You are undoubtedly familiar with the Biblical Story of the Good Samaritan, but have you heard of The Good Samaritan Experiment that was conducted with students at Princeton Theological Seminary?
Two Psychologists, John Darley and Daniel Batson, at Princeton University, conducted the following experiment:
- They selected 40 seminary students
- They divided the 40 into 2 groups, and asked each group to prepare a lecture that they would present to fellow seminarians
- One group was given the topic of the Parable of the Good Samaritan,
- The other group was to talk about job opportunities for people studying theology,
- The lectures were to be delivered in another building and the students were told they would have to walk across campus to get to that building.
- Some of the students were told that they were running late and had to hurry to get to the lecture hall; others were told they had plenty of time, and that there was no need to rush
On the way to the lecture hall, the psychologists had arranged that each student would encounter a person seemingly in distress, someone who appeared to have been mugged and was in pain and calling out for help. The purpose of the experiment was to observe the reactions of the students to the injured person -- who would stop to help the injured man and what would be the deciding factor that made him stop and help.
What Darely and Batson discovered was that the determining factor in whether a person stopped or didn’t was whether he was in a hurry or not. Only 10% of those who were told they were running late (including those who were to lecture on The Good Samaritan) stopped to help the man while 63% of those not in a hurry stopped and offered help.
The lesson of this experiment is that when we are hurried in our daily lives, we may easily forget the values that are most important to us.