There is a now famous experiment about what will or will not make us a “Good Samaritan.” I like it because I like experimental ethics and experimental economics. It also has practical lessons.
The propositions
Two professors at Princeton decided to try out three different hypothesis:
- Your orientation towards faith and religion might make a difference (do you participate for gain or for other reasons).
- Focusing your mind on the idea of helping might make you more likely to help.
- Being in a hurry might make you less likely to help.
What they did
They recruited people who were training for the ministry, seminary students. They gave them personality tests (to let them sort on orientation), then they had them start in the library and go to the chapel. Between the library and the chapel it was planned that they would encounter a man slumped in an alleyway.
In the library they were either assigned to prepare a sermon or talk about jobs in the seminary or to prepare a sermon on the story of the Good Samaritan. When the preparation period was finished, some were told they were late for the presentation, some were told that it turned out they had some extra time but should head over to the chapel anyway.
They then passed a man sitting slumped in a doorway, an actor, who moaned and coughed twice as the student walked by. For some the slump actually put the man in the path of the seminary student and stepped over him on the way to the chapel. (They would later be questioned about the man).
Reactions were graded on a scale of 1-5
0=failed to notice any need
1=perceived need but did not offer aid
2=did not stop but helped indirectly (told the someone on their arrival at the chapel about the man)
3=stopped and asked if actor needed help
4=after stopping, insisted on taking the actor inside and then left him.
5=refused to leave actor, or insisted on taking him somewhere
When they arrived at the chapel, they gave their presentation and then were given a questionnaire to answer.
Results
First, what you had on your mind, preparing to give a talk on finding a job or on the Good Samaritan did not make a difference on whether or not someone helped. Exactly. Focusing on the Good Samaritan made absolutely no difference on whether or not someone would act like him.
Second, approaches to religion turned out to make no difference. The first experiment reflected that if you saw “religion as a quest” you were less likely to help and that otherwise approaches to religion made no difference at all. Later analysis appeared to have disproved this as a correlation.
Third, whether or not the student was in a hurry had a marked impact. With spare time, people were more likely than not to help (63%). People in a hurry were only 10% likely to help.
Other studies and research
There has been a fair amount of related research by behavioral economists. Some of it is because they just don’t trust other disciplines (a number of “famous” experiments do not replicate when performed by economists which leads to fun discussions). Some of it is because the area is fascinating.
What they learned was:
- People are more likely to help others if they see someone else helping. Actions speak much more louder than words in creating a social norm for how to act. The difference is dramatic.
- People are more likely to help others if they have practiced helping others, either with someone (such as a mentor) or in roleplays or training. Direct first aid training and skills, for example, make it much more likely that someone will render first aid.
- In addition to skill training, role playing (as hokey as it often looks) actually works.
- People are more likely to help if they have time. Just setting aside time to help makes it much more likely someone will help.
Take away points
Inspirational or hortatory sermons and admonitions are worthless.
If you want people to do anything, you need to have them practice doing it. You want someone to report a sexual offender, stop and render aid, visit the needy, minister to the afflicted or act in a Christlike fashion when it is not convenient you need to have them practice and to see or hear of others practicing and doing (so that it doesn’t hurt for someone to bear their testimony of helping someone else — it is actually more useful than having them preach a sermon on helping someone else).
But above all, you need to make time.
Questions
- What do you think?
- How would you improve and change the way we minister to each other?
- What has worked for you to help others in large or small ways?
- What other thoughts do you have on this topic?
Published paper on the study is Darley, J. M., and Batson, C.D., “From Jerusalem to Jericho”: A study of Situational and Dispositional Variables in Helping Behavior”. JPSP, 1973, 27, 100-108.
You can read a nice summary here.
Other than an image I created myself from a book reviewed earlier, images are from wikimedia commons.
Wheat & Tares 
Do you think you would have stopped to help?
It depends on the severity of the problem. A homeless person letting out a cough is a lot different than the man in the story beaten and left for dead.
Where I live, most of the homeless are either drug abusers or mentally ill. The cities have begged us to donate and volunteer at homeless shelters instead of trying to intervene on the streets.
The other sad fact is if I stopped to check every homeless person slumped over, 99.9% of the time I’d be waking them up from a nap.
I know this because I’ve checked before. It’s embarrassing for both parties. After a couple of times, you just stop.
Good point.
The test being run on a college campus makes a difference though.
I’d like to think I would stop, but I am one of those “always in a hurry” people. I know I need to leave earlier and yet I never do. I really like what you wrote about practicing being a good Samaritan though. Even though it feels awkward, it really does help to rehearse what you would say to someone, the same way we practice before we give a talk or presentation. Preparation makes me feel much more competent and effective, which would make me less hesitant to offer help to someone who appears to be in bad health (or whatever else).
First, thank you for providing a detailed and documented post on this subject. I’ve heard perhaps a dozen reports of this experiment, one of which was supposedly run by Hugh Nibley who placed someone needing help changing a bike tire right outside the Joseph Smith Building where a religion final was being administered. Or maybe it really has be replicated dozens of times with different variations.
At BYU one of my general education history professors taught us that people who were most likely to hide and otherwise help Jews during WWII were atheists or non religious.
Unfortunately I don’t think I would have stopped to help this man and I wish I didn’t have to say that I’ve only helped someone on the side of the road a couple of times, which is the everyday version of this dilemma. I’ve only once given money to a beggar; it was on my mission and was berated by my companion (I was a greenie). I spend a few days every year serving the community in various ways (my company gives us two paid days each year for community service), but I do it on my schedule. My guess is that lack of time and keeping our commitments plays a huge role in determining to what extent we help others.
Many seem to trust giving to charitable organizations more than to individuals for many reasons. I wonder whether Jesus would tell us to help the Red Cross, the LDS church, or individuals we see – or all of the above.
Context.
Jesus lived at a time when the Jews were in near slavery to the Romans who had no tolerance for not following their rules and there was no social safety net. Most people were poor in possessions but rich in time compared to us. I don’t think the parable applies very well to the situation we have in the central portions of large cities especially in America with huge numbers of criminals, drug addicts, psychopths, mentally ill, etc and huge expensive government programs extracting up to a third of our income in the form of taxes and huge wealthy churches willing to help .Most of the beggars I meet are less than a few blocks from a church or govt agencies that give out food and offer shelter. Also education, rehab and counseling to get back on their feet. Donating money and volunteering time to these organizations will help more than re-enacting less-relevant Biblical stories and not perpetuate the problem.
Interesting that those who had just developed a presentation on the Good Samaritan were no more likely to help the man on the floor than those who did not. This is called “priming”, and phycology shows that priming works in other circumstances. A experiment was run where students were given a test that they self-scored, then shredded the test and they received a $1 for every correct answer. The shedder was rigged and didn’t really shred the tests. Almost everybody cheated, saying they got two more answers correct than they really did. But, it before the test they were asked to wright down all the 10 Commandments they could remember, cheating went down, even for the atheist. If they were reminded before the test that the school had an honor code they signed, and they were to follow it, cheating went down, even in the schools that didn’t have an honor code.
Mike,
Enlarged context.
There is much of what you wrote I would agree with but I think there is more to the issue and would offer the following. I work in a large medical university out of the Dean of Medicine’s office. The culture if full of meetings which we are expected to be to on time to. The only exception is if we are helping lost patients find their way. The Dean as well as the CEO are known for helping lost patients. Much of their administrative staff do not interact with patients but one of them after watching their boss in action had an idea… In the Dean’s office there is always leftover food from various functions. Why not share the food with departments such as the mail room, receiving dock or transportation. Groups who normally do not meals during meetings? The point. The behavior was demonstrated. Then modified to fit what was available. The Dean did not have to say this is what we are going to do. They just demonstrated the behavior of being kind and considerate and their staff got the message.
Mark—exactly. Example, social norming and practice. That was a great comment.
Bishop Bill. You are right about priming as to ethics in cases where it doesn’t change the time or effort required. People are also more ethical in the morning, down to more likely to cheat on their spouses late at night.
Toad and llnelso3 —good points.
If I were running an experiment now I’d be testing the effect of priming when honesty required extra time or effort rather than giving up a benefit.
Great post Stephen. We had a seminary teacher do a similar experiment and I failed the test.
I do agree that preparation and time play a big role in ones willingness to stop and help. I live in a rural area and I always take with me gas, a tow rope, jumper cables, antifreeze and tools. I am also my own boss, so I usually can make time to stop and help if I need to. I will stop if someone is broke down on the side of the road because I have the tools and the skill set to help the majority of people that are stopped.
I don’t have the skill set to listen to people, to show empathy to those who struggle, or to do service without broadcasting to the world how great I am. You would think that I would have learned these things on my mission, but looking back I spent most my time trying to impress people and climb in the ranks. I have only started working on these things the last few years.
It is a great idea to role play with the youth not only how to change a tire, but how to listen to someone without judging or trying to fix them.
First, to answer the question honestly, as a woman, I would be reluctant to get too close to the man slumped in the doorway for fear of harm. I would like to think I would at least ask him what was wrong (#3)-or alert someone (#2). But, probably, if I knew others were passing by this person around the same time as me, likely I would do neither, rationalizing that others tried to help or would help him–which feeds into the research that people are less likely to help when there are more eyewitnesses.
I am reminded of something that happened to my husband several years ago when he was the Gospel Doctrine teacher. He had gone out to dinner with his boss who always liked to walk home after dinner. During the walk home, his boss asked him what lesson he would be teaching Sunday. The upcoming lesson was the Good Samaritan. His boss, (being Jewish), was not familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan and asked my husband to tell him about it. A few moments later they were confronted by a woman asking for “gas money” for her car which was not anywhere in sight. His boss said nothing, and just looked at my husband, who, of course, could not do anything else but pull out his wallet and give the woman some money. (btw my husband more often than not-right or wrong–gives panhandlers money).
Stephen: “Do you think you would have stopped to help?” Possible, not likely. I am usually over-committed, short on time, and susceptible to every virus or infection that comes along. I am also suspicious of panhandlers. Some here have reported taking in $400/day; some I have “helped” have shown themselves clearly fakes as to needs. My concerns may be overblown, but since a friend was killed by a hitchhiker he had stopped to help years ago, I have not been able to get past them. (Issues of possible danger are not limited to women.) Sometimes I feel a strong urge to give money or aid — and some of those times I do. Some would say those are the promptings of the Spirit. I don’t think I’m particularly susceptible to promptings of the Spirit, but in view of time, health, safety, fraud and economic issues, I’m content to wait for them. I hope I respond appropriately when they come.
This varies with country, situation, and culture. I have not seen anyone begging in Australia, so someone laying on the ground has a medical problem and would be helped.
I have just been traveling in a very remote part of Australia, where in 8 hours of travel you might see 5 vehicles come the other way. If someone is stopped on the side of the road they are answering a call of nature or in need of help. You all wave to each other on passing. You would stop if not waved on.
I’d heard of the Good Samaritan experiment and have been perplexed by how to relate it to the Mormon teaching that scripture study makes you a better person. It seems like we believe that scriptural text is a magic spell we cast over ourselves — an incantation, essentially; “Scripture power keeps me safe from sin.” My dad was more than a bit off when I was growing up, so we sometimes read scriptures as a family for hours, not exaggerating. It didn’t stop him from erupting in verbal or physical abuse mid-verse sometimes. Neither did his personal and couple scripture study, which he was quite pious about. I’ve inherited some of his irritability. I’m pretty much a witch when I’m preparing a lesson or talk for church. I can be writing mid-sentence about following the Savior’s loving example and snap at my husband for interrupting me (because he needs help changing the baby, because in our house diaper changing is only a one-man job when that man is a woman). I’m fully aware of my hypocrisy, but the stress of public speaking (and really any stress at all) seems to deplete my self-control, scripture power notwithstanding.
Still, it’s hard for me to accept that scripture study has ZERO effect on behavior. Another study showed that people who have read the Bible are more compassionate. (More liberal, too! Another interesting “fact” I came across: Atheists are more likely to have read the Bible cover-to-cover than believers.) I have read that religious and/or conservatives give more to charities, but that’s counting tithe-like contributions that can go to church buildings and proselyting. On the other hand, atheists and/or liberals supposedly give more money to colleges and museums and the like. It would be difficult to assess how much money goes to true charities from either group given the subjectivity involved in defining true charity.
No citations for any of this, just memory.
If true, the claim that religious people were less likely to help Jews is disappointing. It made me think of another study* that showed non-religious children share more than religious children. Another conclusion from this study was that religious children were crueler, although just from the details I got I’m not sure if that was a fair conclusion. Religious children were more likely to see interpersonal harm as wrong, and (therefore?) more likely to expect punishment for the perpetrators, which was taken to indicate they are more “judgmental” and “meaner.” But couldn’t it be argued that not seeing anything wrong with interpersonal harm is actually “meaner”? I’m not sure what to make of it.
Another study I can’t cite was one that found children told “Don’t be a cheater” were less likely to cheat than those told “Don’t cheat.” This, combined with the study Bill mentioned, could imply that appealing to the subject’s self-importance (a personal sense of identity or honor or adherence to a social contract like the 10 Cs) is more effective than belief in right and wrong. So maybe, Elder Packer, the study of doctrine doesn’t actually improve behavior. And maybe there’s something to be said for the “chosen generation” line? (Not that I’d be the one saying it.)
But what is the point of religion if it doesn’t actually make us better than ourselves? Is it just a social club — or truly an opioid? I don’t like thinking that.
*http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/nonreligious-children-are-more-generous
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/06/religious-children-less-altruistic-secular-kids-study
If this was a situation where I thought I would be able to help, and I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to actually notice a problem, I hope I would stop and help…. I have stopped to help a mother and grandmother struggling to fold a baby buggy, without dropping the baby at a bus stop on a busy London street as a student, and have several times, more recently, assisted mothers struggling up steps with a baby in a buggy, but none of those scenarios appeared as a potential threat.
It’s also true though, that sometimes I haven’t processed what I’ve seen until I’m no longer in a position to do anything. I’m sure practise would help with that.
At BYU one of my general education history professors taught us that people who were most likely to hide and otherwise help Jews during WWII were atheists or non religious.
Would love to see the primary sources on this.
Laurel, if you combine scripture study with other things, such as role plays and planning and examples and social norming it has a positive effect. However, like faith without works (to segue to a scripture) by itself it doesn’t work.
Lois, good for your husband. I often give money too.
Hedgehog—I find that if I don’t process things I often don’t act until it is too late. I don’t have a cure for that.
The “don’t cheat” study is one of the priming studies.
And, statistics reflect that the LDS are ahead of the secularists. 🙂
Laurel,
Unfortunately, not everything that claims to be a study is. And some studies are simply an illustration of bad science. And unfortunately the press frequently can’t tell which is which. They simply report what they’re being told. They don’t assess. Hence, at the top of your first link to the report of the first study about non-religious vs. religious children we find this: “Update, 7 August 2019, 4:35 p.m.: The scientific study this article was based on has been retracted.”
I believe what we’re seeing is NOT that sermons don’t matter. What we’re seeing is what occurs with every single subject we study. And nobody would suggest that all of education is worthless.
The problem is one what’s called “transfer of learning” and refers to difficulty we have of transferring principles learned with with one set of examples to other situations that are superficially different but are actually the same underneath.
Our minds think in concrete terms. And so we can hear a tremendous sermon, but if we aren’t presented with the same examples, we will frequently fail to apply what we just heard because we don’t recognize it as the same problem. For example, in the Cambridge study, they should have probably presented a man that had been beaten, stripped, robbed, and left half dead. And it might have helped if the students saw a stuff-shirt rabbi or priest pass by. Unfortunately, they didn’t. And so it’s difficult to conclude that what the “study” demonstrated more than anything else wasn’t the problem of transfer.
Daniel Willingham, a researcher at the University of Virginia who focuses on the brain basis of learning and memory, writes a great article about the problem of transfer and some things we can do in teaching to help. Here’s his intro.
“Cognitive science has shown us that when new material is first learned, the mind is biased to remember things in concrete forms that are difficult to apply to new situations. This bias seems best overcome by the accumulation of a greater store of related knowledge, facts, and examples. To understand this bias, we need to first distinguish between what I would call genuinely “rote” knowledge and the much more common “inflexible” knowledge. Second, we’ll look at a number of experiments that strongly suggest the mind tends to remember new concepts in terms that are concrete and superficial, not abstract or deep. Third, we’ll review experiments designed to illuminate the nature of expertise, which can be thought of as consisting of “flexible” knowledge. Fourth, we’ll consider what this means for teaching.”
More here: https://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/winter-2002/ask-cognitive-scientist.
As has been pointed out, other factors are also in play such as factors in the social learning theory. Others are elements of behavior captured in models like the Fogg behavior model which recognize that making something easier (giving people time and no conflicting priorities) also helps. More here: https://www.behaviormodel.org/.
The bottom line is that sermons about doing good, just like lectures about math or physics, are helpful. It’s just that we humans need lots and lots of examples to recognize the deep structure of what we’re being asked to do in order to apply it widely.