What was the result of Darley and Batsons 1973 study on helping behavior?

Does circumstance and having one's mind occupied by moral/religious thoughts increase likelihood of helping someone in an emergency?
//www.spring.org.uk/2009/12/when-situations-not-personality-dictate-our-behaviour.php

A good Samaritan

In their classic social psychology study the experimenters recruited 67 students from the Princeton Theological Seminary and told them it was a study about religious education and vocations. They were asked to fill in some personality questionnaires and told they were going to give a brief talk in a nearby room. Some were asked to give a short talk about the types of jobs for seminary graduates, while the others were asked to talk about the parable of the 'Good Samaritan'.
While making their way to the other office to give their talk, they would encounter an experimental confederate lying in a doorway, doubled over, eyes closed and coughing. Participants would have to pass the apparently highly distressed man, but would they stop to help?
The experimenters thought it would depend on how much participants were hurried, so they manipulated this by giving them one of the following three instructions:

1. "Oh, you're late. They were expecting you a few minutes ago. We'd better get moving..."
2. "The assistant is ready for you, so please go right over."
3. "...It'll be a few minutes before they're ready for you, but you might as well head on over..."

This created three conditions: high, medium and low hurry. Each of these conditions were also split into two: half about to deliver a talk on the Good Samaritan, the other half on job prospects for seminary graduates. This meant that the experimenters could assess both the effect of hurry as well as the talk they were giving on the students' helping behaviours.

Results

On average just 40% of the seminary students offered help [with a few stepping over the apparently injured man] but crucially the amount of hurry they were in had a large influence on behaviour. Here is the percentage of participants who offered help by condition:

• Low hurry: 63%
• Medium hurry: 45%
• High hurry: 10%

The type of talk they were giving also had an effect on whether they offered help. Of those asked to talk about careers for seminarians, just 29% offered help, while of those asked to talk about the parable of the Good Samaritan, fully 53% gave assistance.
What these figures show is the large effect that subtle aspects of the situation have on the way people behave. When the effect of personality was compared with situation, i.e. how much of a hurry they happened to be in or whether they were thinking about a relevant parable, the effect of religiosity was almost insignificant. In this context, then, situation is easily trumping personality.


It is important to realise that the 'fundamental attribution error' is especially prominent here. It is the inclination to overemphasize the influence of dispositional factors [e.g. personality] and underestimating the role of situational factors [e.g. weather] on a persons behaviour.

Also, what is it that really defines a good samaritan? Perhaps there may have been a difference in perception between what may have been helping another. There may have been a conflict between helping the experimenter and helping the unknown victim. The perception of what is more important to them could vary.


What are the other characteristics in such a situation that may have caused the results to vary greatly?

In 1973, researchers from Princeton University created an experiment to investigate factors that inhibit selflessness and altruistic behavior. The factors they wanted to test were the relative haste of a person and how distracted their minds were on other things such as religious and spiritual matters.

So, seminary students were recruited and were told they were to be part of a study on religious education. The participants completed a personality questionnaire about their religion and then began fake experimental procedures. The fake experiments initially took place in one building, and after some time the participant was asked to go to another building for the second part of the experiment. On their way to the next building, there would be an actor who would pose as an injured victim in an alleyway. Before leaving, different participants were told different amounts of urgency for their walk, and participants were also told different tasks they would be doing when they arrived at the next building.

One of these tasks was to prepare a talk about seminary jobs and the other was to prepare a talk about the story of the Good Samaritan. Surprisingly, the task assigned to the participant did not show any effect on helping behavior. However, the amount of urgency told to the participant had a major effect on helping behavior. Also, there was no correlation between the participant’s religious beliefs and helping behavior.

The researchers concluded that thinking about certain “norms” does not imply that a person will act on them. The participant’s conflict between meeting the needs of the victim and the needs of the experimenters is what influenced their decision on whether to help or not.

I found this study particularly interesting because of my fascination with religion and its influence on human behavior. This study may seem to disprove the connection between religious affiliations and ethics, but I see these results more as showing the humanity in even the most devout person. I can confidently state that being religious does not inherently make a person good. However, I would argue that it has a substantial impact on a person’s recognition of certain ethics and on their life outlook.

Church is, from my perspective, a devotion of time every week to reaffirm a commitment to the good that we as humans strive to bring to the world. It carves an hour out of our busy lives to think about and give us a reason to be a good person. Through the past several decades, people have grown more cynical towards religion and towards the idea of attending church [for good reasons too]. However, because of this, we have lost the ethical center of our communities that was present all the way through the 20th century.

We all are easily distracted by the rush of life; this study has made that clear. I am by no means saying that people should feel obligated to attend church. However, I do believe that setting aside time every week to contemplate the idea of a higher purpose in life is essential to shaping our communities for the better.

What was the purpose of the Good Samaritan experiment?

What was the Good Samaritan study related to helping?

When was the Good Samaritan experiment done?

Was the Good Samaritan experiment ethical?