What Would You Do?

The television program Primetime: What Would You Do? stages hidden-camera experiments in which average people are confronted with awkward social situations in order to see how they’ll respond.

In this week’s edition, people were reminded of the parable of the Good Samaritan, then sent off to a television audition in another building. Along the way, they encountered a person in obvious need of assistance. The point of the experiment was to see if hearing the biblical story would prompt people to respond.

Here's the twist. Some of the participants were told that they were already late for their audition and had to hurry. The others were told that they had a few minutes to spare.

Only 35 percent of those who were in a hurry stopped to help, compared to 80 percent of the others.

Before concluding that you would respond differently, consider this. This program mimicked a well-known experiment conducted among seminary students at Princeton in the 1970s, and the results were nearly identical. People in a hurry are much less likely to help others, regardless of their level of faith.

The more we think about ourselves, the less open we are to others.

Saying that is a little like discussing the forecast--everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything to change it.  The real question is how we can change the climate in our culture (and ourselves) so that we are less focused on our own lives and more open to others?

 How do we create a sense of community in a society which places its highest value on individual gratification?