In Social Psychology this week, I was learning about how behaviors are influenced and how when a situation actually arises, an outlook could change. I'm sure if asked in a questionnaire "Would you stop to help a person having a seizure" that everyone would say yes- but when faced with the actual situation, would their answer hold true? People have a tendency in hindsight to boost themselves up and make themselves feel better when in reality, they aren't.
A study was conducted where 300 students were asked if they saw someone who was sick, would they stop to help them regardless of what they were doing. Over 85% of the students answered that they would. To test this, the students were told they had to go to a special class. To get to this class, the students had to go through one hallway, and in that hallway a man was seated to pretend to be sick to see how many of the students would ACTUALLY try to help him.
The students were assigned to three groups- one group was told they were going to be late if they didn't hurry to the classroom, and they all left in a hurry. The second group was told that they had a LITTLE time, but they should probably leave then anyway and they left at a moderate pace- and the third group was told to go early and left slowly. Out of ALL the students, about 10% in total stopped to help the man- out of the 85% that said they would help a sick person no matter what.
I found this rather interesting- and astonishing because of how honest it was. People often do say things they don't mean, most of the time unintentionally and because of biases and self pride. We are biased to think that if we DON'T help the sick person, we are automatically BAD, BAD people- when in reality, we are just being honest.
Maddie
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