If people are not doing the right things; If people are less kind than what we know they can be; If people are more selfish or self-centered that what we believe they should be; Maybe what’s wrong is that we are not letting them have the opportunity , the situations to show the good they can do. Whenever I fall in the trap of thinking myself as good and decent I step back and tell myself; How lucky I am that I have the opportunity to be good, to be decent. This is because I haven’t faced something that was big enough to push me to the limit. This keeps me huble.
In a hurry, can’t stop
Here’s what happened. 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. Recall that the experimenters also measured personality variables, specifically the 'religiosity' of the seminarians. 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.
via When Situations Not Personality Dictate Our Behaviour | PsyBlog.