So, back to work finally. I'm preparing my lecture for Social Psychology tomorrow. Revising my old Helping lecture to fit only one day because of lost days to the storm. I'm reviewing in detail on the Darley and Batson study from 1973 that showed seminary students became unlikely to help an apparently ill stranger when put under time pressure, even if they'd just written a sermon based on the parable of the Good Samaritan. I wanted some details so I found the published study and wow... wow… so much to question to my eye: erroneously applied randomization of procedures making for unequal Ns and no indication of what the Ns were in the conditions, weak statistical methods (though possibly state of the art for the time).
One of the main findings is that preparing the sermon on the parable did not increase helping compared to creating a sermon on another topic. But, looking at the results, it looked to me like there was evidence for helping having increased for those who prepared the Good Samaritan sermon. And, I found a later critique suggesting the analysis looked wrong. This is a very popular study to teach in undergraduate classes and it doesn't fit well, IMO, with the large body of work supporting priming a cognitive schema, in this case for helping (the type of sermon written should have done that). Given the level of importance this is given in some textbooks, has there been any replications that would support the lack of finding an effect for activation of a helping schema? You might enjoy reading the study. http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~omirosa/357/Readings/13-Darley_and_Batson.pdf Paul --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=21410 or send a blank email to leave-21410-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
