Busy vs. Compassionate? Can we be both?
According to the Princeton Seminary Experiment conducted by Princeton social psychologists John Darlet and Dan Batson in the 1970s this can be difficult. The study was conducted on students studying to become priests as they were asked to deliver a sermon. They were asked to hold a sermon in a building across campus and would be evaluated by their supervisors. The researchers were curious about how time pressure would affect the student’s “helpful nature.” As the students were preparing their sermons in a classroom they were inflicted with three different constraints by the researchers:
“You’re late. They were expecting you a few minutes ago…You’d better hurry.” This was the high-hurry condition.
“The (studio) assistant is ready for you, so please go right over.” This was the intermediate-hurry condition.
“It’ll be a few minutes before they’re ready for you, but you might as well head on over. If you have to wait over there, it shouldn’t be long.” This was the low-hurry condition.
As each one of the students walked across campus they encountered a “victim” alone in a back street. The “victim” (part of the experiment) appeared poverty- stricken, was coughing and clearly in need of assistance. The students were thus presented with an opportunity to apply what they preach and to help this “victim.” Ultimately, the researchers were interested in seeing if the imposed time pressure would affect the students' response to the distressed “victim.”
Remarkably, only 10% of the students in the high-hurry situation stopped to help the victim. 45% of the students in the intermediate-hurry and 63% of the students in the low-hurry situations helped the victim.
Another lesson this experiment teaches us is that when we feel rushed and in a hurry we experience a phenomenon known as “narrowing of the cognitive map.” This means that we miss details, we aren't really present to what is actually going on around us, which leads us not to make the most beneficial choice for ourselves either. The busier we get the more we start abandoning things that are important to us, our loved ones, our health, the environment around us, and frankly things that make us happy. We tend to do more of things that numb the frustration of the place we are in; having a glass of wine every evening, scrolling social media, and exercise less to name a few.
So not only does busyness make us less compassionate towards others but it also lowers our compassion towards ourselves.
What if our promise to ourselves, the people around us, and the environment for the upcoming year is not to find the next big idea, thing or title. Instead it is to invest in having more time. More time to nurture our loved ones, to take care of what we already have, and to have space to listen to our own thoughts?
Would you be up for it?
Written by:
Alexandra Nash
Citations:
Darley, J. M., & Batson, C. D. (1973). "From Jerusalem to Jericho": A study of situational and dispositional variables in helping behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 27(1), 100–108. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0034449