In 1973, researchers from Princeton University created an experiment to investigate factors that inhibit selflessness and altruistic behavior. The factors they wanted to test were the relative haste of a person and how distracted their minds were on other things such as religious and spiritual matters.

So, seminary students were recruited and were told they were to be part of a study on religious education. The participants completed a personality questionnaire about their religion and then began fake experimental procedures. The fake experiments initially took place in one building, and after some time the participant was asked to go to another building for the second part of the experiment. On their way to the next building, there would be an actor who would pose as an injured victim in an alleyway. Before leaving, different participants were told different amounts of urgency for their walk, and participants were also told different tasks they would be doing when they arrived at the next building.

One of these tasks was to prepare a talk about seminary jobs and the other was to prepare a talk about the story of the Good Samaritan. Surprisingly, the task assigned to the participant did not show any effect on helping behavior. However, the amount of urgency told to the participant had a major effect on helping behavior. Also, there was no correlation between the participant’s religious beliefs and helping behavior.

The researchers concluded that thinking about certain “norms” does not imply that a person will act on them. The participant’s conflict between meeting the needs of the victim and the needs of the experimenters is what influenced their decision on whether to help or not.

I found this study particularly interesting because of my fascination with religion and its influence on human behavior. This study may seem to disprove the connection between religious affiliations and ethics, but I see these results more as showing the humanity in even the most devout person. I can confidently state that being religious does not inherently make a person good. However, I would argue that it has a substantial impact on a person’s recognition of certain ethics and on their life outlook.

Church is, from my perspective, a devotion of time every week to reaffirm a commitment to the good that we as humans strive to bring to the world. It carves an hour out of our busy lives to think about and give us a reason to be a good person. Through the past several decades, people have grown more cynical towards religion and towards the idea of attending church (for good reasons too). However, because of this, we have lost the ethical center of our communities that was present all the way through the 20^th century.

We all are easily distracted by the rush of life; this study has made that clear. I am by no means saying that people should feel obligated to attend church. However, I do believe that setting aside time every week to contemplate the idea of a higher purpose in life is essential to shaping our communities for the better.