Identifying Questions and Hypotheses

     The Good Samaritan Experiment, carried out in 1978, tested the helping behavior of humans while placed in different circumstances. The set up of this experiment includes many adolescents in a room learning about religion. Then once the lesson was over, the children were asked to move from one building to another. Some were given many minutes to pass to the next classroom and others were told to move locations in a haste. While walking to the next building, the students would see an "injured" man and the experiment would essentially test whether the students would help or not.
     The full experiment can be found at https://explorable.com/helping-behavior
     The main question of the study was to find out if students would be a Good Samaritan and help out an injured man, under various circumstances. They tried this experiment and used variables like lack or length of time and the effect of religious or nonreligious values.
     The experiment tested three hypotheses. The first one was, If people are thinking about religion and higher principles, they would be no more inclined to show helping behavior than laymen (a non religious person). The second one held as, if people are in a rush, then they would be much less likely to show helping behavior. And finally, If people are religious for personal gain, then they would be less likely to help than people who are religious because they want to gain some spiritual and personal insights into the meaning of life.
     These hypotheses were based on prior knowledge on human behavior. The first one argued that people who are religious and non religious can have the same values to help others out, which is true in many cases because people who aren't god-fearing, usually help because they have good morals. The second one stated that people who are in a rush won't help out, which can be accurate because when a person has some work to finish, they will put themselves first. But this statement may not hold true in all cases, which is why they took the experiment. The last hypothesis hints that people who are religious for personal gain are selfish, which may have been true in 1978 but where we live today- being religious will not give you more gain in society than others.