Almost 1,000 people came to the distribution centers. In New York City, CBS broadcast the neutral episode of
Medical Center
and the episode in which Tom stole from the charity box and was caught by the police. Nine percent of the people who had seen the
neutral
program took the dangling dollar or broke open the charity box. Did watching Tom steal money and receive punishment for his crimes increase the likelihood of theft? In fact, it seemed to make people slightly more honest, since only about 4 percent of people took the dollar or broke into the box. In St. Louis, CBS broadcast the neutral episode and the episode in which Tom’s crimes went unpunished. Only about 2 percent of people who saw the neutral program behaved in a dishonest way, compared to 3 percent of those who had seen Tom steal the money and get away with his crime.
Worried that any potential effect might have been diluted by the relatively long delay between the time people watched the programs and when they arrived at the gift distribution centers, Milgram repeated the experiment but this time eliminated the delay. In this new study, people in New York’s Times Square area were offered a “Free Ticket for a Color Television Preview.” Those accepting the offer were taken to a room in a nearby building containing just a television set, a chair, and the charity box. Participants were left alone to watch one of the specially filmed episodes of
Medical Center;
they were then secretly observed to see whether they removed money from the charity box. The experiment was not a success. Most of the people accepting the free tickets turned out to be alcoholics, drug addicts, or homeless (several asked whether they were allowed to sleep in the laboratory), and the subsequent levels of antisocial behavior, including urinating on floors and threats to staff, forced the early closure of the experiment. As far as I am aware, this is the only time an experiment examining the psychology of antisocial behavior has been terminated because of antisocial behavior.
Milgram’s highly elaborate, expensive, and extensive studies revealed that the television programs had little, if any, impact on public behavior. The findings caused controversy; some argued that they represented conclusive evidence against legislation to control television programming; others criticized Milgram’s methods and said the findings promoted the case for censorship.
This mass-participation television experiment was not Milgram’s only sojourn into the world of antisocial and prosocial behavior. His other contribution had a much larger impact, and it involved devising a method that is still used by psychologists around the globe. The idea, which was simplicity itself, concerned the innocent act of inadvertently dropping an envelope on the street.
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ENVELOPE DROPPING, AND THE FRIENDS OF THE NAZI PARTY
In 1963, Milgram and his research assistants secretly wandered around ten districts in New Haven, Connecticut, dropping three hundred envelopes in phone booths, on pavements, and inside shops. The first line of the address on the envelopes read either “Friends of the Nazi Party,” “Friends of the Communist Party,” or “Medical Research Associates.” The remaining address lines on all of the envelopes were identical—a post office box in Connecticut. Milgram figured that people would be far more likely to pick up the envelopes and put them in a mailbox if they felt some level of support for the organization listed in the address. Milgram was right. About 70 percent of the envelopes addressed to the “Medical Research Associates” were returned, compared to just 25 percent of those addressed to either “Friends of the Nazi Party” or “Friends of the Communist Party.”
These findings demonstrated that this simple technique could be used to gauge public opinion without ever having to ask people a single question. It was a clever way to find out what people actually thought about an issue, rather than relying on notoriously unreliable surveys and opinion polls.
The technique was not, however, without its problems. Milgram was concerned that scattering so many envelopes addressed to organizations associated with Communists and Nazis might arouse suspicion among both the public and the police. In an attempt to avoid such unwanted and unnecessary attention, he contacted the FBI prior to the study and informed them about the research. It was to little avail. When Milgram telephoned back after the experiment, the FBI agent said that he couldn’t remember Milgram’s original call; he also hinted that a significant number of agents were now involved in the case. The feds were not the only problem. Milgram also reported that researchers often complained of aching feet after walking the considerable distances needed to ensure a satisfactory distribution of envelopes. The situation was made worse by “helpful” passersby frequently spotting an envelope immediately after it had been dropped, picking it up, and handing it back to an experimenter.
The technique was, however, sufficiently promising for Milgram to devise and test various ways of overcoming these problems. In one instance, he tried distributing the envelopes from a moving car. To avoid arousing suspicion, this had to happen at night, but the envelopes frequently landed face down in unintended, and inappropriate, places. Undeterred, on another occasion Milgram hired a light aircraft and dropped hundreds of envelopes over Worcester, Massachusetts. Again, the method proved unsuccessful. Many of the envelopes became stuck in trees or landed on rooftops. Worse still, others were swept into the aircraft’s wing flaps, endangering the safety of both the pilot and the researcher.
Despite these setbacks, Milgram was to employ the envelope-dropping procedure in several additional studies. In one, he measured the levels of racial prejudice in predominately white and black neighborhoods in North Carolina. In another, the technique was successfully used to predict the outcome of the 1964 presidential election race between Barry Goldwater and Lyndon B. Johnson (albeit dramatically underestimating the margin of Johnson’s subsequent victory). Milgram also attempted to export the technique to the Far East to investigate the percentage of pro-Mao and pro-Nationalist people living in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Bangkok. Unfortunately, this ambitious project was besieged by unforeseen problems. The experimenter Milgram sent to conduct the study in Singapore was placed on a return plane immediately after arriving in the country because of widespread rioting, and the researcher hired in Hong Kong promptly absconded with Milgram’s research funds.
The technique is still used by social psychologists today, and it has been employed to examine public opinion about a diverse range of issues, including Bill Clinton’s impeachment,
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gay and lesbian issues, abortion, Arab-Israeli relationships,
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and the attitudes of Catholics and Protestants toward one another in Northern Ireland. In 1999, a student named Lucas Hanft carried out one of the largest studies, dropping 1,600 letters addressed to various fictitious organizations in Manhattan and Nassau County that were for and against gay marriage. The results revealed that those living in the city were more liberal than suburbanites. Hanft also experienced many of the same types of problems encountered by Milgram, including, for example, being threatened with arrest for littering.
Over the years, psychologists have employed a modified version of the envelope-dropping technique to measure levels of altruism in different communities and countries. The results of these subsequent studies have helped identify who helps, and when. Some of the most intriguing experiments have investigated a group of people who are often perceived as highly helpful: the deeply religious.
THE PARABLE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN, AND OTHER RELIGIOUS MYTHS
Results from work examining religion and altruism suggest that, in general, religious people often give to those in need.
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However, some of the more quirky research into the subject has questioned whether such altruism is always present.
In the 1970s, Gordon Forbes and his colleagues, psychologists from Millikin University in Illinois, wanted to discover which religious groups were the most, and least, helpful.
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There seemed little point in simply asking different sets of churchgoers whether they were good people because everyone was likely to say yes. Instead, the researchers asked a knowledgeable theologian to identify the ten most liberal and ten most conservative churches in the region. During Sunday services at these churches, the experimenters tiptoed around the outside of the building and dropped letters in doorways and parking lots. They then repeated the procedure at local Catholic churches during mass.
The letters were all sealed and unstamped, and they were addressed to local residents “Mr. and Mrs. Fred Guthrie.” Rather sneakily, the experimenters had made sure that letters dropped in the liberal, conservative, and Catholic churches, respectively, could be identified on the basis of Fred’s alleged middle initial. Roughly 40 percent of letters were returned from each of the three types of church. None of the letters bore a stamp, and thus people picking up the letters faced a choice. They could either place a stamp on the letter and drop it in a mailbox or send it postage due. The Catholics and liberals came out of the study looking most generous, placing stamps on 89 percent and 87 percent of the envelopes, respectively. However, only 42 percent of those at the conservative churches were prepared to indulge in this act of kindness, the remaining being returned postage due. As noted by the authors: “These findings suggest that members of conservative churches are as willing to help strangers as are members of liberal or Catholic churches; yet they are far less willing to spend a few cents to do so.”
Other researchers have also questioned the altruistic intentions of those claiming to be highly religious. In 1973, Princeton psychologists John Darley and C. Daniel Batson reported a remarkable study on religion and helping.
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At the beginning of their experiment, a group of trainee ministers at one of the world’s leading institutions for theological education were asked to prepare sermons based on the parable of the Good Samaritan. According to this well-known biblical story, a man is beaten up by thieves and left lying in the street. Various priests come across the man, but walk by. Eventually, a Good Samaritan goes out of his way to provide assistance, and the parable ends by urging others to help those in need. After they had made their preparations, the trainee ministers were told that their sermons would be filmed in another building, were given directions to the new location, and sent on their way. Although they didn’t realize it, every step of their journey was being secretly observed by the experimenters.
On the short trip between the two buildings, each participant came across a man (an actor) who was in need of assistance. He was slumped against a doorway, his head down and eyes closed. As each participant walked past, the actor gave a well-rehearsed groan and two coughs. The experimenters wanted to know whether the trainee ministers would practice what they preached and help the man. Even though they were on their way to deliver a sermon about the importance of being a Good Samaritan, more than half the participants walked straight past the man. Some of them actually stepped
over
him. In a slightly modified version of the study, the experimenters told another group of trainee ministers that they needed to get to the second building as soon as possible. Under these circumstances, the level of helping dropped to just 10 percent. The experiment reveals a great deal about human nature, including the dramatic difference between people’s words and actions, and how a fast pace of life can help create an uncaring culture.
Earlier in this chapter, I described a series of studies, conducted by the
World in Action
program, examining the honesty of the nation. The producers also carried out a study comparing the honesty of two groups of the most, and least, trusted people in society: priests and used-car dealers. According to the results of a recent Gallup poll, 59 percent of people rate the clergy as honest, versus only 5 percent for car salesmen. But do these beliefs really reflect honesty? To find out, the team members set up a fictitious furniture company called “Honesty,” and then they sent a group of priests and used-car dealers a letter from our newly formed organization. The letter thanked them for their recent purchase; it also contained a check for about £10 as a refund. All the recipients would have known that they hadn’t bought anything from the company, but how many of them would be dishonest enough to cash the check? There was very little difference between the two groups, with both the priests and car dealers cashing about 50 percent of the checks.
CITY LIVING
A slight variant of Milgram’s envelope-dropping technique has also been used by Robert Levine, from California State University, to assess kindness across the world.
Levine’s initial work investigated whether people helped or not in thirty-six major cities across the United States.
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Instead of dropping envelopes in the street, Levine and his team placed stamped, addressed envelopes on the windshields of randomly selected cars parked in shopping centers; they also left a neat handwritten note: “I found this next to your car.” They wanted to find out how many of the letters would be returned from each area. This test of helping was supplemented by several others. As experimenters walked in front of randomly selected people, they dropped pens and then counted how many people picked them up and returned them. A concealed experimenter observed the response of the public as a perfectly healthy experimenter who had donned a large leg brace stood on the street and struggled to pick up a pile of magazines that he had dropped. The same experimenter also put on dark glasses, held a white cane, and took note of how many passersby helped him cross a busy street.