"You Do You," The War on Compassion
Humans don't like feeling empathy.
It hurts.
Psychologists at Princeton did a little experiment on empathy and compassion back in the 1970s.
They told their students to give a lecture on the good samaritan, but they had to give it across campus. They told one group to take their time. They told the other to hurry.
On their way, the students encountered a man slumped in a doorway coughing and groaning. When students thought they had time, about 60 percent of them stopped to help.
When they were rushed, less than 10 percent even slowed down. They walked right past the suffering stranger.
Of course, the stranger was a plant.
He was recording their responses.
A psychologist in Canada did a different kind of study. He found that students go physically out of their way to avoid situations where they might feel empathy. Time and again, psychology demonstrates a troubling human characteristic. We only help each other when we have the bandwidth. The very sight of sickness or poverty triggers …