The Bad Samaritan...

...on a similar note, regarding revealing psychological experimentation, you may know of this one - an old chestnut taught at every seminary and, strangely, always about events in another country. In the UK we are taught it happened in America, whilst the Americans always swear it was over here.

A group of trainee priests was taken to a large, run-down urban hospital where they were informed that they were going to be tested on their short-term memory. (Clue One of course - the explicit task in any psychexperi is never the real deal. This much we all know!)

The group was split into three and each told they would be read a short text before being asked to walk through the hospital to another room and there recite the read text from memory. They were given a maximum of five minutes to make the journey or their score would be invalid.

One group was read a short passage from the Old Testament, one group a paragraph from a novel and the third group was read the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

So off they set in turn, one by one, focused on the route, the time and the text. In a dark corridor they each passed an actor dressed as a tramp, lying on the floor, seemingly wounded, unattended and crying out for help.

Very few of the busy trainee priests thought to stop and help the man. Most rushed on by, some pausing to tell a nurse if they saw one, and just a handful set aside their 'task' to attend to the man's seeming needs.

Of those who had just heard the very passage in which Christ Himself exhorts them not to 'pass by on the other side' - you can probably guess - there were no more in that group who stopped to help than in either of the other two groups.

The words were in their head, but not in their hearts.