Context Trumps Values

Context trumps values. A study at the Princeton Seminary found that intentionally hurried, seminary students, conflicted between being on time to help with an experiment or to stop to help a “victim” they encountered while walking to the experiment, ignored or “did not perceive” the ethical dilemma the victim created and continued on to the experiment 90% of the time. Gladwell paraphrased these findings saying:

. . . the convictions of your heart and the actual contents of your thoughts are less importa nt than immediate context of your behavior . . . the words “you’re late” had the effect of making someone who is ordinarily compassionate into someone . . . indifferent to suffering.

Dawn Freshwater has written, “As nurses we would do well to question our own responses in situations of stress and conflict and the manifestations of oppression in everyday clinical practice”