Students who were listening to this particular interview were given a letter asking the student to share lecture notes and meet with her. The experimenters changed the level of empathy by telling one group to try to focus on how she was feeling (high empathy level) and the other group not to be concerned with that (low empathy level). The experimenters also varied the cost of not helping: the high cost group was told that Carol would be in their psychology class after returning to school and the low cost group believed she would finish the class at home.
Students who listened to this specific interview were given a letter requesting that they share lecture notes and meet with her. The researchers manipulated empathy levels by instructing one group to focus on Carol's feelings (high empathy) and the other not to worry about it (low empathy). Moreover, the cost of not helping was varied: the high-cost group believed Carol would be in their psychology class after returning to school, while the low-cost group thought she would finish the class at home.