In Martha Minow's (1990) book, Making All the Difference: Inclusion,
Exclusion, and American Law, a study by Samuel and Pearl Oliner was cited.
The study was about rescuing behavior towards Jews during WWII. They found
some interesting differences between those that did engage in rescuing and
those that did not. The rescueres "were more likely to be members of vital
communities, bound by religious, familial, or affective ties. Rescuers were
more likely to have grown up in families that emphasized the commonalities
of all humankind; they had had less exposure to anti-Semitic and other
labels marking some groups as inherently worse than others. The Oliners'
study suggests that moral action may be shaped by the relationships people
enjoy and by the messages they receive about their relationships with
others" (p. 389).
Two questions:
1. How do you think this study relates to service-learning?
2. Have there been any studies of service behavior that has findings
regarding moral action, or findings similar to the above?