An Experiment by Darley and Batson (1973) Looked at Seminary

An experiment by Darley and Batson (1973) looked at seminary students' willingness to help. In one condition, participants were made to hurry from one building to another by being told they were late to give a speech, which was part of the study requirements. In the other condition, participants were only told to go over to another building in order to give the speech. Both groups encountered a person lying on the ground on their way to the other building. The experimenter observed the participants from both groups and counted the number of people who stopped to check on the person lying on the ground. It was found that the participants who were in a hurry stopped much less frequently than the participants who were not in a hurry. In this experiment, what was the independent variable?

A) being made to hurry from one building to another or not
B) the person lying on the ground
C) the number of people stopping to check on the person lying on the ground
D) going from one building to another