Heart of Altruism
* Book: The Heart of Altruism. Kristen Monroe.
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Description
Jay Weinstein:
"Political psychologist Kristen Monroe has provided a significant contribution to the literature on altruism. In The Heart of Altruism: Perceptions of a Common Humanity, she defines altruism as "behavior intended to benefit another, even when this risks possible sacrifice to the welfare of the actor." Monroe examines the possible influences that encourage altruism and highlights the importance of separating this discussion from a rational choice perspective. As a staunch advocate of the plausibility of altruism as part of human nature, Monroe succinctly argues against the limitations provided by rational choice theorists. (As noted above, the key to their argument is that egoism is normal behavior, even in the performance of apparently other-directed acts.)
Monroe's work is based on an in-depth study of individuals whose behavior can be placed along a continuum from altruistic to egoistic and which includes several points in between. As in the work of Fogelman (1994) and Oliner and Oliner (1988), Monroe argues that the most altruistic individuals are rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. In addition to the rescuers, along the continuum from more-toless altruistic are heroes, philanthropists, and entrepreneurs. For Monroe, entrepreneurs display the least altruistic behavior. Using these categories, she contrasts research findings with theoretical assumptions based on both rational choice and altruistic theories. Her conclusion is that rational choice theories cannot account for the behavior of altruists.
Monroe originally believed that the roots of altruism might be traced to factors such as parental modeling, education, and religion; but her findings did not support this. Rather, she discovered that what sets the more altruistic subjects apart from the others is a shared general perspective, a "cognitive orientation." She concluded that the perspective itself, and not the specific factors, consistently accounted for altruism.
For Monroe, the altruistic perspective is best understood in philosophical and psychological terms, although she uses principles from other social sciences as well. In fact, the perspective is quite complex and consists of several components: cognition and cognitive processes, expectations, worldviews, empathy, and views of self."