Book Review: Altruism in Humans

Abstract

Reviews the book, Altruism in Humans by C. Daniel Batson (see record 2011-04533-000). Batson's book is a summary of his impressive research career investigating altruism and more specifically the claim that empathic concern is an important motivator for altruistic behavior. Years ago he wrote another book about the topic, The Altruism Question. In the current book, Batson describes further developments in altruism research by himself and others and reflects on what is not (yet) known. It is not a book about evolutionary psychology per se but it does have implications for altruism research from an evolutionary perspective. The aim of Batson's book is to offer an explanation of helping behavior at proximal level. He has very specific methodological views. He favors doing experiments and he doubts self reports as evidence for altruistic motivation with good arguments. He does use self-reports to check experimental manipulation, but this is something quite different. Batson's definition of altruism as a motivational state is very different from the standard focus on behavior in behavior ecology. However, in practice the difference is not so big as Batson seems to suggest. Batson's measures altruism by measuring behavior, namely number of participants in experiments offering to help, e.g. willing to take the place of a student supposedly undergoing electric shocks. Altruism in Humans is an excellent book but there remains a lot to discover about altruism despite the research already done. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)