کمک های JP راشتون به مطالعه نوع دوستی

This essay describes Rushton’s work on altruism over the past 40 years. During his academic career, he changed his theoretical approach from social learning theory to trait theory to sociobiology. My essay includes five sections. The first gives an overview of Rushton’s work on altruism. The second reviews his early work based on social learning theory. His laboratory and naturalistic experiments led him to conclude that altruism could be increased by exposure to models exemplifying the behavior, and that, once engaged in, the behavior could be durable over months and generalizable across situations. The third section discusses his work on the genetic foundation of altruism with social biology including his twin studies of prosocial behaviors using different age groups of both western and Asian samples. He concluded that about 50% of the variance in prosocial behaviors is heritable. The fourth section will describe altruism as part of the general factor of personality, the apex of the personality hierarchy. The last section summarizes my review of Rushton’s work on altruism.

I am honored to be a contributor to this Special Issue for J.P. Rushton. I have been fortunate to work with Rushton on papers about genetic influences on prosocial behaviors in South Korean children and other research on personality. His contributions to knowledge have become well-known over the past four decades. Like other eminent psychologists, Rushton has boldly challenged conventional views. As a result, he had to endure strong opposition from critics in the field of psychology and public opinion. However, his work has also been acknowledged with much admiration and made him one of the most provocative and controversial figures in psychology. Altruism has been a central focus for Rushton’s research during his entire career. It began with his doctoral dissertation at the University of London (Rushton, 1973). During the 1970s and 1980s, many psychologists focused on negative traits such as aggression and delinquency. However, Rushton maintained the importance of also studying positive aspects of human nature. With conviction that human beings are helpful, cooperative, empathic, loving, kind and considerate, he asserted that altruism is a universal value in all human societies (Rushton, 1982). He defined altruism as “social behavior carried out to achieve positive outcomes for another rather than for self (Rushton, 1980, p. 8)”. He proposed egoism to be the opposite of altruism. In defining altruism, Rushton emphasized the behavioral component, although he did not preclude motivations activating the behavior. He considered these motivations mainly as “empathy” and “moral judgment” (Rushton, 1980 and Rushton, 1982). Rushton’s work on altruism has spanned a considerable range of methodologies. Early in his career (1970–1980), he performed laboratory and naturalistic field experiments to study altruism from the social learning perspective. He examined data on altruism to join the “consistency vs. specificity” debate over whether behavior was consistent enough across situations to warrant being called a trait (Mischel, 1968). By applying the principle of aggregation to measure altruistic and other behaviors, Rushton concluded that there was enough consistency (e.g., .50 to .60 vs. .20 to .30) to warrant a “trait” of altruism on which people differed more or less consistently. Rushton later became interested in the theory of evolution and in social biology and how these applied to altruism. In this paper I review Rushton’s early work on altruism from a social learning theory perspective, discuss his more recent work on the genetic foundation of altruism using the empirical evidence he provided, and then briefly describe his work on altruism in the context of the general factor of personality (GFP). I will use the terms ‘prosocial behaviors’ and ‘altruism’ interchangeably throughout this pape