Paige Amormino, Joseph S. Venticinque, Abigail A. Marsh
{"title":"The altruistic personality: Insights from research with extraordinary altruists","authors":"Paige Amormino, Joseph S. Venticinque, Abigail A. Marsh","doi":"10.1016/j.copsyc.2025.102055","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Humans possess a remarkable capacity for altruism, frequently providing help to a wide range of beneficiaries, including strangers. But people also vary in their tendency to behave altruistically. A small subset of people engages in extraordinary altruism: rare, costly, non-normative acts such as non-directed organ or marrow donation, heroic rescues, and humanitarian aid work. These extraordinary altruists may be a uniquely valuable population for identifying traits that underlie altruism. This is because extraordinary altruism typically occurs in contexts that offer few potential self-benefits and have weak or absent social norms, helping isolate dispositional from situational influences. Recent research with extraordinary altruists suggests individual variation in altruism reflects stable differences in how much people value others' welfare relative to their own welfare. Measures that most reliably distinguish extraordinary altruists from controls include the social discounting task and the honesty–humility scale of the HEXACO personality inventory, both of which capture differences in the subjective value of one's own versus other's outcomes. Extraordinary altruists are not distinguished by trait agreeableness or self-reported empathy. However, neuroimaging and behavioral studies find that extraordinary altruists display heightened empathic accuracy and heightened empathic neural responding to others' distress in brain regions implicated in prosocial decision-making. Improved understanding of the traits that distinguish highly altruistic people can offer new insights regarding how to cultivate altruism on a broader scale, for example, through interventions that foster stable increases in how much people value others' welfare.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48279,"journal":{"name":"Current Opinion in Psychology","volume":"65 ","pages":"Article 102055"},"PeriodicalIF":6.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Current Opinion in Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X25000685","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Humans possess a remarkable capacity for altruism, frequently providing help to a wide range of beneficiaries, including strangers. But people also vary in their tendency to behave altruistically. A small subset of people engages in extraordinary altruism: rare, costly, non-normative acts such as non-directed organ or marrow donation, heroic rescues, and humanitarian aid work. These extraordinary altruists may be a uniquely valuable population for identifying traits that underlie altruism. This is because extraordinary altruism typically occurs in contexts that offer few potential self-benefits and have weak or absent social norms, helping isolate dispositional from situational influences. Recent research with extraordinary altruists suggests individual variation in altruism reflects stable differences in how much people value others' welfare relative to their own welfare. Measures that most reliably distinguish extraordinary altruists from controls include the social discounting task and the honesty–humility scale of the HEXACO personality inventory, both of which capture differences in the subjective value of one's own versus other's outcomes. Extraordinary altruists are not distinguished by trait agreeableness or self-reported empathy. However, neuroimaging and behavioral studies find that extraordinary altruists display heightened empathic accuracy and heightened empathic neural responding to others' distress in brain regions implicated in prosocial decision-making. Improved understanding of the traits that distinguish highly altruistic people can offer new insights regarding how to cultivate altruism on a broader scale, for example, through interventions that foster stable increases in how much people value others' welfare.
期刊介绍:
Current Opinion in Psychology is part of the Current Opinion and Research (CO+RE) suite of journals and is a companion to the primary research, open access journal, Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology. CO+RE journals leverage the Current Opinion legacy of editorial excellence, high-impact, and global reach to ensure they are a widely-read resource that is integral to scientists' workflows.
Current Opinion in Psychology is divided into themed sections, some of which may be reviewed on an annual basis if appropriate. The amount of space devoted to each section is related to its importance. The topics covered will include:
* Biological psychology
* Clinical psychology
* Cognitive psychology
* Community psychology
* Comparative psychology
* Developmental psychology
* Educational psychology
* Environmental psychology
* Evolutionary psychology
* Health psychology
* Neuropsychology
* Personality psychology
* Social psychology