Altruism and the Theory of Rational Choice: an Empirical Exploration

A classic issue in the theory of rational choice is whether individuals’ preferences should and can be measured. This paper suggests that studies of altruistic behavior will benefit from trying to measure altruistic preferences. Such an effort would enable scholars to test the separate effect of preferences and situational factors on action. The above suggestions are applied to the case of the rescue of Jews during the Nazi occupation of Europe. The paper uses the APPBI data on those who rescued Jews and those who did not rescue Jews during the Nazi occupation of Europe (N=510). It employs the ‘prosocial action orientation’ personality as a proxy for an altruistic preference and shows that in arriving at altruistic behavior situational factors activate an existing preference. Applying nonparametric techniques to the analysis of the APPBI data, the paper rules out the hypothesis that this activation process is governed by a threshold effect. Instead, this process is linear. A discussion of the implications of this study for the theory of rational choice concludes the paper.