Focusing on the Motives Behind Altruistic Acts : Author Spent 8 Years Studying Man’s Humanity to Man

University researcher Kristen Renwick Monroe has delved into one of life’s most puzzling mysteries: why some people risk their own welfare to unselfishly help others, with no expectation of reward.

There was no university laboratory she could employ to pick apart the stuff of altruism; no substance to be replicated in a petri dish; nothing to be poked, prodded and observed in the unfiltered light of scientific analysis.

“Some of my colleagues said, ‘Oh God, don’t look at altruism. Nobody’s been able to figure that out. It will just swallow you up.’ ”

To get to “The Heart of Altruism,” as her recent Pulitzer Prize-nominated book is titled, the 50-year-old Irvine resident and UCI political science professor would spend eight years interviewing people such as Otto Springer, a German who risked his life to save more than 100 Jews from imprisonment and death during World War II.

“He said he just couldn’t walk away from it, and that’s what is so interesting about Otto. He could have left the country and sat out the entire war, but he stayed and paid a very heavy price.”

Springer protected a Jewish firm by becoming its chief executive, openly married a Jewish woman to save her from arrest, pulled Jews off transports headed for concentration camps, worked in the underground, forged documents and bribed Gestapo officials and concentration camp guards. He was eventually arrested and sent to a concentration camp.

“When I interviewed him--he has unfortunately since died--he was still having terrible nightmares and suffered from post-traumatic shock syndrome. He had dreams that he was in a room and they were pumping gas into the room and there wasn’t any way to escape. He also dreamed that he was on the guillotine and the ax was coming down--things like that.

“He described himself as not a particularly moral man. He said, ‘My morals aren’t any better than those of an average American congressman.’ He meant that they were low.”

During her 1988 interview with Springer, then 82 and living in San Anselmo, Calif., he told her that he was not religious and that his actions were not the result of some higher moral calling.

“One thing is important,” she quotes Springer in her book. “I had no choice. I never made a moral decision to rescue Jews. I just got mad. I felt I had to do it. I came across many things that demanded my compassion.”

Monroe does not believe she qualifies as an altruist, but when she was about 23, she saved the life of a baby. Her recollections of the event help her comprehend what she believes is the unconscious nature of many altruistic acts.

“It just happened so fast, I couldn’t even remember jumping in the water or even thinking somebody should do something,” she said. “None of that went through my mind. There certainly wasn’t any risk to my life, but I just use that as an example of how there was no conscious process that I was aware of at all. That helped me understand that altruism is not just the same thing as being ethical. Much of it is spontaneous.”

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Instead of concentrating on what triggers altruistic acts, Monroe examined what she calls the “central core” of altruism in those she interviewed.

“The heart of altruism is the perception of a common humanity. If you see that there is a common humanity in another person and you share that humanity, you’ll respond differently than if you don’t see it. Where the rest of us will see a stranger, the altruist will see another human being.”

Monroe interviewed a German-born woman living in Holland who rescued Jews and assisted the Dutch Resistance during the Nazi occupation, even though her actions placed the lives of her children in danger. Monroe said the woman made little distinction between family and strangers.

“Genetics is a factor. For some people, I couldn’t explain it any other way, than just being genetically programmed. That was the only thing that seemed to make sense, because they weren’t religious. I am not a geneticist or evolutionary biologist, but I would not write off that explanation.”

Monroe hopes her book will have some practical effect on government policies, which she says are rooted in the theories of Thomas Hobbes, a 17th century social philosopher. Hobbes believed than human behavior was guided exclusively by self-interest. Monroe believes an adjustment in that prevailing view of human nature is long overdue.

“He spelled it out with such power, that people accepted it. As a social theorist, one of the things that I’m trying to accomplish with this book is to get people to say, ‘Yes, self-interest is important, but there are other aspects to human nature that are also important. Let’s try to construct our theories on those.’ We are living in a time in which we’re questioning what the role of government should be, in terms of taking care of other people and providing social well-being.

“You can’t really think of the world as being divided between altruists and nonaltruists. We all do engage in limited amounts of altruism. There are times when we do wonderful things and times when we’re all quite self-centered. The fact that people are self-interested is not an absolute like gravity, it’s something that contains great variations. If that can be demonstrated, then we can move away from the kinds of dog-eat-dog policies that are based on self-interest alone.”

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Profile: Kristen Renwick Monroe

Age: 50

Hometown: Collinsville, Ill.

Residence: Irvine

Family: Husband, Wil Lampros; three school-age children

Education: Bachelor’s degree in government, Smith College; master’s degree in international relations and doctorate in political science, University of Chicago

Background: Killam Fellow in political economy and econometrics, University of British Columbia; teaching positions, State University of New York (Stony Brook), New York University and New York University School of Law; visiting academic positions and fellowships, Princeton University; UCI faculty since 1984, where she is professor in the Department of Politics and Society, and assistant director of the political psychology program

Author, author: Five books on political and economic theory, including “The Heart of Altruism,” (Princeton University Press, 1996), nominated for a Pulitzer Prize

On interviewing altruists: “We all wonder about the meaning of life. If all you get from it is the ability to live your own life with dignity and integrity--that’s enough to give meaning to it.”

Source: Kristen Renwick Monroe

Researched by RUSS LOAR / For The Times

Los Angeles Times