Stephen Post is Professor of Preventive Medicine and Bioethics and Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at Stony Brook University in New York. His many articles and books on altruism include, as co-editor, Altruism and Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue (Oxford University Press, 2002).

Keishin Inaba, associate professor of human sciences at Osaka University in Japan, has a website on altruism. He is author of Altruism in New Religious Movements: The Jesus Army and the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order in Britain, which examines whether Christianity and Buddhism change people’s attitudes and behavior towards altruism. He also edited The Practice of […]

Psychology professor Richard Ebstein at National University of Singapore was senior author of the altruism gene study, which showed that the dopamine gene plays a role in prosocial behavior. The study was published in Molecular Psychiatry in January 2005.

Read a seminal article by Allan Luks in the October 1988 Psychology Today that describes the “helper’s high” – a sense of calm and enhanced self-worth – observed in a study of more than 1,700 women involved regularly in helping others. Altruism functions like exercise but has some advantages over it, Luks suggests.

Read a 2003 Boston Globe article on studies linking altruism to better health and stress reduction.

Read an October 2004 Science & Theology News article on evolutionary theory and altruism.

Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz is rabbi emeritus of Congregation Agudath Sholom in Stamford, Conn., and a co-founder of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn. The center is a leading forum for dialogue and learning.

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