A Study on Altruism and Interest in Literature at Higher Secondary Level

Mukul Baran Mandal^1, and Chitralekha Mehera¹

¹Department of Education, Burdwan University, Burdwan, West Bengal, India

Cite this paper

Mukul Baran Mandal and Chitralekha Mehera. A Study on Altruism and Interest in Literature at Higher Secondary Level. American Journal of Educational Research. 2016; 4(9):689-694. doi: 10.12691/EDUCATION-4-9-8

Abstract

The present study is an attempt to look for the relationship between altruism and interest in literature of Higher Secondary students. Sample consists of 800 students (age 17⁺) from rural and urban H.S schools of Birbhum district, West Bengal. The Scale of Altruism as well as the Interest in Literature Scale, the first adopted by the investigators and the second developed by the investigators, were used to assess the Altruism and Interest in Literature of the students respectively. The result divulged the fact that the girl students are more altruistic and have more interest in literature than those of the boy students. The study also reveals that there exists significant relationship between altruism and interest in literature. It is strengthened by another finding that the group with low level of altruism shows lower interest in literature than the group with high level of altruism. The constructed regression equation reveals that interest in literature can be used as the predictor of altruism.

Keywords

altruism, interest in literature, adolescent, higher secondary level

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

References

[1]	Batson, C. D., & Oleson, K. C. Current Status of the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis. Review of Personality and Social Psychology, 12, 62-85, 1991.
[2]	Drebera, A., Emma, V. Essenb. and Eva, Ranehillc. “In Bloom: Gender Differences in Preferences Among Adolescents”. Social Science Research Network, 35(734), 88-97, Jul. 2012, [Online]. Available: http:// ssrn.com/abstract=1804278.
[3]	Eisenberg, N., R Leon, and K Roth. “Pro-social Development: A Longitudinal Study”. Developmental Psychology, 846-855, 1983.
[4]	Holland Jo, Antonio S. Silva and Ruth Mac (2012). “Lost Letter Measure of Variation in Altruistic Behaviour in 20 Neighbourhoods”. PLoS One, 7(8), August 2012. [Online]. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal .pone.00432.
[5]	Howard, Judith A. and J.A. Pilivian “Altruism”, in Encyclopedia of Sociology, New York, Macmillan, 2000.
[6]	Huber J. T. and Douglas A. MacDonald. “An Investigation of the Relations Between Altruism, Empathy, and Spirituality”. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, April 2012.
[7]	Ma, K. Hing,“The Relation of Gender-Role Classifications to the Prosocial and Antisocial Behavior of Chinese Adolescents.” Journal of Genetic Psychology, 166(2), 189-202, June 2005.
[8]	Mikulincer, Mario and Phillip R. Shaver. “Attachment Security, Compassion, and Altruism”. Current Direction in Psychological Science, 14(1), 34-38. 2005.
[9]	Rashmi, S., DK Sharma and CS Sushil. “A Comparative Study of Altruism Among the Boys and Girls of Joint and Nuclear Families”. Journal of Mental Health and Human Behavior, 15 (2), 88-90, 2010.
[10]	Toussaint L. and Jhon. R. Webb. “Gender Differences in the Relationship between Empathy and Forgiveness”. J. Soc Psychol, 145 (6), 673-685, 2005.
[11]	Visser S Michael and Matthew R. Roelofs. “Heterogeneous Preferences for Altruism: Gender and Personality, Social Status, Giving and Taking”. Experimental Economics, 14(4), 490-506, March 2011.