SPECIES AGAINST AN INDIVIDUAL: THE DEFENSIVE FUNCTION OF EGOISM
Abstract. The article under consideration regards the scores of altruism and egoism in the new context, dealing with a certain opposition between individual interests and the interests of the human/social interests in general. The experiments had the longitudinal character and were conducted with the help of the Experience Sampling Methods (ESM). In particular, the author has discovered a minor quantitate superiority of the egoistic scores (good, benefit for an individual) over altruistic (good, benefit for other people) estimates. Such a regularity can be observed in the majority of life situations. Besides others, the obtained result can be an evidence of the «defensive» egoism function, which enables an individual to pursue his own interests, staying at the same time a full member of a bigger community. The last conclusion is backed by the positive correlations obtained between the two groups of scores. Simultaneously, the mass tendencies which operate within the human species (in particular, the decline of an average level caused by a number of reasons), present higher demands for a necessary egoism level of a gifted individual for the sake of his unique self-realization and achievement of a life success. In the opposite case, an altruistically driven individual can become an exploited sacrifice. Using various examples, the author of the paper demonstrates that the discovered score between the altruistic and the egoistic tendencies can change substantially in the extreme life conditions.
Key words: adaptation, altruism, individual, rivalry, evolution, egoism.
Levit Leonid – Doctor of Psychology, Associate Professor, the Director of the Center for psychological health and education, Minsk, Belarus
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