Altruism revisited: a comparison of medical, law and business students' altruistic attitudes.

Full Abstract

OBJECTIVE:
Although the concept of altruism in medicine has a long tradition in Western thought, little empirical research has been carried out recently in this area. This study compares the altruistic attitudes of medical, legal and business students.

METHODS:
We used a cross-sectional survey to compare the altruistic attitudes of 3 types of contemporary 'professional' students, those in medicine, law and business.

RESULTS:
The results suggest that medical students report more altruistic attitudes than legal students, but not than business students. Overall, female students reported stronger attitudes consistent with altruism compared with males; African-American and Hispanic students reported more altruistic attitudes compared with White students.

CONCLUSIONS:
Our results suggest that the recent trend in recruiting more women and under-represented minority group members into medicine may have a positive impact on altruism in the profession, if we can assume that attitudes correlate with behaviours.

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Author information

Author/s: Coulter, Ian D (ID); Wilkes, Michael (M); Der-Martirosian, Claudia (C);

Affiliation: RAND Health, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California, USA. coulter(-atsign-)rand.org

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article

Journal: Medical education (Med Educ), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Apr; vol 41 (issue 4) : pp 341-5

Dates: Created 2007/04/13; Completed 2007/07/10; Revised 2007/11/15;

PMID: 17430278, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Female
Humans
Legislation as Topic
Male
Students - psychology

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