Abstract: the study examines the relationship of several independent variables (altruism, altruistic orientation, the need for altruism, altruistic behavior), which can become a criterion for predicting the tendency to prosocial behavior of the individual. The authors discuss the degree of antonymic relations in the dyad “altruism-egoism”. In addition, an integrative-theoretical model underlying the relationship between these variables is proposed, which will allow to construct a methodological arsenal for the empirical study of the degree of presence and manifestation of altruism as a property of personality. The authors show the type of interpersonal interaction predicting the strongest educational effect leading to altruistic behavior. The discussion block of the article also includes fragments of the authors’ discussion about the nature of human altruism and the corresponding behavior, where they resort to an attempt to separate the concepts of altruism as a property or quality of personality with altruistic behavior. The study of population, data collection method and materials are presented in the method section. Summary of empirical results and theoretical reasoning of the authors is the irrationality of altruism as a quality of personality, but invaluable in terms of altruistic behavior as a Pro-social type of activity.
Keywords: altruism, altruistic behavior, the altruistic orientation, the need for altruism, self-actualization, a social group, the installation on altruism, self-assesment, religiosity, self-esteem, social compliance