Abstract
Of the many examples of altruism, the rescue of Jews by non-Jews during the horrendous period of the Holocaust remains among the most compelling. Altruism on behalf of ‘insider’ groups, groups who share a strong collective identity and a sense of common fate, is not uncommon. What makes rescuer activity particularly important was the fact that it was not only undertaken at grave personal risk, but on behalf of an ‘outsider’ group, sharply distinguished through long centuries of Christian and European national history as ‘them’.
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David A. Schroeder, Louis A. Penner, John F. Dovidio, and Jane A. Piliavin, The Psychology of Helping and Altruism: Problems and Puzzles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1995).
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Two well known examples include Margaret Mead, From the South Seas (New York: Morrow, 1939
and Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1946).
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The concepts intrinsic and extrinsic were developed by Gordon Allport (The Nature of Prejudice [Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1954; Personality and Social Encounter; Selected Essays [Boston: Beacon Press, 1960, pp.257–267), and subsequently formed into the Intrinsic/Extrinsic Scale by J. R. Feagin (‘Prejudice and Religious types: A focused study of southern Fundamentalists [Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 4, 1964, 3–13]). For an excellent summary of efforts to measure religiosity see David M. Wulff, Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Views (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1991). Wulffs comprehensive work, which synthesizes theoretical and historical aspects of the psychology of religion, is a major contribution to the field.
Lester Kurtz, Gods in the Global Village: The World’s Religions in Sociological Perspective (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1995).
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© 2001 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Oliner, P.M., Wielgus, J., Gruber, M.B. (2001). Very Religious and Irreligious Rescuers. In: Roth, J.K., Maxwell, E., Levy, M., Whitworth, W. (eds) Remembering for the Future. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-66019-3_82
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