The social sciences underwent rapid development in postwar America. Problems once framed in social terms gradually became redefined as individual with regards to scope and remedy, with economics and psychology winning influence over the other social sciences. By the 1970s, both economics and...

This article provides a historical account of the developments of research into seemingly unselfish behavior between 1975 and 1993. I shall first argue that the triumph of the self-interest model in the examination of seemingly unselfish behavior can better be understood if it is remembered that...