'Selfish World Doomed' Sorokin Says After Year

After a year's study of altruism, Pitirim A. Sorokin, professor of Sociology, yesterday reaffirmed that a selfish world will never have peace.

Sorokin heads the University's Research Center in Altruistic Integration and Creativity which was established in February, 1949, with a grant of $120,000.

If the amount of altruism in each person can be increased, Sorokin said, there is hope for a peaceful world.

Other conclusions reached by Sorokin are that altruists live longer than the average person and that altruists actually have "more freedom" than any of their contemporaries because they have "peace of mind."

The Center is completing two books on altruism which will appear this year. One of these is a study of "American good neighbors" and Christian saints, and the other is a symposium discussing various experiments concerning altruism.

Analyzed Christian Saints

In the Center's first year of operation, Sorokin and his assistants analyzed the lives of 3,500 Roman Catholic and 500 Russian Orthodox saints, looking for their common qualities and the reasons for their altruism.

Also studied were 1,000 living Americans who were nominated by others as example of unselfishness. About one-half of these "good neighbors" were selected from the files of a day-time radio program which daily sends prizes to a "good neighbor" nominated by the program's listeners.

The symposium, edited by Sorokin, will contain a study of an experiment at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital in which two treatments were tried on the mentally ill. Some patients were handled with kindness, while others were punished for misconduct.