What, if any, objective tests were designed for the assessment of altruism? In an article by Santacreu et al. (2006) there is a mention of altruism assessment within the framework of the Character Education Inquiry (CEI):


  If we return to the first half of the last century, we can find
  important precedents of objective assessment of Personality that were
  embodied in solid and coherent research programs carried out by
  important authors in this field. Amongst these, works by Hartshorne
  and May (1928, Hartshorne, May &amp; Maller, 1929, Hartshorne, May &amp;
  Shuttleworth 1930) must be mentioned. These authors developed a set of
  tests included in their Character Education Inquiry (CEI) oriented,
  amongst other things, to measure honesty or altruism.


At the present moment I do not have access to the report of the CEI to verify how Hugh Hartshorne and his colleagues were assessing "honesty or altruism". However, Robert W. Friedrichs (1960) cites the report of the CEI (along with a couple of other investigations) and claims that these studies did not have as their objective the assessment of altruism. These, so he implies, are the only studies undertaken in the field of psychology which may attract attention of those interested in the study of altruism. I tried to find attempts at objective assessment of altruism in the work published since 1960, but without success. So I'm here looking for assistance.

I admit that I may use the term 'objective test' incorrectly. In order to exclude any misunderstanding I would like to add that I conceive of objective test designed to assess altruism as simulated conditions in which an individual (or a group of them) is put at a moral choice being unable to uncover the simulated nature of the proceedings or to identify the qualities under scrutiny. I will be very grateful to all who help me to find reports of applications of such methods to the assessment of altruism.


Santacreu, J., Rubio, V. J., &amp; Hernández, J. M. (2006). The objective assessment of personality: Cattells's T-data revisited and more. Psychology Science, 48(1), 53.
Friedrichs, R. W. (1960). Alter versus ego: An exploratory assessment of altruism. American Sociological Review, 496-508.
The following scale; The altruistic personality and
the self-report altruism scale, a commonly used measure of altruistic tendency in psychological research. It has 745 citations at this time November 2017. The scale is also freely available online.

Rushton, J.P., Chrisjohn, R.D., Fekken, G.C., 1981. The altruistic personality and
the self-report altruism scale. Personality and Individual Differences 7,
293–302.

This has been discussed as psychometrically adequate for measuring altruism, and has good the SRAS has good inter-rater reliability. However the SRAS has two main weaknesses: its expansive, in terms of its definition of altruism, it also it frames of reference are unspecified, and unclear.   

There are other measures that investigate aspects of altruism such as the Internalised subscale of the Self-importance of Moral Identity Scale (ISMIS). In the following article they discuss moral behaviour to outgroups, which the scale measures. This is also a highly cited source for measuring altruism or moral behaviour. 

There are a few other scales or methods of measuring altruism, I do not have time to go into detail...

Empathic Concern questionaire (EC)

Compassionate love for others

Sprecher, S. &amp; Fehr, B. (2005). Compassionate love for close others and humanity. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 22, 629-651.

State Based Empathy. Empathy is more of a measure of motivation to act kindly which is a precursor to altruism but not actually altruism itself. 

I highly recommend you read the following blog on measuring altruism, which discusses it in far greater detail than the answer here.

T. Farsides. (2014, October 18). Conception and measurement of altruism. Retrieved from http://tomfarsides.blogspot.com/2014/10/conceptualisation-and-measurement-of.html