Questions concerning the essential nature of altruism, the existence of an altruistic personality, and the genetic, biosocial, and social psychological bases of altruistic behavior have dominated theory and research on the topic. The current paper reconceptualizes financial altruism sociologically as a form of unilateral resource exchanges, or welfare. The alternative definition employs Donald Black's (1979, 2000) analytic approach to describe and explain the behavior of welfare with its location and direction in social space. The paper offers several propositions that purport to explain variations in welfare by drawing upon cross-cultural research. In general, welfare flows in the direction of those who are less integrated and who have lower social status. In addition, welfare varies directly with intimacy, conventionality, and respectability. Finally, welfare varies inversely with relational distance, cultural distance, and group size. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of strengths and limitations of the general propositions advanced.

有关利他行为的本质，​​利他人格的存在以及利他行为的遗传，生物社会和社会心理基础的问题已成为该主题的理论和研究的主要问题。当前论文在社会学上将金融利他主义重新概念化为一种单边资源交换或福利的形式。另一种定义是使用唐纳德·布莱克（Donald Black，1979，2000）的分析方法来描述和解释福利的行为及其在社会空间中的位置和方向。该论文提出了一些主张，这些主张旨在通过借鉴跨文化研究来解释福利的变化。一般而言，福利会朝那些融合程度较低和社会地位较低的人们的方向发展。此外，福利会因亲密感，传统性和受人尊敬而直接不同。最后，福利与关系距离，文化距离和群体规模成反比。本文最后简要讨论了提出的一般主张的优缺点。