Qualitative, phenomenological research provides rich information about the constructive, life span perspectives of the manifestation and development of altruism. Using an interpretive phenomenological approach, this study investigated altruism as described by 34 older persons in a continuing care retirement community. The findings identified 13 overarching, common, emergent themes related to this construct. Implications are provided for helping professionals.A ltruism may be defined as unselfishly giving to others without expectation of personal gain (Eisenberg et al., 1999). Furthermore, according to Robinson and Curry (2005), "altruism is the purest form of caring-selfless and non-contingent upon reward-and thus a predecessor of pro-social cognitions and behaviors" (p. 68). Although the construct of altruism holds much promise for understanding, conceptualizing, and promoting non-reward-contingent and caring behavior, there is a lack of empirical support to evidence the development and manifestation of the construct throughout the life span. Specifically, many of the references found during the literature review for this study were from older or outdated sources. Moreover, although there are a few hypotheses about the origins and processes that contribute to altruism, there is still debate over whether altruism actually exists (Dovidio, 1991).Much of the initial research focus on altruism was stimulated by the murder of Kitty Genovese, a woman who was stabbed to death in front of a recorded 38 eyewitnesses, yet none of them intervened to save her (Dovidio, 1991;Robinson & Curry, 2005). This event prompted researchers to explore both the bystander effect (created by the social diffusion of responsibility; Dovidio, 1991) and acts of prosocial interest versus self-interest. From these early investigations, three main hypotheses about the development of altruistic behavior emerged.The first hypothesis comes from the field of biology, wherein evidence for the existence of altruism has been gathered through animal behavior studies, parental altruism research, monozygotic and dizygotic twin studies (Eisenberg et al.,