She did her graduate work at the University of Chicago, where she received her MA in international relations (1970) and PhD in political science (1974), after studying with Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph, Joseph Cropsey, Duncan MacRae, and Robert Fogel.
Monroe tested the major explanations of altruism through a narrative analysis of in-depth interviews with philanthropists, Carnegie Hero Commission recipients and rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust.
By contrasting these cognitive portraits with those of entrepreneurs, Monroe used altruism as an analytical tool to reveal significant limitations in political theories predicated on the assumption that human nature is innately self-interested.
Her empirically-grounded critique resulted in effective challenges to scholars, such as Gary Becker (Nobel laureate in Economics) and Richard Dawkins (author of The Selfish Gene), who—Monroe claimed—try to explain away altruism in order to protect disciplinary paradigms rooted in the principle of self-interest.
It advanced Monroe’s view of how an altruistic perspective creates a feeling of moral salience, the psychological process that transforms generalized sentiments of concern for others’ suffering into an imperative to help.
Interviews with bystanders, Nazis and rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust reveal how self-image and identity—especially the sense of self in relation to others—set and delineate our choice options, not just morally but cognitively.
It developed a broader theory of moral choice, one applicable to other forms of ethnic, religious, racial, and sectarian prejudice, aggression, and violence.