In reading the newspapers this morning, I was drawn to an article detailing a scientific study conducted by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. I subscribe to two daily newspapers and each are delivered in the morning. Both papers covered the story in their front section, so the study certainly seems to be deemed as important, at least by the printed media. According to Cendri Hutcherson, one of the researchers who presented the study’s findings as part of the Neuroscience 2012 conference held in October in New Orleans, “My research tries to understand why people are generous and why some people are more generous than others.”
Hutcherson, who is a postdoctoral scholar in neuroeconomics. Presented the findings of the study at a press conference called “The Social Brain.”
“We see people behaving generously all the time, with money or donating their time, but we don’t know what motivates people to do that,” she said in a phone interview a few days after the presentation. “Do they really like helping people? Or mom told them they’d be a bad person if they didn’t. Generous behavior makes society function.” Hutcherson said this motivated her to learn more about what causes people to be generous.
Here is what the study found:
More generous people use a part of their brain to make their decision about giving, called the temporoparietal junction “an area typically implicated in empathy,” while less generous people use a part of their brain called the prefrontal cortex, the area of self-control.
“It’s as if more selfish people have to work hard to force themselves to do the right thing,” Hutcherson said. The empathy mechanism “seems to be a little more effective in producing generosity,” but both self-control and empathy can lead to generosity.
Researchers also watched a part of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, in which activity is high when someone gets something they want and low when they don’t.
“When we looked at the most generous folks, their brain responded to a reversal of a generous choice as if they were genuinely disappointed,” Hutcherson said. Can people, then, not help whether they’re naturally generous or not? Hutcherson’s answer was that she doesn’t believe that’s the way it works.
“I think it’s probably not biological. I imagine that this is something people can change. It may depend on context or depend on people’s moods,” she said. “I wouldn’t be ready to say it’s hard-wired. When (people) use the empathy-related impulse, that correlates with people being more generous,” Hutcherson said.
In essence, this research seems to indicate that generosity is not a biological function. If not, from where does generosity emanate? Does it come from some unknown source? Could that source be spiritual?
I believe that humans are spiritual searchers. Rather than being primarily concerned with self-survival, we have an innate need to become free from attachment to our own smallness. We are called to search for our meaning in terms of more than merely ourselves. It is in our smallness mode where we find selfishness; where the “me-me-me” obsessions reside.
Pondering on large ideas or standing in front of things which remind us of a vast scale can free us from acquisitiveness and competitiveness and from our likes and dislikes. It is where we recognize that we are drawn to embrace that which is bigger than ourselves. This is where we discover that our core is not biological, but rather spiritual. In this sense, generosity and spiritualty are inexorably intertwined.
For those of my readers who are more secularly grounded, the spiritual path I have spoken of doesn’t have to begin with religion or religious belief, although I personally believe that this path will ultimately lead one there. But, if you attune your mind to the sky or to the ocean or to the myriad stars at night, or any other indicators of vastness, your mind will gradually still and your heart will be ultimately filled with a quiet joy. This, I believe, is spiritually grounded.
Likewise, when we recall our own experiences in which we acted generously or with compassion for the simple delight of it without expectation of any gain, such thoughts give us more confidence in the existence of a deeper goodness from which we are freed from the bonds of selfishness and we ultimately drawn to the realization that it is in serving others that we discover that we are served. This too, I believe is spiritually grounded.
“But Jesus called them to himself and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life for a ransom for many.” – Mark 10:42-45