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$1.7 Million in Research Grants for Projects on Unlimited Love Readers who follow my column are well aware of the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love (IRUL). In December, IRUL announced $17 Million in science research grants for 21 projects designed to document the effects and nature of altruism. These research grants represent the most carefully reviewed set of projects in the history of an emerging scientific field, which focuses on the scientific nature of unselfish or “unlimited” love, including volunteerism, organ donations, rescue work and other examples of selfless altruism, compassion, and service. IRUL hopes that the grants, the first of many it intends to award, will help establish clinically documented evidence of the positive effect and transformative power, even on a global scale, of unconditional love. The newly-funded projects are categorized into six areas: Human Development; Public Health and Medicine; Mechanisms by which Altruistic Love Affects Health; Other-Regarding Virtues; Evolutionary Perspectives on Other-Regard; and The Sociological Study of Faith-Based Communities and Their Activities in Relation to the Spiritual Ideal of Unlimited Love. A number of the projects address a direct connection between spirituality and unlimited love. Summaries for all the projects can be viewed at the IRUL web site (www.unlimitedloveinstitute.org). I’ll just summarize a few of them in this column. But, first, just what is unlimited love. Here’s the definition offered by IRUL: The essence of love is to affectively affirm as well as to unselfishly delight in the well-being of others, and to engage in acts of care and service on their behalf; unlimited love extends this love to all others without exception, in an enduring and constant way. Widely considered the highest form of virtue, unlimited love is often deemed a Creative Presence underlying and integral to all of reality: participation in unlimited love constitutes the fullest experience of spirituality. Some of the Projects These summaries are taken directly from IRUL, so the language is just a bit technical. Notice the emphasis on spirituality. Cultivating Adolescents’ Other-Regarding Virtues: The Developmental Pathways to Unlimited Love: This study by Peter Benson seeks to understand the linkages among the ecologies of youth that promote, discourage, or remain silent on altruistic love, other-regarding virtues, and actions that are designed to enhance the welfare of others. The bioecological systems model of Bronfenbrenner forms its theoretical base. Two existing data sets will be used: a cross-sectional data set of 229,000 adolescents, and a longitudinal set of almost 400 adolescents assessed at 3 points in time. Both data sets contain responses to the Profile of Student Life: Attitudes and Behaviors (PSL-AB), which was designed by the Search Institute to assess developmental assets. This study examines the developmental ecologies of families, religious institutions, schools, neighborhoods, local communities, and non-parental adults with regard to other-regarding dispositions and helping behaviors. Spiritual and religious assets are important variables to study. What Love Has To Do With It: Altruism, Generativity and Spirituality in the Aftermath of 9/11/01: The principal investigators of this study will study altruism, generativity, and spirituality in a sample of 3000 respondents to a web-based questionnaire. Quantitative measures include: the 9/11 specific coping questionnaire; Brief COPE; Post-traumatic Growth Inventory; Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness and Spirituality; Scale of Psychological Well-Being; Social Well Being Scale; Brief Symptom Inventory; PTSD Checklist; demographics; exposure extent. Qualitative data for 100 subjects will be gathered for linguistic analysis. The researchers hypothesize that those with higher altruism and generativity, and those who draw upon more spiritual resources at the outset, will have less post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and less general symptom distress at baseline and at follow-up. This study will be a part of a Stanford University 9/11 project being led by David Spiegel, MD. Spirituality will be assessed in terms of global religiousness/spirituality, religious coping, and spiritual change. This project hypothesizes a connection between aspects of other-regarding love and human resilience in the face of trauma and tragedy. Care for the Soul: The Role of Divine Love and Human Love in Adjustment to Military Trauma: Robert Hierholzer, M.D., psychiatrist with the Veterans Affairs Central California Health Care System, is principal investigator of this project, which is a longitudinal epidemiologic investigation of the protective effects of divine and human love on adjustment to military trauma among U.S. veterans. This project promises to make exciting contributions to clinical care for sick veterans and to the validation of theoretical work in psychology that proposes salutary effects for secure attachments to significant others. Additionally, results should advance our understanding of the etiology and prognosis of PTSD. The Self as a Conduit of Love: Julie Juola Exline will examine the ways in which receiving love from others enhances one’s ability to love. Love is a common thread that underlies many virtuous actions, including helping behavior, emphasis on positive qualities in others, and forgiveness and apology in the wake of offenses. This project will test a conduit model of altruistic love. The model predicts that we are most able to love if we have first received love, either from other people or from God. The proposed research also addresses the role of grace, or undeserved favor, in the transmission of love. Studies will be primarily experimental, beginning with laboratory-based designs and cumulating in an intervention study. Laboratory-based studies will address whether feeling loved — especially when the love is seen as undeserved — motivates people to return love to the source. A second set of studies will address whether people who receive love, and are reminded to pass it on, will become more loving to third parties. Finally, an intervention will be developed to give participants the tools to love in situations in which doing so would be difficult. Religious themes will be emphasized, including participants’ relationships with God. One major aim of the proposed project is to provide a bridge between scientific and theological literatures on the topics of altruistic love, forgiveness, justice, and grace. By focusing on the dual roles of giving and receiving love, the long-term aim of the project is to give people practical tools that will enhance their well-being, their perceived relationships with God, and their ability to love others. Self-Forgetfulness in Seeking the Lost: A Sociological Study of Relentless Love and Compassionate Service at Ground Zero: In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, the country will long remember the thousands of construction workers, firemen, police, and chaplains who poured into Lower Manhattan to conduct the rescue, recovery, and clean-up operation. They worked around the clock for days in the early weeks, then in grueling 12-hour shifts looking for survivors and the dead. At St. Paul’s Episcopal Chapel on Lower Broadway in New York, located on the precipice of Ground Zero, some 5,000 volunteers fed these workers, gave them sleeping quarters, comforted them, clothed them, and built a spiritual community of mutual gratitude. What motivated these particular individuals to volunteer for this work? What human attributes were displayed in greatest abundance? With all the array of resources at ground zero, why did these persons make the Chapel their home? What was it about the experience of life in the Chapel that sustained the massive work? This study will provide scientifically-based explanations for questions surrounding such notable and sustained altruistic behavior. Led by Dr. Courtney Cowart, a theologian in the St. Paul’s ministry at ground zero, and Dr. Bambi Schieffelin, a cultural anthropologist and linguist, this important study will document the role that religious perceptions may have played in motivating and sustaining this remarkable human response to the tragedy of September 11. Other Unlimited Love News Earlier this year, IRUL provided $300,000 in matching funds to four on-going studies of the Fetzer Institute's Science of Compassionate Love initiative. These projects were: The Impacts of Religious, Intellectual, and Civic Engagement on Altruistic Love and Compassionate Love as Expressed through Charitable Behaviors; Benevolent Love and Marriage; Volunteerism, Community, and Compassionate Acts among Older Adults; and The Development, Antecedents, and Psychosocial Implications of Altruism in Late Adulthood. For more information on the Fetzer initiative, go to www.fetzer.org/Programs/programs_altrusic_comp_love.htm This Spring, IRUL and the Metanexus Institute on Religion and Science will sponsor an international, interfaith, and interdisciplinary conference entitled “The Works of Love: Scientific and Religious Perspectives on Altruism” from May 31 through June 5, 2003 at Villanova University in Pennsylvania. The conference will address the following: Active in Love: Lives of Compassionate Service; Unlimited Love and Human Nature: The Problem of Inter-Group Conflict; The Healing Power of Love: Healthful Compassion; The Biology of Compassionate Love: Evolutionary, Physiological, and Neurological Correlates; The Psychology of Love; The Sociological Study of Faith-Based Communities and Their Activities in Relation to the Spiritual Ideal of Unlimited Love; The Emergence and Impact of Helping Behavior in Young People; The Science and Spirituality of Family Care-giving; Compassionate Love and the Artistic Imagination; Spiritual Transformation: Love and the Fruits of the Spirit; Science as Altruistic Fidelity to the Phenomena; Science, Religion, and the Metaphysics of Love. For more information on the conference, to www.metanexus.net. Mary Montgomery-Clifford is a certified web author and developer. Her company, Montgomery Media Enterprises ("Freelancing with Finesse!"), specializes in public relations, events, promotions, writing project and web authoring, development and publicity. Ms. Montgomery-Clifford has a Master's Degree in religious studies from Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS) in June 2002 and is working on a Ph.D. with a focus on the new scholarship of Unlimited Love and the Other Regarding Virtues in the Fall of 2002. She is also in the process of completing the Morris Pratt Institute Course on Modern Spiritualism. Contact her via e-mail at Monty764@aol.com, by phone at 773-235-8821 or at her web site at www.montymedia.com. Next Article |
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