Moving ahead, the Institute’s core activities include continuing to provide competitive awards for high-level scientific research, developing courses in colleges, universities and secondary schools and writing essays and books. It also convenes conferences that bring together exemplary practitioners of unselfish love, scientists, scholars and educators to dialogue on the prospects for a better human future.
Post knows some question the scientific exploration of love, but he firmly believes the data is on his side, “One of the primary reasons we do what we do is that our research shows that real happiness comes from cultivating positive emotional states, like kindness, compassion and love,” he says. “It really is better to give than to receive. People are happier; they get a kind of helper’s high, a kind of euphoria associated with generosity and they feel more buoyant and withstand emotional onslaught.”
Additionally, new ways of thinking about established concepts frequently bring groundbreaking results. “Many of the major improvements in the human condition emerged from paradigm-shifting research. No one believed that polio could be prevented, but a small group of researchers went on to change human history. In a time when group conflict, rudeness, selfishness and hatred are so evident in the world, and when the technologies of destruction are so vast, we owe it to the human future to bring the best methods of science to study that which is most good,” Post says.
The Institute’s newest research initiatives include several projects examining the impact of helping behavior on the mental and physical health of adolescents. Click here for two others that give a sense of the range and depth of the research underway. They are being conducted at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Search Institute in Minneapolis. The Institute has also received matching funding from the Foundation to pursue a three-year research project in collaboration with the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion at Emory University. The project is entitled “The Best Love of the Child.”
To the eternal complaint that the world is going to hell, Dr. Post has a ready answer: “Don’t believe it. All over the world people are doing amazing things. Ninety-five percent of the total energy of love comes from everyday good neighbors. It comes from families and friendships, and the people in the local geography. The dynamic is so important.”
