STORY BY

Drs. Blair & Rita Justice

Odds are you were not one of the people camped out around the Wal-Mart days ahead of the release of Sony’s fabled PlayStation 3. Most people don’t want a game—any game—that badly. But the frenzy and even violence that surrounded this quest was an amplification of the feelings that surge under the surface of more socially controlled demeanors in this holiday time of get and give.

Both of those verbs—get and give—are in our faces abundantly this month which can be shorthand for two other “G” words: greed and generosity. It’s not hard to figure out which one society values. We don’t say with admiration, “He’s such a greedy person.” But, other than being obnoxious, what is so bad about greed? Or so good about being generous?

Being generous means being willing to give more than is required. The verb “generosity” has only positive definitions: “Excellence, readiness or liberality in giving, munificence, free in giving, rich and full of strength, strengthening, invigorating.” In its distilled state, generosity means giving away a lot of what you could have kept for yourself. Greed, however, is about taking and keeping as much as you can. The extent to which we are pulled toward one pole or the other can make a huge difference in how happy these holidays actually turn out to be.

Generosity may or may not be motivated by compassion or empathy, though it’s probably better for your health if it is. During this season especially, the newspapers run articles on the plight of people who are suffering from adversity, with the intent of inspiring acts of compassionate generosity on the part of the readers. Toy and food drives and adopt-a-family programs remind us to have empathy for those less fortunate. Churches, mosques, synagogues all have programs to facilitate giving.

Learned behavior

These encouragements are mightily needed, according to research conducted by psychologists Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota School of Management, Nichole Mead of Florida State University, and Miranda Goode, a graduate student at the University of British Columbia. From a series of experiments reported in Science (November 2006), the authors concluded that the impulse to share does not come naturally to anyone who is thinking about money, even unconsciously.

In one of the experiments, undergraduates were given a set of jumbled phrases to unscramble. One group untangled phrases about money, like “high a salary paying,” while the other group worked with phrases not related to money. The students who had been “primed” unconsciously to think about money were less likely than the other group to ask for help in solving a difficult abstract puzzle and less likely to lend assistance. They were twice as slow to help a confused student on a word problem and about twice as cheap when asked to donate to needy students.

The authors concluded that those students who were unconsciously oriented towards money reacted with more self-reliance and their behaviors indicated they felt others should similarly rely on themselves. Said Dr. Vohs in a New York Times interview on the research, “And none of them realized the studies were about money. It was all unconscious.”

So, if the mere mention of money unconsciously tilts us in the direction of self-reliance, we may need to put our ears to the ground to hear and respond to the counter messages that urge us to care for those less fortunate. Whatever the anti-greed inspiration, the resulting compassion appears to benefit your body as well as your mind and soul.

Practice, practice, practice

Compassion is being moved by the suffering of others and having the desire to alleviate that suffering. In a study by Patrick Steffen and K.S. Masters, published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine (2005), the researchers found that, while religious people seem healthier than people who are not, the researchers noted that “just going to church on Sunday, or synagogue on Saturday, isn’t sufficient for good health. It’s going there and learning the principles and incorporating that into your life. If you are compassionate, even if you are not religious, you are still going to have the positive psychosocial health outcomes.”

That sounds straight-forward enough, but how do you go about “incorporating that into your life?” The old saying, practice makes perfect, applies aptly to empathy and compassion, just as it does to greed. They are learned behaviors. People who lack the good fortune of having had empathetic parents as role models must learn it from family, friends, co-workers, even literary characters. The 12-step recovery programs advise, “Fake it ‘til you make it.” Behavioral therapy techniques often consist of breaking down a difficult or aversive behavior into very small steps. Very small steps of giving in response to someone’s plight build a habit of thinking and responding to others’ needs. It doesn’t have to cost money. The gift can be very simple, although challenging to our time-driven egos. Here are some possibilities:

1. Let someone else have the parking spot you’ve scouted and found.
2. Hold the door open for someone a few steps behind you.
3. Let the person with few items go ahead of you in the check-out line.

You get the idea. Give up something you want that, in truth, costs you very little. Take it a day and an act at a time.

Envy and jealousy

There’s one more sticky area that deserves some attention in this time of give and get. How are we to be happy for people who get something we wish we had gotten? Empathy is a bit easier to feel when others are suffering misfortune. It’s much harder to muster when they are joyously happy. How then to deal with the green-eyed monsters, envy and jealousy, that may appear as gifts are given?

Envy and jealousy always involve looking at others through the eyes of the ego and concluding that the other is better, superior, more fortunate, in short, higher up. Those comparative words are a certain sign that the ego, not the soul, is doing the commentary. What’s required are different “news analysts.” The fastest shortcut to letting the heart take the lead in responding is to offer a quick affirmation or prayer for yourself—and the other person.

In the Buddhist tradition, the Metta meditation gives a simple antidote for both fear and envy. It works like this: When you start to feel displeasure in response to someone else’s happiness, say these phrases:

“May I/you be happy.
May I/you be healthy.
May I/you be free from suffering.
May I/you live with ease.”

It takes some practice to feel any authenticity in the recitation, but merely saying the words distracts the ego and gives you some time to move on to other thoughts. And you just might have an outcome like old Scrooge, in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol:

“He had no further intercourse with Spirits...and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!”

Last Updated: 12-21-2006

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