Grateful for two recent studies suggesting we take care to cultivate an affiliative, generous attitude and a kind affect when either working toward happiness or in living an ethically-intensive life. Both studies demonstrate that striving toward happiness and working to be ethically upright can easily lead to selfishness and self-righteousness.
One recent study by Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong shows that "when people feel they have been morally virtuous ... it leads to the 'licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour,' otherwise known as 'moral balancing' or 'compensatory ethics.'"
And another study suggests that merely pursuing happiness, by itself and for itself, can in fact cause people to become increasingly selfish, less able to develop a persuasive argument, more gullible, worse at remembering, and more likely to be influenced by stereotypes. This may be instructive for those who make a concerted effort to "be happy," as meditators do. Meditators are one of the few groups of people that I know of who actively try to cultivate happy attitudes. Yet sometimes a cold and harsh temperament is the result. I call this attitude happyitis: a tendency to be harsh, or selfish and self-righteous, and consequently blindly hurtful, in the name of being happy.
It appears, based on the Pali texts, that this was something Siddhatta Gotama noticed too. He did not just suggest, but insisted, that it is not possible to be fully happy just by practicing mindfulness, developing wisdom, and living a moral life. Doing that alone will not rid someone of mental and emotional defilements. He stressed that one must also cultivating a concomitant attitude of love and genuine service (wherein one seeks to help rather than to acquire position) in order to rid oneself fully of defilements:
One recent study by Canadian psychologists Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong shows that "when people feel they have been morally virtuous ... it leads to the 'licensing [of] selfish and morally questionable behaviour,' otherwise known as 'moral balancing' or 'compensatory ethics.'"
And another study suggests that merely pursuing happiness, by itself and for itself, can in fact cause people to become increasingly selfish, less able to develop a persuasive argument, more gullible, worse at remembering, and more likely to be influenced by stereotypes. This may be instructive for those who make a concerted effort to "be happy," as meditators do. Meditators are one of the few groups of people that I know of who actively try to cultivate happy attitudes. Yet sometimes a cold and harsh temperament is the result. I call this attitude happyitis: a tendency to be harsh, or selfish and self-righteous, and consequently blindly hurtful, in the name of being happy.
It appears, based on the Pali texts, that this was something Siddhatta Gotama noticed too. He did not just suggest, but insisted, that it is not possible to be fully happy just by practicing mindfulness, developing wisdom, and living a moral life. Doing that alone will not rid someone of mental and emotional defilements. He stressed that one must also cultivating a concomitant attitude of love and genuine service (wherein one seeks to help rather than to acquire position) in order to rid oneself fully of defilements:
That from Love and Sympathy in Theravada Buddhism, p. 53, Harvey Aronson, student of S. N. Goenka, following the theme of the chpt that "one who practices mindfulness [alone] is not liberated from enmity," while one who practices mindfulness along w/ metta bhavana is.
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