Compassion, Altruism and Public Goods Experiments

I learned today that the Dalai Lama’s view on compassion and altruism significanlty differs from Western views. Westerners have trouble with the concept of altruism because we believe altruistic acts are not truly altruistic if they benefit the doer. In the public goods literature, this features strongly in the discussion of “warm glow,” and is a real problem for the definition of altruism. According to the Dalai Lama, there is no such difficulty in their conception of compassion. To the Buddhist, compassion for one’s fellow humans is not solely about benefiting others, it is also about benefiting one’s self. One is to wish for all to be happy and free from suffering, and one’s self is a part of all, so it makes sense to with for one’s self to be happy!

It is also interesting to note that the Buddhist view is backed up by science, which shows that altruistic acts tend to make the doer happy. It would be interesting to take this perspective and examine public goods/altruism behavior.