With a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love (www.unlimitedloveinstitute.com) has to date funded a significant number of carefully selected scientific research projects focused on unselfish love.

Open a PDF of the Complete Funding Overview here

RESEARCH
FUNDED IN 2006 & 2007

1. Promoting the Best Love of the Child
PIs Margaret F. Bring (Notre Dame University School of Law) & Steven L. Nock (University of Virginia)
2. The Religious Tolerance Project
PI Jacob Neusener (Bard College)
3. The Golden Rule Project
PI Jacob Neusner (Bard College)
4. Helping and Long-Term Outcomes in Alcoholism
PI Maria Pagano (University Hospitals of Cleveland)
5. Does Mindfulness Meditation Increase Compassion?
PI Jeanne L. Tsai (Stanford University)
6. Binghamton Neighborhood Project on Altruism
PI David Sloan Wilson (SUNY Binghamton)
7. Do Generative Adolescents Become Healthy Adults? Further Studies
PIs Paul Wink (Wellesley College) & Michelle Dillon (University of New Hampshire)

(Integrative Projects)
8. The Best Love of the Child
PIs Timothy Jackson & John Witte (Emory University)
9. The Pursuit of Happiness
PIs John Witte & Stephen Post (Emory University)

THE JUDITH B. WATSON INITIATIVE
FUNDED 2004 – 2007

1.Health and the Ecology of Altruism
2.Investigating Helping Behavior and Depression Among Middle Childhood and Early Adolescent Youth
3.Altruism/Agape Love and the Pathways Project
4.Evaluating the Health Benefits of Altruism in Adolescents: A Cross-sectional Survey
5.Other-regarding Dispositions and Mental Health
6.Naturalistic Conceptions of Moral Commitment: Pathways for Resiliency in Adolescent Personality

PILOT STUDIES IN SUPPORT OF YOUNGER RESEARCHERS
FUNDED 2003

1.The Effects of Gratitude on Well-Being in Relatives of Individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease
2.Participating in Medical Research for the benefit of Science, Medicine and Society: A Proposal to Analyze the Nature and Role of Altruistic Discourse in the Clinical Oncology Research Setting
3.The Drive for Donation: The Study of Understanding and Drivers License Designation
4.A Measure of Compassion
5.Facial and Physiological Correlations of Compassion

SPIRITUALITY AND RAISING A CARING CHILD
THIRD SET OF GRANTS FUNDED IN OCTOBER 2004

1. Indonesian Adolescents’ Caring and Caring Relationships
2. Selfishness and Selflessness in Adolescent-Parent Relationships

UNLIMITED LOVE
GRANTS AWARDED DECEMBER 2002

AREA ONE: HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
1.Love, Emotion and Empathy: Infancy to Early Childhood
2.Cultivating Adolescents’ Other-Regarding Virtues: The Developmental Pathways to Unlimited Love
3.What Love Has To Do With It: Altruism, Generativity and Spirituality in the Aftermath of 9/11/01

AREA TWO: PUBLIC HEALTH AND MEDICINE
1.Effects of Compassionate/Loving Intention as a Therapeutic Intervention by Partners of Breast Cancer Patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial
2.Care for the Soul: The Role of Divine Love and Human Love in Adjustment to Military Trauma
3.Charismatic Empowerment and Unlimited Love: A Social Psychological Assessment

AREA THREE: MECHANISMS BY WHICH ALTRUISTIC LOVE AFFECTS HEALTH
1.The Origins of Empathy: Body States, Brain States, and Behavior
2.Towards an Understanding of the Neurobiology of Parental Love
3.Is There a Neurobiology of Love?

AREA FOUR: OTHER-REGARDING VIRTUES
1.Other-Regarding Love for Individuals Outside One’s Social Group
2.The Gift of One’s Self: Expressions of Unlimited Love and Gratitude in Organ Donors and Recipients
3.The Self as a Conduit of Love

AREA FIVE: EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVES ON OTHER-REGARD
1.Altruistic Love, Evolution, and Individual Experience
2.Unlimited Love in the Laboratory: Evaluating the Effect of Religion on Sharing and Cooperative Behavior
3.Cross Cultural Survey of Altruistic Behavior
4.An Evolutionary Perspective on the Emotional Prerequisites for Love

AREA SIX: THE SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY OF FAITH-BASED COMMUNITIES AND THEIR ACTIVITIES IN RELATION TO THE SPIRITUAL IDEAL OF UNLIMITED LOVE
1.A National Study of Altruistic and Unlimited Love
2.Faith-Based Service Organizations, Altruistic Caregiving, and Understandings of Love
3.Antecedents and Correlates of Civic Engagement for African American Adolescents and Their Parents
4.Self-Forgetfulness in Seeking the Lost: A Sociological Study of Relentless Love and Compassionate Service at Ground Zero
5.Unlimited Love, Compassion, and Forgiveness: Acts of Moral Exemplars

SCIENCE OF COMPASSIONATE LOVE
INITIAL SET OF GRANTS AWARDED SUMMER 2001

1.Benevolent Love and Marriage
2.Volunteerism, Community, and Compassionate Acts among Older Adults
3.The Development, Antecedents, and Psychosocial Implications of Altruism in Late Adulthood
4.The Impacts of Religious, Intellectual, and Civic Engagement on Altruistic Love and Compassionate Love as Expressed Through Charitable Behaviors

The Institute offers the following definition of love: 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.

It is precisely in a time when hatred, injustice, and violence might lead us to doubt our capacities for goodness that we must rededicate ourselves to progress in unselfish love and its manifestation in the world. We can be heartened by the many everyday people who act with compassionate resilience, and by those remarkable people who manifest through action a visionary sense of a shared humanity. How can we raise children whose lives will be characterized by creative altruism and care? Does life lived more for others than for self contribute to a person’s happiness, health and even longevity? Is love of others the ground of human nature? How can spiritual and religious visions of the love of neighbor fully translate into actions on behalf of all humanity, rather than on behalf of some fragment of humanity that demonizes outsiders? How can we effectively educate youth for goodness as well as for knowledge?

The Fetzer Institute, after the collaborative JTF/Fetzer conference Altruism, Empathy and Agape: Perspectives on Love in Science and Religion (Oct. 1999), co-chaired by Stephen G. Post and Lynn G. Underwood (Fetzer), funded 16 studies independently through a Request for Proposals that was disseminated in 2000. IRUL and Fetzer were able to reach a matching agreement enabling the funding of 8 additional studies in the summer of 2001, with each entity responsible for funding 4 of these. In 2004 IRUL and Fetzer developed another matching arrangement, allowing 5 studies on agape love and child rearing, with IRUL funding 2 and Fetzer 3 of these. IRUL, based on a Request for Proposals disseminated in 2002, funded 21 studies. Thus, to January 2005, funding included 8 initial IRUL-Fetzer match studies, 21 IRUL studies, 5 IRUL-Fetzer studies = 34 funded studies. In the winter and spring of 2005, under the rubric of the Judith B. Watson Research Initiative, 6 IRUL projects were funded in the area of adolescent mental health in relation to perceptions and activities centered on the love of neighbor and spiritual commitments. In 2006 IRUL 5 additional studies, and 2 in 2007. Thus, to date, IRUL has funded 47 scientific research projects on unselfish love, along with 2 major integrative research projects collaborative with Emory University, and 5 pilot studies by junior researchers, for a total of 54 projects. If the 16 orginal Fetzer research studies are included, IRUL plus Fetzer have funded 70 research projects.

It is impossible at this time to accurately state the number of publications emerging from these studies, but in late 2007 Dr. Post will ask all funded researchers for a final list of published work or work in press. At this time, it is fair to suggest that there will be a total of 400 peer-review articles, and a solid number of edited books, book chapters, and single-author books.