Wisdom as self-transcendence: What’s love (& individualism) got to do with it?

Abstract

Certain spiritual and contemplative traditions (e.g., Mahayana Buddhism, and Sufism) suggest that love or compassion may be one path toward wisdom. Fromm (1956) argued that certain cultures, particularly capitalistic ones, hinder productive and mature forms of love, and thus perhaps wisdom. In the first study, 90 Southeast Asian, Russian/Slavic, and Tibetan community participants completed a survey containing measures of cultural syndromes, immature love, and self-transcendence, an aspect of wisdom. The second study collected similar data on 164 undergraduate students. The results of these two studies revealed that one cultural syndrome, vertical individualism, was negatively associated with self-transcendence and positively with immature love. An egalitarian cultural stance was also related to self-transcendence among college students. The results did not support a mediating role for immature love between vertical individualism and self-transcendence. Future studies, particularly longitudinal ones, are needed to establish the causal or reciprocal relationships among culture, love, and self-transcendence.