Why Buddhism is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment

by Robert Wright

We all know that we behave differently when in different moods, so it stands to reason that putting us in a romantic mood would change our behavior. But the people who did this study don’t think that the “moods” paradigm is the best one to use here. Douglas Kenrick and Vladas Griskevicius, two of the psychologists who collaborated on the study, see us each as having multiple “subselves”—or modules, as Kenrick sometimes calls them—and they think that in this case which movie you watch determines which subself, or module, controls your reaction to the ad. The romantic movie puts your “mate-acquisition” module in charge. The scary movie puts your “self-protection” module in charge. I can imagine the Buddha liking this kind of language. The alternative way of describing the situation—saying that “I” act differently when in different “moods”—is just a way of evading the question he seems to have been asking: If you have different preferences from one moment to the next, then in what sense is it the same “you” from moment to moment? Isn’t this image of you exchanging one mood for another just a way of covering up the fact that today’s you and tomorrow’s you aren’t really the same you?