Empirical research in the psychology of nature appreciation suggests that humans across cultures tend to evaluate nature in positive aesthetic terms, including a sense of beauty and awe. They also frequently engage in joint attention with other persons, whereby they are jointly aware of sharing attention to the same event or object. This paper examines how, from a natural theological perspective, delight in natural beauty can be conceptualized as a way of joining attention to creation. Drawing on an analogy between (...) art and creation, we propose that aesthetic appreciation of nature may provide theists with a unique phenomenological insight into God's creative intentions, which are embodied in the physical beauty of creation. We suggest two directions in which this way of looking at the natural world can be fleshed out: in a spontaneous way, that does not take into account background information, and with the help of science. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy of art and aesthetics is the application of the methods of experimental philosophy to questions about art and aesthetics. By taking a scientific approach to experiences with art and aesthetic phenomena, it is continuous with the longstanding research program in psychology called empirical aesthetics. However, it is also continuous with traditional research in philosophy of art and aesthetics because it is centered on many of the same timeless questions. Like other branches of experimental philosophy, such as experimental moral (...) philosophy, it involves gathering data using empirical methods and bringing analyses of the data to bear on theorizing on a wide range of topics in philosophy of art and aesthetics: definition of art, ontology of art, aesthetic properties, aesthetic judgments, aesthetic adjectives, morality and aesthetics, and emotion and art. In this entry, we briefly examine the history prior to the current movement’s emergence in the 2010s, extensively survey extant works in this movement on each of the topics, and consider methodological debates regarding this movement. (shrink)

The cosmic perspective (or view sub specie aeternitatis) is associated with concerns about the meaning of life, our significance in the universe, and the universe’s indifference. I suggest that there is another important and common, albeit tacit, concern related to the cosmic view. Adopting the cosmic view can justifiably bring about a sense of disconnection from one’s life. Moreover, many of the explicit concerns we have regarding the cosmic view are issues that have a rational bearing upon this sense of (...) disconnection. As I argue, issues concerning our normative reasons (viewed from the cosmic perspective), our cosmic significance, and the universe’s vastness and indifference all warrant a sense of disconnectedness from our lives. At least, such disconnection is warranted for the duration of our attentive engagement with the cosmic view. But in small enough doses, this can be a good thing. The cosmic view and the sense of disconnection it brings about can foster experiences of awe. Awe, in turn, can promote a greater feeling of connection to the world around us and make us, as Bertrand Russell (1935/1973) would put it, less ‘trivial’ and ‘arrogant.’. (shrink)

This paper examines an overlooked aspect of interpersonal love: Like morality, love demands a certain kind of impartial or disinterested vision from us. We cannot love another person well, I argue, without being capable of such impartiality. Unfortunately, our self-interested nature makes meeting love's demand for impartiality extremely difficult if not impossible. This paper unpacks and offers a solution to this difficulty. Drawing on Iris Murdoch's work on love, I suggest that we can come to appreciate our beloveds as we (...) should through unselfing, a state of self-forgetful, disinterested appreciation of an object outside the self. When we unself, we are so deeply moved by an external object's value—e.g. a stunning sunset—that all our subjective cares and concerns disappear from view. In concluding, I suggest that the capacity for impartiality we must develop to love someone well is relevant to understanding what our moral relations demand of us. (shrink)

What explains people's propensity to ask existential questions that they have little hope of resolving, such as: Why are we here? What, if any, is our purpose? What is the structure of the universe? That humans engage in these endeavors has long puzzled evolutionary theorists, as they go beyond the immediate demands of fending for ourselves, seeking safety, finding food, and reproducing, which occupy the daily lives of other animals. In this book, philosopher Helen De Cruz draws on a wide (...) range of disciplines and thinkers, from Aristotle and 12th-century Muslim philosopher Ibn Tufayl to Jewish thinker Abraham Heschel and science writer Rachel Carson, showing how awe and wonder lie at the heart of such existential questions. She argues that there is an emotional basis to this drive for inquiry, as wonder and awe are epistemic emotions that help us think about big-picture questions and that motivate the answers we provide to those questions. (shrink)

Coastal environments are increasingly shown to have a positive effect on our health and well-being. Various mechanisms have been suggested to explain this effect. However, so far little focus has been devoted to emotions that might be relevant in this context, especially for people who are directly or indirectly exposed to the coast on a daily basis. Our preregistered qualitative study explored how coastal residents experience the emotions they feel at the coast and how they interpret the effect these emotions (...) have on them. We conducted semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of eight Belgian coastal residents aged 21–25 years old. The interviews were analyzed with the approach of interpretative phenomenological analysis. Five superordinate themes were identified and indicate that, for our participants, the coast represents a safe haven in which they can experience emotional restoration, awe, and nostalgia. These emotional states are accompanied with adaptive emotion regulating strategies, such as reflection and positive reappraisal, that may facilitate coping with difficult thoughts and feelings. Our study demonstrates the importance of investigating specific emotions and related processes triggered at the coast and how these could contribute to the therapeutic value of the coast. (shrink)

IntroductionIn the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, Romanian universities switched to emergency relocation and online education, with students experiencing a sense of isolation, which affected their well-being, pace and normal learning style, relationships with other colleagues, and Professors. Beyond the technological obstacles that have arisen in learning, the aim of this study is to highlight the psychological variables that are associated and that explain the self-perceived well-being of students, in university, in the pandemic. The psychological variables studied were the following: the (...) level of openness and personal autonomy, as personality traits of students but also the mechanisms for regulating their academic motivation.MethodWe used a questionnaire-based survey, wherein all four research instruments had been validated and adapted to the investigated population. The subjects were BA and MA students at the University of Oradea, Romania, the majority being females with the age range of 27 years old. Pearson Correlation and Multiple Linear Regression were used to test the two hypotheses.ResultsResearch data obtained in the correlation analysis, point out association relationships with moderate and high effects size, between positive attitude toward self, others and student life and: openness to learning, openness to aesthetics, behavioral autonomy, cognitive autonomy, intrinsic motivation, and identification motivation. Furthermore, in regression analysis, it was revealed that regarding the variance of results concerning students’ self-perceived well-being in university, it contributes both of students’ personality traits and their intrinsic motivation and identification motivation.ConclusionThe fundamental conclusion of the research is that, although the personality traits of students explain in a higher percentage the variability of results in students’ self-perceived well-being, motivation regulation mechanisms play an important role, especially in the conditions of online activities. The results have direct implications for the work carried out in universities. The educational policies developed by specialists and government will have to emphasize the ways of forming resilient student communities in periods of sudden transition and adaptation to change which take place in education and society. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 2, Page 132-160, April 2022. Autonomic nervous system activity is a fundamental component of emotional responding. It is not clear, however, whether positive emotional states are associated with differential ANS reactivity. To address this issue, we conducted a meta-analytic review of 120 articles, measuring ANS activity during 11 elicited positive emotions, namely amusement, attachment love, awe, contentment, craving, excitement, gratitude, joy, nurturant love, pride, and sexual desire. We identified a widely dispersed collection of studies. Univariate (...) results indicated that positive emotions produce no or weak and highly variable increases in ANS reactivity. However, the limitations of work to date – which we discuss – mean that our conclusions should be treated as empirically grounded hypotheses that future research should validate. (shrink)

In this paper, we present an abductive argument for the existence of God from the experience of awe at natural beauty. If God’s creative work is a viable explanation for why we experience awe at natural beauty, and there is no satisfactory naturalistic explanation for the origins of such experiences, then we have defeasible evidence that God exists. To evaluate the argument's tenability, we assess the merits of the two main naturalistic frameworks that can be marshaled to answer the question (...) of why human beings experience awe at natural beauty, Wilson's biophilia hypothesis, and Keltner and Haidt's prototype approach to awe. We show shortcomings of both accounts in explaining the relevant experiences and argue that the reliance of these accounts on an adaptationist reading of our aesthetic appreciation of nature entails a commitment to questionable hidden premises: that affordances themselves can figure in the subject's perceptual experience, and that experiences of awe have adaptive value. We maintain that the argument's “empirical” premise is tenable and conclude with directions for future research regarding the argument's “theological” premise. (shrink)

In order to contribute to the consolidation in the field ofPositive Psychology, we reinvestigated the factor structure of top 10 positive emotions of Barbara Fredrickson. Former research in experimental settings resulted in a three-cluster solution, which we tested withexploratoryandconfirmatorymethodology against different factor models. Within our non-experimental data (N= 312), statistical evidence is presented, advocating for a single factor model of the 10 positive emotions. Different possible reasons for the deviating results are discussed, as well as the theoretical significance to various (...) subfields inPositive Psychology(e.g., therapeutical interventions). Furthermore, the special role ofawewithin the study and its implications for further research in the field are discussed. (shrink)

The moral foundations theory (MFT) proposes that there are five moral foundations that work as the standard to make moral judgments. Among them, the purity foundation is a complex concept. It is considered to be a distinctive foundation compared with the other ones partly because it involves religious beliefs. The assumption underlying the purity foundation is Christian beliefs, so the MFT was developed and made prevalent mostly in the Western cultures. However, because of that assumption, cultural differences in perceiving the (...) purity foundation should be observed with a non-Western sample, such as Japan. It would be important to discuss and clarify the Japanese unique aspect of their orientation toward the pure and impure. We constituted a scale to measure people's tendency toward purity orientation–pollution avoidance (POPA), based on the purity/sanctity subscale of the MFT. For validation, we administered several scales along with POPA. In Study 1, we developed the scale and measured the relationship between the degree of one's POPA, disgust, and animism. We identified four factors as POPA subscales. In Study 2, we investigated the test–retest reliability of POPA and conducted questionnaire surveys to measure attitudes toward paranormal phenomena and the degree of concern for each of the moral foundations. The results showed the validity of the scale, based on the moderate correlations with other scales. The POPA can be a promising tool to better understand the phenomena involving the purity foundation in a Japanese context. (shrink)

Self-transcendence has been characterized as a decrease in self-saliency (ego disillusionment) and increased connection, and has been growing in research interest in the past decade. Several measures have been developed and published with some degree of psychometric validity and reliability. However, to date, there has been no review systematically describing, contrasting, and evaluating the different methodological approaches toward measuring self-transcendence including questionnaires, neurological and physiological measures, and qualitative methods. To address this gap, we conducted a review to describe existing methods (...) of measuring self-transcendence, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these methods, and discuss research avenues to advance assessment of self-transcendence, including recommendations for suitability of methods given research contexts. (shrink)

The Overview Effect is the commonly reported experience of astronauts viewing planet Earth from space, and the subsequent reflection on, and processing of this experience. The Overview Effect is associated with feelings of awe, self-transcendence, and a change of perspective and identity that manifest themselves in taking steps towards protecting the fragile ecosystem. In the current study, we investigated whether the Overview Effect can be obtained in school children when simulated using virtual reality and whether the effect has a positive (...) impact on learning gains. Using questionnaires and attention data in an existing simulation environment used in the school system, we showed that the virtual reality simulation elicits an Overview Effect experience. Moreover, the experience yields learning gains in the domain of astrophysics. These findings are in line with past evidence regarding the positive impact of awe on learning and can be used to support further investigations of the relation between the Overview Effect and behavioral changes, specifically for educational purposes. (shrink)

This paper examines the role of awe and wonder in scientific practice. Drawing on evidence from psychological research and the writings of scientists and science communicators, I argue that awe and wonder play a crucial role in scientific discovery. They focus our attention on the natural world, encourage open-mindedness, diminish the self (particularly feelings of self-importance), help to accord value to the objects that are being studied, and provide a mode of understanding in the absence of full knowledge. I will (...) flesh out implications of the role of awe and wonder in scientific discovery for debates on the relationship between science and religion. Abraham Heschel argued that awe and wonder are religious emotions because they reduce our feelings of self-importance, and thereby help to cultivate the proper reverent attitude towards God. Yet metaphysical naturalists such as Richard Dawkins insist that awe and wonder need not lead to any theistic commitments for scientists. The awe some scientists experience can be regarded as a form of non-theistic spirituality, which is neither a reductive naturalism nor theism. I will attempt to resolve the tension between these views by identifying some common ground. (shrink)

Little is known about the psychological processes that can explain how connectedness to nature evolves. From social psychology, we know that emotions play an essential role when connecting to others. In this article, we argue that social connectedness and connectedness to nature are underpinned by the same emotions. More specifically, we propose that social relational emotions are crucial to understanding the process, how humans connect to nature. Beside other emotions, kama muta (Sanskrit: being moved by love) might play a particular (...) crucial role when connecting to nature. Future research should address the consideration of social relational emotions in a range of areas when investigating the human-nature relationship. (shrink)

The increasing demand for environmental protection has given rise to burgeoning research on green consumption. The present research adds to this expanding literature by investigating a novel predictor of consumer green consumption: awe. As a self-transcendent emotion, awe arises when people encounter perceptually vast stimuli that overwhelm their existing knowledge and mental structures, and, meanwhile, this also elicits a need for accommodation. This research proposes and demonstrates that, compared with happiness and a neutral affective state, experience of awe promotes green (...) consumption via an enhanced psychological ownership of nature. Moreover, this research identifies a condition by showing that, while awe promotes green consumption when interdependent self-construal is activated, this effect diminishes when independent self-construal is activated. (shrink)

Many pantheists have claimed that their view of the divine is motivated by a kind of spiritual experience. In this paper, I articulate a novel argument, inspired by recent work on moral exemplarism, that gives voice to this kind of motivation for pantheism. The argument is based on two claims about the emotion of awe, each of which is defended primarily via critical engagement with empirical research on the emotion. I also illustrate how this pathway to pantheism offers pantheists distinctive (...) resources for responding to persistent objections to their view, and how it might lead to more exotic views incorporating pantheistic elements. (shrink)

ABSTRACTExperiences that contradict one's core concepts elicit intense emotions. Such schema incongruence can elicit awe, wherein experiences that are too vast...

This special issue presents developments in research on the cognitive mechanisms and consequences of surprise. Amidst much progress, surprise research has often been siloed, so, as editors, we have sought to juxtapose insights, theories, and findings, to support cross‐fertilization in future research. The present paper sets the stage by presenting a historical summary, highlighting contrasts in definitions, and tracing major threads running through this issue and the larger surprise literature.

Can we feel emotions about abstract objects, assuming that abstract objects exist? I argue that at least some emotions can have abstract objects as their intentional objects and discuss why this conclusion is not just trivially true. Through critical engagement with the work of Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, I devote special attention to awe, an emotion that is particularly well suited to show that some emotions can be about either concrete or abstract objects. In responding to a possible objection, (...) according to which we can only feel emotions about things that we take to matter to our flourishing, and thus cannot feel emotions about causally inefficacious abstract objects, I explore how abstract objects can be relevant to human flourishing and discuss someemotions other than awe that can be about abstract objects. I finish by explaining somereasons why my conclusion matters, including the fact that it presents a challenge to perceptual theories of emotion and causal theories of intentionality. (shrink)

Awe and wonder are theorised to be distinct from other positive emotions, such as happiness. Yet little empirical or theoretical work has focused on these emotions. This investigation explored differences in language used to describe experiences of awe and wonder. Such analyses can provide insight into how people conceptualise these emotional experiences, and whether they conceptualise these emotions to be distinct from other positive emotions, and each other. Participants wrote narratives about experiences of awe, wonder and happiness. There were differences (...) in the language used to describe these positive emotional states, consistent with the theorised functions of each emotion. Awe was related to observing the world, reflected in greater use of perception words. Wonder was related to trying to understand the world, reflected in greater use of cognitive complexity and tentative words. Language use for both emotions reflected an environmental focus, whereas language use for happiness reflected a social/relationship focus. (shrink)

How is admiration different from adoration? We provided one answer to this question by examining the pathways through which admiration and adoration linked to self-expansion in a questionnaire and an experimental (autobiographical recall of emotion episodes) study. Both emotions were associated with increased potential efficacy to accomplish goals (i.e., self-expansion), but different action tendencies accounted for these links. While our emotion inductions did not successfully distinguish between admiration and adoration, we could statistically disentangle their effects through mediator models. In both (...) studies, self-reported admiration linked to self-expansion through the tendency to emulate admired others. Adoration related to self-expansion through the tendency to affiliate with adored others. These findings were obtained after controlling for other emotions in response to the target person (awe, love, hope, benign envy) and mutuality of the relationship. Our findings also suggest that considering specific emotions (rather than undifferentiated positive affect) helps uncover different pathways to self-expansion. (shrink)

The demand for ethical fashion products has grown in recent years, with consumers caring more about how the product is made. Based on the deontological underpinnings of ethical fashion, the present research provides recommendations to ethical fashion brands by leveraging the emotion of awe through visual representations. This research examines 5362 Instagram posts of five ethical fashion brands and shows that the presence of awe-inspiring visual elements increases consumer engagement on social media for ethical fashion brands. Further, this research identifies (...) the moderating roles of the color green and the size of the visual elements in this context. Two follow-up experiments provide causal evidence for these relationships. Experimental evidence for the role of deontological beliefs as a mediator of the relationship between feelings of awe and social media engagement with ethical fashion brands is also provided. Overall, the findings offer a more nuanced understanding of how ethical fashion brands can develop effective visual advertising campaigns on social media and the underlying process driving the effect, which is consistent with deontological ethics. (shrink)

By the start of the twenty-first century, the notion of ‘the sublime’ had come to seem incoherent. In the last ten years or so considerable light has been shed by empirical psychologists on a related notion of ‘awe’, and a fruitful dialogue between aestheticians and empirical psychologists has ensued. It is the aim of this paper to synthesize these advances and to offer what I call a ‘two-tiered’ theory of the sublime that shows it to be a coherent aesthetic category. (...) On this theory, sublime experiences begin in an ‘awe response’ (the ‘thin sublime’) and might, with the additional element of temporally-extended reflection, turn into a ‘thick sublime’ response. Building on accounts of the sublime as a species of ‘aesthetic awe’ (Clewis, 2019a and 2019b; Arcangeli, et al., 2020) I aim to show that this two-tiered theory helps to explain why sublime experiences seem to have a basic, primordial core, but also seem to be historically and culturally quite variable (as Nicolson, 1963 [1959]; Battersby, 2007; and McMahon, 2017 have stressed). On this model, the cultural and historical variability comes in largely at the point of the temporally-extended reflection characteristic of the thick sublime, due to the cognitive stock that the subject brings to the encounter. Thus, sublime experiences really lend themselves to being interpreted quite variously by the subject (as well as by the theorist) of these experiences, as, for example, affording insight into the Divine, our moral vocation, or our metaphysical unity with the entire universe, among other lofty thoughts. (shrink)

Introduction Connectedness to nature is a concept that reflects the emotional relationship between the self and the natural environment, based on the theory of biophilia, the innate predisposition to the natural environment. However, the biophobic component has largely been ignored, despite, given its adaptive functional role, being an essential part of the construct. If there is a phylogenetic component underlying nature connectedness, biophilic, and/or biophobic, there should be evidence of this record from early childhood. The main aim of this study (...) is therefore to describe the emotional attributions identified in 5 years old. Methodology Two studies were conducted. In the first, 94 children expressed their concept of nature and made basic emotional attributions to a set of 30 images of natural, using a software designed for the study. In the second, 39 children repeated the procedure and provided explanations for their responses. Results The main results show that, in general, children use both positive and negative emotions, which may be related to a three-dimensional model of emotional attributions to nature. The most widely attributed emotion is happiness. However, fear is the second most common attribution. The role of happiness could be explained by a feeling of security and familiarity, while the importance of fear in nature could show an adaptive response of the fear of wild nature in children. This interpretation could be confirmed when analyzing specifically the emotional attributions, classifying the images according to biological and ecosystemic criteria. Thus, for example, more emotional attributions are explained by the “pleasantness” attributed to primary producers and landscapes (e.g., flora), versus attributions of “harm” to the images of secondary and tertiary consumers (e.g., hunters). Conclusion These results provide evidence in favor of a didactic procedure to study emotional attributions to images of nature in preschool children. They suggest the incorporation of biophobia as an important adaptive factor in connectedness to nature and a tripartite emotional hypothesis based on the valences of the attributed emotions. (shrink)

Scholars have recently identified resemblances between pragmatist thought and contemporary trends in cognitive science in the area of ‘embodied cognition’ or ‘4E cognition.’ In this article I explore these resemblances in the account of religious belief provided by the classical pragmatist philosopher William James. Although James’s psychology does not always parallel the commitments of embodied cognition, his insights concerning the role of emotion and socio-cultural context in shaping religious belief, as well as the action-oriented nature of such beliefs, resonate with (...) embodied and embedded accounts of religious belief. James’s insights are readily extended in light of contemporary embodied cognition research to highlight the interdependency between religious belief of individuals and the cognitive scaffolding provided by embodied religious practices. (shrink)

In this article we review the emerging literature on the self-transcendent emotions. We discuss how the self-transcendent emotions differ from other positive emotions and outline the defining features of this category. We then provide an analysis of three specific self-transcendent emotions—compassion, gratitude, and awe—detailing what has been learned about their expressive behavior, physiology, and likely evolutionary origins. We propose that these emotions emerged to help humans solve unique problems related to caretaking, cooperation, and group coordination in social interactions. In our (...) final section we offer predictions about the self-transcendent emotions that can guide future research. (shrink)

While interest in the emotion of awe has surged in psychology, philosophers have yet to devote a single self-standing article to awe’s conceptual contours and moral standing. The present article aims to rectify this imbalance and begin to make up for the unwarranted philosophical neglect. In order to do so, awe is given the standard Aristotelian treatment to uncover its conceptual contours and moral relevance. Aristotelianism typically provides the most useful entry point to ‘size up’ any emotion – more problematically (...) here, however, as Aristotle did not himself explicitly identify awe. The article critiques and proposes to improve upon existing psychological conceptual analyses of awe, probes the question why Aristotle ignored it and addresses an often-presumed link between awe and humility which bears on its moral status. (shrink)

Astronauts often report experiences of awe and wonder while traveling in space. This paper addresses the question of whether awe and wonder can be scientifically investigated in a simulated space travel scenario using a neurophenomenological method. To answer this question, we created a mixed-reality simulation similar to the environment of the International Space Station. Portals opened to display simulations of Earth or Deep Space. However, the challenge still remained of how to best capture the resulting experience of participants. We could (...) use psychological methods, neuroscientific methods or philosophical methods. Each of these approaches offer many benefits, but each is also limited. Neurophenomenology capitalises on and integrates all three methods. We employed questionnaires from psychology, electroencephalography, electrocardiography, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy from neuroscience, and a phenomenological interview technique from philosophy. This neurophenomenological method enabled extensive insight in experiencers and non-experiencers of awe and wonder in a simulated space scenario that otherwise would not have been possible. Traditional empirical analyses were completed, followed by individual differences analyses using interview transcriptions paired with physiological responses. Experiencers of AW showed differences in theta and beta activity throughout the brain compared to non-experiencers. Questionnaires indicated that non-experiencers of AW gave more positive responses of religious and spiritual practices than experiencers of AW. Interviews showed that awe and wonder were more likely to occur when watching the simulated Earth view instead of the Deep Space view. Our study is a successful example of neurophenomenology, a powerful and promising interdisciplinary approach for future studies of complex states of experience. (shrink)

Awe has traditionally been considered a religious or spiritual emotion, yet scientists often report that awe motivates them to answer questions about the natural world, and to do so in naturalistic terms. Indeed, awe may be closely related to scientific discovery and theoretical advance. Awe is typically triggered by something vast (either literally or metaphorically) and initiates processes of accommodation, in which existing mental schemas are revised to make sense of the awe‐inspiring stimuli. This process of accommodation is essential for (...) the kind of belief revision that characterizes scientific reasoning and theory change. Across six studies, we find that the tendency to experience awe is positively associated with scientific thinking, and that this association is not shared by other positive emotions. Specifically, we show that the disposition to experience awe predicts a more accurate understanding of how science works, rejection of creationism, and rejection of unwarranted teleological explanations more broadly. (shrink)

Having good moral character often involves shifting one’s focus of attention from the self to others and the world. Across three studies (N = 605 adults), we found converging evidence that self-transcendent experiences, specifically awe and flow, enabled the expression of wisdom, as captured by wise reasoning and epistemic humility measures. Study 1 found that dispositionally awe- and flow-prone people have stronger wise reasoning and epistemic humility abilities, over and above dispositional happiness. Consistent with Study 1, Study 2 found that, (...) across diverse recalled experiences, individuals who experienced more awe showed greater wise reasoning, and those who experienced more flow showed greater epistemic humility. In Study 3, using situated interventions, we induced awe (watching a video involving vast nature scenes) and flow (composing a song using an online music maker) and compared them with neutral and amusement experiences. Compared to these control conditions, eliciting awe and flow facilitated one’s (1) ability to address interpersonal conflicts with wise reasoning, (2) ability to acknowledge one’s epistemic gaps, and (3) willingness to improve those aspects and one’s general moral character. Altogether, these findings reveal the promising role of self-transcendent experiences in motivating people to appreciate others’ perspectives beyond one’s own. (shrink)

Research shows the experience of awe is associated with a variety of benefits ranging from increased well-being and prosocial behavior to enhanced cognition. The adaptive purpose of awe, however, is elusive. In this article, we aim to show that the current framework used to conceptualize awe points towards higher-order cognition as the key adaptive function. This goes against past evolutionary positions that posit social benefits or unidimensional behavioral adaptations. In the second half of the article, we highlight a distinct cognitive (...) advantage of awe. The literature connecting awe and cognition is surveyed and used to develop a view that situates awe as a critical component in the cognitive success of the human species. (shrink)

ABSTRACTAwe is described as an a “epistemic emotion” because it is hypothesised to make gaps in one’s knowledge salient. However, no empirical evidence for this yet exists. Awe is also hypothesised...

Research on differences in personal control among Blacks and Whites is conflicted. The purpose of this study is to see if differences in feelings of control between Blacks and Whites can be attributed to race differences in the use of religious resources. Developing a close relationship with God serves as the focal measure of religious involvement. The data come from a nationwide survey of middle-aged and older Blacks and Whites in the United States. A second-order factor model is embedded in (...) a larger latent variable model that assesses the relationships among race, a close relationship with God, and feelings of personal control. The findings suggest that Blacks have a stronger sense of control than Whites. Moreover, a significant portion of these race differences can be attributed to the fact that Blacks are more likely than Whites to report they have a close relationship with God. (shrink)

We investigated the impact of situational awe on topic-specific interest and recognition memory for information presented in immersive planetarium films. Adult participants (N = 131) were recruited among science centre visitors who were going to view one of the films shown in the science centre’s planetarium. Participants responded to questions about prior knowledge, topic-specific interest in the film and background information before viewing one of the three planetarium films. After the film, they completed the topic-specific interest scale, epistemically-related emotion scales, (...) situation-specific awe scale, critical thinking disposition scale and a recognition task of the film contents. The results showed that during viewing planetarium films participants experienced awe, but the strength of this emotion varied among films. Additionally, situation-specific awe was strongly associated with another epistemic emotion, namely surprise. As for the recognition task performance, awe decreased error and nonsense detection, and increased false recognition of inferential statements. Finally, awe was found to substantially increase topic-specific interest. These results present evidence that awe has potential to prompt individuals to become more interested in science-related topics. (shrink)

This narrative review aims to contribute to the scientific literature on awe by reviewing seven perspectives on the evolutionary function of awe. Each is presented with accompanying empirical evidence and suggestions for research investigating unanswered questions. Based on the existing perspectives, this review proposes an integrated evolutionary model of awe, postulating the evolutionary selection of awe through three adaptive domains: (1) social cooperation, (2) reflective processing, and (3) signaling suitability as a potential mate.

Based on the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, this study explored the mediating effect of spiritual intelligence between awe and life satisfaction among Chinese primary school teachers and whether this effect was moderated by ethnicity. Participants comprised 569 teachers from 24 primary schools in southwestern China, where many of the ethnic minority groups of China reside. Awe and spiritual intelligence were found to positively predict life satisfaction among primary school teachers, while awe also indirectly influenced life satisfaction through the partial (...) mediation of spiritual intelligence. Ethnicity was also found to moderate the relation between awe and life satisfaction, i.e., when compared with the Han teachers, there is a more significant and positive relation between awe and life satisfaction in ethnic minority teachers. These findings not only indicate the critical role of awe in promoting life satisfaction of primary school teachers but also especially show that awe embodied in the traditional cultural activities makes it easier to breed life satisfaction in ethnic minority teachers. (shrink)

We define aesthetic emotions as emotions that underlie the evaluative assessment of artworks. They are separated from the wider class of art-elicited emotions. Aesthetic emotions historically have been characterized as calm, as lacking specific patterns of embodiment, and as being a sui generis kind of pleasure. We reject those views and argue that there is a plurality of aesthetic emotions contributing to praise. After presenting a general account of the nature of emotions, we analyze twelve positive aesthetic emotions in four (...) different categories: emotions of pleasure, contemplation, amazement, and respect. The emotions that we identify in each category, including feelings of fluency, intrigue, wonder, and adoration, have been widely neglected both within aesthetics and in emotion research more broadly. (shrink)

The wilderness is one of the most widely recognized sources of transcendent emotion. Various recent studies have demonstrated nature’s power to induce intense emotions. The study at hand will generate conceptual and operational definitions of sublime emotion toward nature. Taking into consideration the recent research on feelings of awe, an instrument is devised to measure sublime emotion toward nature. The proposed scale’s reliability and validity is tested in a sample of 280 participants from the general population of Madrid. Results show (...) that sublime emotion was defined by two conceptual components: awe, and inspiring energy, both obtained using the computer program FACTOR. After reliability and validity analysis, the Sublime Emotion toward Nature (SEN) scale included 18 items, distributed into awe (6 items, α =.881) and inspiring energy (12 items, α=.933). Awe was defined by feelings of fear, threat, vulnerability, fragility, and respect for nature, which is perceived as vast, powerful, and mysterious. Inspiring energy was defined by feelings of vitality, joy, energy, oneness, freedom, eternity, and harmony with the universe. The SEN is an adequate instrument to measure transcendent emotions provoked by direct wilderness exposure or memory thereof. (shrink)

This thesis presents a study of transcendent experiences — experiences of connection with something greater than oneself — focusing on what they are, how artefacts support them, and how design can contribute to that support. People often find such experiences transformative, and artefacts do support them — but the literature rarely addresses designing artefact support for TXs. This thesis provides a step toward filling that gap. The first phase of research involved the conduct and analysis of 24 interviews with adults (...) of diverse spiritual perspectives, using constructivist Grounded Theory methods informed by relevant literature and by studies performed earlier in the PhD programme. Analysis found that TXs proceed in three phases — creating the context, living the experience, integrating the experience — and that artefacts support two phases and people desire enhancements to all three. This TX framework supports and extends experience structures from the literature: it recognises the top-level categories as phases in a cycle where integration may alter future contexts, and it extends the structure of TX by incorporating the relationships of artefacts and of enhancement desires to the phases of these experiences. This extended structure constitutes a grounded theory of transcendent user experience. The second phase involved the design and conduct of three “Transcendhance” game workshops for enhancing transcendence, which incorporated themes from the grounded theory and aimed to elicit design ideas in an atmosphere of imagination, fun, and play. Participants sketched 69 speculative ideas for techno-spiritual artefacts, and analysis mapped them to TX phases and identified possible extensions inspired by relevant research. The great majority of ideas mapped to the phase Creating the Context, with very few mapping to Living the Experience, which suggests that context may be easier than lived experience to understand and address directly. This point is especially important for experiences such as TX that are tricky to define, impossible to arrange or anticipate, and thus unsuitable for straight-forward “classic” user experience methods. The final phase involved the elaboration of workshop ideas to explore the extension of design fiction for TUX. Analysis related design fiction to the TX phases and suggested features that affect design ideas’ potential for TUX design fiction. This phase ended with the proposal and analysis of three new forms of design fiction — extended imaginary abstracts, comparative imaginary abstracts, and design poetry — using workshop ideas to illustrate the forms, their construction and use, and their benefits to TUX design. Transcendhance workshops and TUX design fictions approach techno-spiritual design peripherally, “sneaking up” on lived experience by addressing context and enabling the consideration of ineffable experience through storytelling, metaphors, and oblique imagery. This thesis combines the grounded theory of transcendent user experience with the Transcendhance workshop process and new forms of design fiction, presenting peripheral design as a promising strategy for facilitating design to enhance transcendent experience. (shrink)

After a period of relative neglect, awe has been the focus of substantial empirical work in psychology and has also begun to receive some philosophical attention. Thus far, though, little attention has been devoted to a line of reasoning present in the literature on environmental ethics that moves from being awe-inspiring to being worthy of preservation. I argue here that this neglect ought to be remedied, as this argument potentially has a significant role to play in various ethical contexts involving (...) non-persons. I also identify key questions that would need to be addressed in delivering an all-things-considered verdict on this argument, and argue that the argument is largely independent of empirical work on the ‘pro-social effects’ of awe. My primary goal is to motivate, and provide a clear direction for, further work devoted to the prospects and implications of this line of reasoning. (shrink)

In response to the mental health crisis in science, and amid concerns about the detrimental effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists, this study seeks to identify the role of a heretofore under-researched factor for flourishing and eudaimonia: aesthetic experiences in scientific work. The main research question that this study addresses is: To what extent is the frequency of encountering aesthetics in terms of beauty, awe, and wonder in scientific work associated with greater well-being among scientists? Based on a large-scale (...) and representative international survey of scientists in four countries, this study employs sets of nested regressions to model the associations of aesthetic experiences with flourishing while controlling for demographic factors and negative workplace and life circumstances such as burnout, job/publication pressure, mistreatment, COVID-19 impacts, other stressful life events, serious psychological distress, and chronic health conditions. The results show that the frequency of aesthetic experiences in scientific work in the disciplines of biology and physics has a very large and statistically significant association with flourishing and eudaimonia that remains robust even when controlling for demographic factors and negative workplace and life circumstances, including COVID-19 impacts. Aesthetic experiences in scientific work are even as strongly associated with flourishing as the presence of serious psychological distress and are most strongly associated with the flourishing domain of meaning in life, thus pointing to a link with eudaimonic well-being. In line with neurophysiological evidence and positive psychological models of flow, self-transcendence, and intrinsic motivation, aesthetics are a key source of flourishing for scientists in the disciplines of biology and physics. While future research needs to test the causal mechanism, the strength of the findings could encourage leaders of scientific labs and research organizations generally to remove obstacles to experiencing the aesthetic dimensions of science. Fostering cultures in which the aesthetic experiences that are intrinsic to scientific practice are fully appreciated might potentially protect or boost flourishing by reducing the impacts of burnout, job/publication pressure, and mistreatment-related experiences in science. (shrink)