The Power of Awe
Oxford Languages defines AWE as “a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder.”
In a recent episode of the podcast, A Slight Change of Plans, created and hosted by Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist, she interviewed Berkeley Professor and Psychologist, Dacher Keltner. He shares the science supporting the enigmatic and evocative emotion of AWE. The two take listeners on a journey to where we can find AWE in our daily lives – if we just make an effort to open ourselves to it. They also share a quite common but nevertheless surprising source.
“AWE is an emotion that you feel when you encounter something that is vast or beyond your frame of reference that you can’t understand with your current knowledge.” During the show and in his most recent book, AWE, The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, Dr. Keltner expounds on how AWE can enhance our well-being and has the ability to positively impact psychological traits such as openness and resilience.
Keltner offers two defining characteristics of AWE, which include:
- Perceived vastness - a function of physicality, time, semantics or even conceptual in nature, and
- Need for accommodation - “the mystery component.”
His research team collected 2,600 stories from people from twenty-six diverse cultures around the globe. The stories were translated and classified into what they refer to as “The Eight Wonders,” which are:
- Nature at its Finest… like the limitless sky, the staggering mountains, or the countless hues of the ocean.
- Spiritual Experiences… like prayer, having a relationship with spirit(s) or God.
- Musical Encounters… like being at a concert or enjoying a symphony.
- Visual Design… like realistic or unique paintings, cars, or buildings.
- One Big Idea… like infinity, big data, or the incredible capabilities of AI.
- Life and Death… like watching the birth of a child or passing of a friend or relative.
- Collective Effervescence… like singing/dancing with a large group or cheering at a big sporting event.
- Moral Beauty… “being moved when you witness people's sacrifice and courage and character and overcoming and wisdom… being blown away by how good human beings can be.”
Unexpectedly, to the researchers, the show host, guest, and myself included, the final two categories on the above list were the most common encounters with AWE across all cultures, with Moral Beauty topping the list.
“We tear up and are ready to do good in the world when we see people sacrifice… when we see courage. You have shifts in your physiology of oxytocin release where you feel more open to the world. And once you wrap your mind around this, the prevalence of moral beauty and how it inspires us, then you start to think about the people who have changed your life through their moral beauty. You know, a teacher or a coach, or someone in the streets… Once you open your eyes to it, you can walk through a city and suddenly you see seventeen acts of moral beauty that are holding the society together. We live in this era of toxic politics… [constant] comparisons, cynical views of human beings, and yet there's so much moral beauty to keep us inspired.”
I think we can all agree that now, more than ever, widespread self-aggrandizement consumes many to the point of narcissism and has become a focal obstacle of today’s mental health crisis. AWE, and its wonderous ability to make us feel both big and small, curious and cozy, all at the same time, “helps us to stave off narcissism, self-absorption, self-focus.”
“Little moments of AWE make you more generous… you have a better inflammation profile, you are more creative, you polarize politics less, you see more common ground in ideological adversaries… People who feel AWE, they handle stresses better; they handle traumas better. They just can look at the problem from many different angles, and that's beneficial. Those are all cognitive strategies that help us to be more resilient... So there are broad effects with lots of spillover in good ways.”
I don’t know about you, but I have a constant desire to evolve into a better version of myself, not for myself but for those who have poured into me, those who continue to nourish me, and most importantly, those in need…my family, friends, clients, colleagues, and perfect strangers. And, like all of us, I sometimes fall short. But I believe cultivating my relationship with AWE, my children’s relationship with AWE, can and will make us better people to serve and shape a better world.
As we prepare for a fresh, New Year, I encourage you to make yourself open to the power of AWE; it just might surprise you! I challenge you to “Find, create, and share joy whenever and wherever you can… The world needs it!”
A Slight Change of Plans - How Awe Transforms Us - Apple Podcasts
A Slight Change of Plans - How Awe Transforms Us - Spotify
Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life
~Solitaire Dasher-Smiley, December 2023
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