Purpose of Awe

The experience of awe ‘primes’ a person to be open to learning, connected to nature, and motivated to engage in pro-environmental behaviours towards species and the natural world. When a person experiences awe they are most likely to:

•  Be able to see the “big picture”
• Engage in cognitive thinking and acquire new knowledge
• Shift consciousness away from self and have a stronger desire to spend time helping others
• Be less likely to experience shame
• Engage with multi-visit or multi-product experiences and
• Be attracted to consuming experiential products instead of material items.

An individual with a genuine relationship with nature will improve their physical health and provides psychological benefits include positive emotions, enhanced kindness, sympathy, generosity towards others and greater authenticity that contribute to promoting prosocial tendencies.

The more immersive an individual’s experience of awe, the deeper their commitment to sacrificing personal short-term interests for the overall altruistic interests of society through their realisation that they are part of nature and vice versa.

Through the experience of awe a person recognises the sacredness and value in nature and with this insight understands that destruction of this sacred would be inconceivable.

Collated from the following references:

Bai et al., 2017; Basso, Schefft, Tis & Dember, 1996; Darbor, Lench, Davis & Hicks, 2016; Gerber, 2002; Gordon et al., 2017; Kelter & Haidt, 2003; McShane, 2018; Piff, Dietze, Feinberg, Stancate & Keltner, 2015; Rudd, Vohs & Aeker, 2012; Shiota, Keltner & Mossman, 2007; Steller et al., 2017; Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012; Weinstein et al., 2009; Yang, Hu, Jing & Nguyen, 2018; Zhang, Piff, Iyer, Koleva & Keltner, 2014b.

Full reference list available here