The experience of awe requires:
- An object or event external to the individual and outside of their control
- Being in the presence of something greater than the individual
- Being free of time pressures
- Participation in and openness to the encounter.
Awe is experienced as a fusion and spontaneous overflow of feelings including amazement, connectedness, ecstasy, elevation, expansion of time or timelessness, fascination, fear, heightened awareness, humility, gratitude, insignificant, oneness, pleasure, respect, sense of enormity, smallness, surprise, transcendence, uncertainty, unity, vastness and wonder.
Keltner’s 2023 research identified 8 Wonders of Life that inspire awe experiences:
- Moral beauty (other people’s courage, kindness, strength)
- Collective effervescence (events and gatherings of people merging ‘life force’ e.g. weddings, concerts, rallies)
- Nature
- Music
- Visual design
- Spirituality and religion
- Life and death
- Epiphany (understanding essential truths about life)
Research participants describing an awe experience:
- “I feel the presence of something greater than myself”
- “I feel part of some greater entity”
- “I feel like I am in the presence of something grand”
- “I feel like I am a part of the greater whole”
- “I feel the existence of things more powerful than myself”
- “I feel like my own day to day concerns are relatively trivial”
- “In the grand scheme of things, my own concerns and issues don’t matter as much”
Collated from the following references:
Bai et al., 2017; Ballantyne & Packer, 2005 & 2016; Gerber, 2002; Halstead & Halstead, 2004; Kristjansson, 2017; Lee, 1994; McShane, 2018; Piff et al., 2015; Rudd et al., 2012; Silvia et al., 2015; Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012; van Elk, et al., 2016; Weger & Wagemann, 2021; and Wettstein, 1997.
Full reference list available here.
