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Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion
Cognition and Emotion
Abstract
In this paper we present a prototype approach to awe. We suggest that two appraisals are central and are present in all clear cases of awe: perceived vastness, and a need for accommodation, defined as an inability to assimilate an experience into current mental structures. Five additional appraisals account for variation in the hedonic tone of awe experiences: threat, beauty, exceptional ability, virtue, and the supernatural. We derive this perspective from a review of what has been written about awe in religion, philosophy, sociology, and psychology, and then we apply this perspective to an analysis of awe and related states such as admiration, elevation, and the epiphanic experience.
... Among them, awe is a discrete emotion closely related to the tourism context (Tian et al., 2015b). According to the core characteristics and triggering conditions of awe mentioned by Shiota (Shiota et al., 2007) and Keltner (Keltner & Haidt, 2003), awe can be triggered in tourist situations and become one of the most anticipated emotional experiences for tourists (Coghlan et al., 2012). ...
... According to the prototype theory of awe, awe can promote individuals to have positive thinking and make behaviors that are beneficial to others and society (Su & Zhang, 2016), and demonstrate pro-social functions including PEB (Wang & Lyu, 2019). In the context of tourism, when awe is aroused, tourists will put their own interests after the natural needs, update their own psychological schema, and re-identify and accept the surrounding environment and things (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Emphasis is placed on individual integration and conformity to group requirements (Van Cappellen, Saroglou (2012)), deepening the rational cognition and moral cognition of environmental protection, not only strictly abiding by the civilized tourism norms of tourist areas, and exhorting others' actions against the environment. ...
... The second part collects social and demographic data, including permanent residence, household registration type, gender, age, education, occupation, monthly income, religious belief, and the number of visits to Shangri-La. The third part consists of six measurement scales, the NE and CA were selected from those used in Keltner's (Keltner & Haidt, 2003), Tian (Tian et al., 2015b) and Qi (Qi et al., 2018) study on the evaluation of the perception of NE and CA (e.g., Magnificent, strong, magically beautiful, majestic and unexpected; Solemnity, seriousness, unlimited, gorgeous, beautiful and magical); the items for awe were based on those used in Coghlan's (Coghlan et al., 2012), Tian (Tian et al., 2015a) and Qi (Qi et al., 2018) exploration of the dimensions of awe (e.g., Exciting, unusual, humbling, unexpected); the items for measuring SA were derived from Wang , Godin (Godin & Kok, 1996), Chen (Chen & Chao, 2011), Ajzen (Ajzen, 1991), Brown (Brown et al., 2010)'s study (e.g., It is worthwhile to protect the environment of tourist site; It is good to protect the environment of tourist site; It is worthwhile to protect the environment of tourist site); the items measuring SN were mainly derived from Wang , Heesup (Heesup et al., 2018), Van (Van Riper, Kyle (2014)), Brown (Brown et al., 2010) and Miller (Miller et al., 2015)'s study (e.g., Most people who are important to me think I should protect the environment of the scenic spot; People who I respect hope I can protect the environment; People I am familiar with will take part in the protection of the environment of tourist site); and the items measuring PEB were modified on the basis of the scale used by Wang , Cheng (Cheng et al., 2013), Ajzen (Ajzen, 1991), Miller (Miller et al., 2015) and Untaru (Untaru et al., 2014) to study the influencing factors of tourists' PEB (e.g., I am willing to follow the tourism regulations of the administration of the scenic spot; I am willing to follow the tourism regulations of the administration of the scenic spot; I am willing to discourage others from damaging the scenic spot) ( Table 2). ...
... Given the present focus on individual awe experiences in relation to natural environments, psychology was a central discipline for this research [13]. A commonly referenced definition for awe from psychology literature is that awe is an emotion induced by a situation that includes a need for accommodation and a perceived sense of vastness [15][16][17]. Accommodation is associated with the scholar John Piaget's definition: accommodation is the ability to change or mentally restructure our view of ideas or concepts as we take in new information [18]. Allen [19] described perceived sense of vastness as a stimulating experience beyond the average range of what is familiar. ...
... In one study, psychologists summarized awe's meaning as an "emotion that arises when one encounters something so strikingly vast that it provokes a need to update one's mental schemas" [20]. This implies that one who has these experiences would likely alter their behaviors and decisions as a result [16,17,19,20]. ...
... They, and other awe-focused researchers, argued that this personal benefit is directly correlated to feeling more positively connected with others. Awe is considered by researchers to be the ultimate "collective" emotion, capable of motivating and binding people to act in collaborative ways that can lead to enhanced, positive group dynamics and enable more cohesion in communities [16,36,37]. Shteynberg's [38] Shared Attention Theory suggests that an engaging cognitive group experience creates more stimulus compared to when experienced alone. ...
Time spent in nature is restorative for both our physical and mental health. Awe is frequently evoked by nature experiences and increasingly linked to pro-environmental behaviours. Yet, research into awe’s influence on environmental managers specifically is sparse. Through a survey-based empirical study, we examined water professionals’ experiences in nature, frequency and characteristics of their nature-based awe experiences (e.g., awe experiences during professional vs. personal hours; ranking of awe-inspiring nature images), and awe’s influence on their workplace decision-making. Participants indicated greatest awe related to water-based scenes and activities. Related to professional decisions, participants reported nature-based awe most influenced their decisions around protecting the natural environment. Results underscored the significance of nature-centric awe in shaping water professionals' decisions. By recognizing the profound influence of nature-based awe on individuals, particularly within professional contexts, this study contributes to a broader understanding of how awe-inspiring experiences can promote environmental stewardship in contemporary society.
... One task was a beauty comparison, which required participants to compare the level of moral beauty of two scene drawings containing moral acts or the level of facial beauty of two face photos. The contents of the scene drawings depicted various levels of ''moral beauty'' (Fig. 1a), a stimulus description which is consistent with many previous studies (Keltner and Haidt 2003;Diessner et al. 2006Diessner et al. , 2008Diessner et al. , 2013Takahashi et al. 2008;Wang et al. 2015). The other task was a physical size comparison, which required participants to compare the size of two scene drawings or two face photos. ...
... In the beauty-comparison task, the comparisons of moral beauty and facial beauty belonged to the same domain (i.e., beauty) but were different types of natural comparisons (i.e., the moral-beauty comparison was internal, while the facial-beauty comparison was external). Previous studies found that moral beauty is more complex and abstract (Haidt 2007;Diessner et al. 2006;Keltner and Haidt 2003) and depends on more internal cognitive processes (Wang et al. 2015), such as understanding the minds of others (Avram et al. 2013), while facial beauty mainly depends on external perceptual features (Chatterjee et al. 2009;Iaria et al. 2008;Bzdok et al. 2011). Thus, it is reasonable for us to conclude that classifications of moral beauty are representative of internal comparisons while classifications of facial beauty are representative of external comparison. ...
... A possible explanation is that the putamen is related to the physiological component of processing beautiful faces (Wang et al. 2015). Additionally, moral beauty mainly refers to high-level social need but not physiological need (Haidt 2003;Haidt et al. 2004;Keltner and Haidt 2003). Thus, compared with moral beauty comparisons, greater activity in the putamen was found for facial beauty comparisons in the present study. ...
Many previous studies have suggested that various comparisons rely on the same cognitive and neural mechanisms. However, little attention has been paid to exploring the commonalities and differences between the internal comparison based on concepts or rules and the external comparison based on perception. In the present experiment, moral beauty comparison and facial beauty comparison were selected as the representatives of internal comparison and external comparison, respectively. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to record brain activity while participants compared the level of moral beauty of two scene drawings containing moral acts or the level of facial beauty of two face photos. In addition, a physical size comparison task with the same stimuli as the beauty comparison was included. We observed that both the internal moral beauty comparison and external facial beauty comparison obeyed a typical distance effect and this behavioral effect recruited a common frontoparietal network involved in comparisons of simple physical magnitudes such as size. In addition, compared to external facial beauty comparison, internal moral beauty comparison induced greater activity in more advanced and complex cortical regions, such as the bilateral middle temporal gyrus and middle occipital gyrus, but weaker activity in the putamen, a subcortical region. Our results provide novel neural evidence for the comparative process and suggest that different comparisons may rely on both common cognitive processes as well as distinct and specific cognitive components.
... Awe is an emotion elicited by stimuli that are vast, or beyond one's current perceptual frame of reference 19 . This vastness can be physical, conceptual, or semantic, and requires that extant knowledge structures be accommodated to make sense of what is being perceived 19 . ...
... Awe is an emotion elicited by stimuli that are vast, or beyond one's current perceptual frame of reference 19 . This vastness can be physical, conceptual, or semantic, and requires that extant knowledge structures be accommodated to make sense of what is being perceived 19 . Awe is often experienced through encounters with other people's courage and kindness, nature, collective gatherings, art, religious and/or spiritual practices, epiphanies, birth and death 1,[19][20][21][22] . ...
... This vastness can be physical, conceptual, or semantic, and requires that extant knowledge structures be accommodated to make sense of what is being perceived 19 . Awe is often experienced through encounters with other people's courage and kindness, nature, collective gatherings, art, religious and/or spiritual practices, epiphanies, birth and death 1,[19][20][21][22] . ...
Emerging evidence suggests that experiences of awe benefit health and well-being. The present investigation examined the efficacy of an awe intervention to improve the psychological health—stress, anxiety, depression, and well-being—of patients living with long COVID. The awe intervention, a Randomized-controlled Clinical Trial, was delivered in synchronous online sessions to patients, across the United States (in April 2023), who met the criteria for long COVID. Results revealed significant improvements in psychological health for those in the awe intervention (N = 30), compared to the control group (N = 38): including decreased stress, decreased depression symptoms, and increased well-being. There were no significant differences between groups in anxiety symptoms. Effect sizes ranged from medium to large (d = 0.78–0.96), demonstrating the robustness of these findings. This work is the first to document that awe can have salutary effects on psychological health, such as reducing symptoms of depression. These findings suggest that a brief awe intervention can improve psychological health in people dealing with chronic stress and physical ailments, as in the case of long COVID.
Trial registration. The trial is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT05676008, 09/01/2023).
... Given the wide-ranging benefits of prosociality on the quality of life, there has been a range of research about developing interventions to encourage prosocial behavior [5,17,42,54]. Specifically, studies in psychology have designed interventions to improve social well-being and enhance prosocial behavior [39,44,46,58]. These interventions often aim to promote or instill values that contribute to well-being and motivate prosocial behavior. ...
... Users watched a short, relaxing video of nature accompanied by calming music, which is designed to evoke the emotion of awe. Awe emotion has been characterized by two central themes: "vastness" and "accommodation" [44]. Vastness refers to experiences significantly larger than the self, whether in terms of physical size, social status, or symbolic magnitude, while accommodation is the process of adjusting mental frameworks to comprehend such overwhelming experiences. ...
... On the other hand, the selective impact of Dwell in Awe on universal prosociality (but not on interpersonal prosociality), offers an interesting insight. Awe has been shown to expand individuals' perceptions of their place and foster a sense of connectedness to things that are larger than oneself [44,87]. In our study, this broader connection may encourage behaviors that benefit society or the environment as a whole (which is aligned with universal prosociality), rather than directly enhancing interpersonal interactions (which is closer to interpersonal prosociality). ...
Prosociality has been well-documented to positively impact mental, social, and physical well-being. However, existing studies of interventions for promoting prosociality have limitations such as small sample sizes or unclear benchmarks. To address this gap, we conducted a global-scale well-being intervention deployment study, BIG JOY, with more than 18,000 participants from 172 countries and regions. The week-long BIG JOY intervention consists of seven daily micro-acts (i.e., brief actions that require minimal effort), each adapted from validated positive psychology interventions. The analyses of large-scale intervention data reveal unique insights into the impact of well-being micro-acts across diverse populations, patterns of responses, effectiveness of specific micro-acts and their nuanced impacts across different populations, linkages between improvements in prosociality and in well-being, as well as the potential for machine learning to predict changes in prosociality. This study offers valuable insights into a set of design guidelines for future well-being and prosociality interventions. We envision our work as a stepping stone towards future large-scale prosociality interventions that foster a more unified and compassionate world.
... Awe is predominantly a positive emotion that arises when individuals are confronted with something grand not immediately understood, which provokes a need to adjust mental structure and perceived vastness vis-à-vis the self (Keltner & Haidt, 2003;Shiota et al., 2007). A wide range of stimuli could elicit awe, such as natural wonders, inspiring leaders, paranormal phenomena, and human artifacts. ...
... As posited by Keltner and Haidt (2003), awe exists in the "upper reaches of pleasure and on the boundary of fear". This denotes that the experience of awe varies from triggering stimuli. ...
... Awe is a predominantly positive emotion and accompanied by multiple emotions (Jiang & Sedikides, 2022;Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Thus, it is plausible that the effect of awe on climate change perception is driven by the general positivity of awe, or the emotions concurrently emerging with awe. ...
Though research on climate change perception has persisted for several decades, its link with specific relevant emotions has rarely been investigated. To bridge this gap, three studies were conducted to explore the effect of awe on climate change perception as well as the role of allo-inclusive identity and belief in oneness. The results revealed that feelings of positive and negative awe invigorated climate change perception with the former generated a larger effect. Moreover, high levels of positive and negative awe were predictive of enhanced climate change perception through strengthened allo-inclusive identity. And positive awe’ effect on allo-inclusive identity was larger among individuals who had a stronger belief in oneness. These effects were not driven by the general positivity of awe, or the emotions concurrently emerging with awe. Overall, our findings contribute to theoretical insights into climate change perception and have practical implications for interventions to foster climate change perception. We conclude with prospects on how to advance the study of awe-climate change perception.
... As mentioned above, awe involves perceiving vastness and adjusting one's mental structures to fit experiences that exceed expectation (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). This feeling can be triggered by various stimuli, whether tangiblesuch as natural wonders or great individuals -or abstract, like religion, music, or grand ideas (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). ...
... As mentioned above, awe involves perceiving vastness and adjusting one's mental structures to fit experiences that exceed expectation (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). This feeling can be triggered by various stimuli, whether tangiblesuch as natural wonders or great individuals -or abstract, like religion, music, or grand ideas (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). These stimuli shape the complex nature of awe, which often blends positive and negative feelings (Valdesolo & Graham, 2014). ...
... Positive awe emerges from uplifting encounters, such as natural wonders or artistic achievements, and is often accompanied by positive emotions like amusement, appreciation, gratitude, and joy. This form of awe is associated with self-transcendence and social connection (Keltner & Haidt, 2003;Gordon et al., 2017). Conversely, negative awe is elicited by threatening or uncontrollable events, such as natural disasters, and is typically characterized by emotions of fear, anxiety, and nervousness (Chaudhury et al., 2022;Gordon et al., 2017). ...
Awe is often experienced as a spiritual emotion. We aim to clarify how and when awe contributes to benevolence, a prosocial orientation. Across five studies (N = 1,024), we investigated how awe enhances connecting to others, in part, via nature connectedness. Results revealed a positive indirect effect of awe on benevolence (Study 1) through nature connectedness (Study 2–4), which overweighted beyond joy (Study 3 and 4), self-smallness and authentic-self pursuit (Study 4). Notably, when awe is threat-based, the main effect on benevolence is nonsignificant, due to awe contributing to benevolence, but co-occurring fear hindering it (Study 5). Overall, our studies underscore the mediating role of nature connectedness in explaining how awe facilitates benevolence, offering new insight into awe’s prosocial effects, and furnishing empirical support for enhancing prosocial behavior through the interplay between the natural environment and social realm.
... Dessa känslor är inte bara emotionella upplevelser, utan fungerar som viktiga verktyg för att styra och stödja våra kognitiva processer, exempelvis genom att fokusera vår uppmärksamhet och motivera till reflektion och utforskning (Brady, 2009;Hookway, 2016). På så sätt kan epistemiska känslor motivera individer att aktivt söka efter kunskap och förståelse, vilket i sin tur påverkar deras förmåga att skapa mening, hantera komplexitet och bidra till att forma individens sätt att förstå och värdera kunskap (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Till exempel klassas nyfikenhet som en epistemisk känsla eftersom den kan fungera som drivkraft för att söka ny kunskap. ...
... Att förundras över något kan leda till en önskan att få veta mer, och ett engagemang i att skaffa sig mer kunskap, men kan också leda till en stillsam omvälvande inre förändring av en persons världsbild. Den föreslagna pedagogiska potentialen i samband med naturvetenskapsundervisning har kopplats till att känslan av förundran kan motivera elever att engagera sig i lärprocessen och de naturvetenskapliga arbetsformerna och att förundran öppnar upp för känslomässig anknytning till naturen och nya perspektiv på världen, (Candiotto, 2019;Gottlieb m.fl., 2018;Hadzigeorgiou & Schulz, 2014;Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Inom den utbildningsvetenskapliga litteraturen går det att hitta ett flertal teoretiskt grundade förslag på upplägg som gör plats för elevers förundran (Trotman, 2014;Wolbert & Schinkel, 2021). ...
... I likhet med Gail Jones och medförfattare (2022) inkluderar vi tre perspektiv i vår förståelse av epistemiska känslor: (1) att epistemiska känslor generellt har en stor påverkan på elevers meningsskapande och prestationer (Candiotto, 2019;Paulson m.fl., 2021;Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2014;Valdesolo m.fl., 2017), (2) att epistemiska känslor triggar kognitiva processer såsom frågor, fördjupad informationssökning och kritiskt tänkande och därmed inspirerar till lärande genom utforskande och upptäckande av vår fysiska omvärld (Gottlieb m.fl., 2018;Hadzigeorgiou, 2012;Keltner & Haidt, 2003;Valdesolo m.fl., 2017) och (3) att förundran, som särskilt lyfts fram som en viktig drivkraft inom naturvetenskaplig verksamhet, samspelar med andra epistemiska känslor och personliga faktorer, vilket påverkar hur förundran uttrycks och skapar engagemang och förståelse (Anderson m.fl., 2020;Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2014). Genom att undersöka hur epistemiska känslor samspelar med elevers lärande i naturvetenskap vill vi bidra med nya insikter om hur dessa känslor kan användas som pedagogiska verktyg för att stärka elevers upplevelser av och lärande i naturvetenskap. ...
Denna artikel bygger på resultat från ett samverkansprojekt där en högstadielärare och forskare gemensamt genomförde formativa interventioner för att undersöka epistemiska känslor – särskilt förundran – som pedagogiskt verktyg i undervisning om evolutionära processer. Förundran beskrivs ofta som en känsla med stor potential att stärka elevers engagemang och förståelse av naturvetenskap. Trots detta finns det få empiriska studier som har undersökt fenomenet i autentiska klassrumssammanhang. I denna studie analyserades ljud- och videoinspelningar av en lektion som utformats för att främja upplevelser av förundran. Genom kvalitativ innehållsanalys i kombination med multimodal interaktionsanalys identifierades hur elever skapade mening om, och uttryckte känslor i relation till undervisningens innehåll. Resultaten visar att eleverna resonerade mer djupgående kring begreppen konkurrens, variation och anpassning – processer som de även visat känslomässigt engagemang inför. Studien belyser den pedagogiska potentialen i att skapa utrymme för epistemiska känslor i undervisning om komplexa naturvetenskapliga processer. To create a sense of evolution – lower secondary school students' epistemic emotions and meaning-making about natural selection This study is based on a collaborative project in which a lower secondary science teacher and researchers carried out formative interventions to explore epistemic emotions—particularly wonder—as a pedagogical tool in teaching evolutionary processes. Wonder is frequently highlighted as an emotion with strong potential to enhance students’ engagement in and understanding of science. However, few empirical studies have examined this phenomenon in authentic classroom settings. By using qualitative content analysis combined with multimodal interaction analysis of an audio- and video-recorded lesson designed for wonder, the study identified how students made meaning of and expressed emotions in relation to the subject matter. The results show that students engaged in more in-depth reasoning around the concepts of competition, variation, and adaptation—processes that also evoked emotional engagement. The study highlights the pedagogical potential of intentionally creating space for epistemic emotions in the teaching of complex scientific processes.
... Awe is a complex, ambiguous, and relatively rare emotion that is bound up with both excitement and fear (Gordon et al., 2017;Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Experiencing this emotion may alter individuals' general worldview and self-concept, thus provoking a transformative experience (Stepanova et al., 2019;Yaden et al., 2016). ...
... More centrally, awe has often been explored through methods that put the individual in front of sizable and imposing stimuli. Although from the outset several researchers have proposed that awe can not only be elicited by the literal size of the stimuli, but also by the cognitive expansion that may arise from their complexity (Anderson et al., 2019;Gordon et al., 2017;Keltner & Haidt, 2003), this view has never been truly addressed. In fact, individuals who are confronted with awe in current methods often seem rather passive in front of great stimuli which aim at triggering this emotion (Keltner & Haidt, 2003;Piff et al., 2015;Shiota et al., 2007). ...
... Although from the outset several researchers have proposed that awe can not only be elicited by the literal size of the stimuli, but also by the cognitive expansion that may arise from their complexity (Anderson et al., 2019;Gordon et al., 2017;Keltner & Haidt, 2003), this view has never been truly addressed. In fact, individuals who are confronted with awe in current methods often seem rather passive in front of great stimuli which aim at triggering this emotion (Keltner & Haidt, 2003;Piff et al., 2015;Shiota et al., 2007). Followingly, by implying that stimuli greater than oneself elicit awe in a rather passive manner, the prior research has only explored a form of awe that puts the individual into a stance of passive contemplation, a situation which we label "Experienced Awe". ...
Awe is an ambiguous emotion that has previously been addressed as a factor that may contribute to creativity, and whose introduction into organizations can be valuable. Yet, the form of awe that has been proposed to date has restricted the value of creativity to that of a passively experienced phenomenon, or in other words, a force that the individual is subject to. The assumption that creativity may be uniquely and passively fostered by an external force may have detrimental effects in organizations. Indeed, this conceptualization endorses the view that individuals are subject to their environment rather than being action generators, as is valued by organizations. However, the conceptualization of an active and experimentation-based form of awe may reverse this view and complement the relationship between awe and creativity in organizations. The theory set out in this paper is multi-layered. At its surface, we propose a phenomenon based on meaningful problem construction and experimentation which may intrinsically motivate individuals to be more actively creative in organizations. This phenomenon is termed “Experimented Awe”. In more depth, the theory proposes four conditions that may allow the promotion of this phenomenon in organizations, and three challenges that organizations may encounter. Based on the Deleuzian philosophy, we propose that what seemed to have been accepted as a single form of awe in relation to creativity seems, in fact, to be a phenomenon manifesting via two different, complex, and complementary paths contributing to organizational creativity. Experimented Awe contributes to novel forms of Ilinx-based play (vertigo) which can encourage employees to take more time to construct meaningful problems, experiment, and accept failure related to the creative process.
... People can be said to experience a sense of vastness when they observe something that they perceive as overwhelmingly bigger than themselves, either physically (e.g., the Grand Canyon) or conceptually (e.g., life-altering events such as childbirth). This vast amount of new information can defy certain aspects of people's current worldview, prompting a need to accommodate by creating new schemas or revising their existing schemas (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). A more recent framework of awe has also included other characteristics of the construct such as slowed time perception, physical sensations (e.g., goosebumps, jaw dropping, etc.), connectedness, and selfdiminishment . ...
... Some characteristics of awe, such as self-diminishment and connectedness, are also considered common mechanisms of awe (Piff et al., 2015;Bai et al., 2017). Awe is also defined as a mixed-valence emotion because awe experiences simultaneously elicit both positive and negative affect, albeit to different extents depending on the nature of the experience (Keltner & Haidt, 2003;Gordon et al., 2017). Awe is most commonly elicited by nature (e.g., natural disasters and perceptually vast landscapes; Graziosi & Yaden, 2019;Yaden et al., 2019). ...
... This flavor of awe is commonly referred to as negative nature awe. On the other hand, other awe experiences elicited by nature can be predominately flavored by positive feelings of aesthetic pleasure elicited by biophilia (i.e., the innate desire of humans to be connected to nature; Keltner & Haidt, 2003;Godon et al., 2017). This flavor of awe is commonly referred to as positive nature awe. ...
Having a self-compassionate attitude is linked to positive psychological functioning, making it important to identify experiences that promote self-compassion. Several self-transcendent experiences and emotions (e.g., mindfulness), have been shown to predict self-compassion. As awe is considered a self-transcendent emotion, we examined awe as a potential elicitor of self-compassion. This investigation aligns with recent and rapidly growing interest in awe’s intrapersonal consequences. In the present work, we conducted three studies to investigate the relationship between dispositional (Study 1), and experimentally-induced (Study 2 and 3) awe and self-compassion. A correlational relationship between awe proneness and trait self-compassion was observed in Study 1 (N = 473), and awe proneness uniquely predicted self-compassion over and above pride, compassion, and amusement. However, Studies 2 (N = 483) and 3 (N = 377) did not find that reflecting on awe experiences had a causal impact on self-compassion. Instead, we observed opposing indirect effects via awe’s self-transcendent mechanisms–such that awe simultaneously boosted feelings of self-diminishment, which negatively predicted self-compassion (Studies 2 & 3), and boosted feelings of connectedness, which positively predicted self-compassion (Study 3). The indirect effect of awe on self-compassion via self-diminishment generalized to different ‘flavors’ of awe (positive and negative nature) and was distinct from a joy control condition (Study 2). This work highlights complexities surrounding the relationship between awe and self-compassion, which aligns with past work on intrapersonal consequences of awe (e.g., meaning), but is somewhat at odds with the literature on other self-transcendent experiences and emotions (e.g., mindfulness) which directly promote self-compassion.
... (Gavanas 2008, 129) The paradoxical in-betweeness of these moments-fleeting sensations of both losing control yet also finding control-can result in sensations of exstasis, of the dancer losing a sense of him or herself as a separate entity, of becoming part of or identifying strongly with something outside and beyond, yet also including, themselves. (Malbon 2002, 144) In step, collective effervescence is therefore often also associated with the experience of awe (Keltner and Haidt, 2003;Rimé and Páez, 2023). Typically, as the agent moves from an individualized experience towards the collective experience, they also undergo an experience of being connected to something vast or immense, which subsequently makes them feel small or minusculeawe (inside and outside of collective effervescence) is connected to a diminished sense of self (Bai et al., 2017). ...
... Another overarching takeaway from theoretical and empirical work on collective effervescence is that the phenomenon ultimately requires repeated recursive interaction. At a glance, it might seem obvious that collective effervescence requires interaction, but we must be careful not to lump collective effervescence in with other constructs, such as awe or aesthetic experience of the sublime, which do not necessarily require human interaction (Nanay, 2016;Keltner and Haidt, 2003;Monroy and Keltner, 2023). Collective effervescence is not awe since awe can be experienced in isolation. ...
Collective effervescence is a group experience of intense collective affect. It includes feelings of being "swept away" and "becoming one with the crowd" and often a sensation of "awe" and being in touch with the sacred. Empirical research demonstrates that collective effervescence is connected to several short-and long-term psychological and physical benefits. The growing field of 4E cognition (enactive, embodied, embedded, and extended) takes cognition to be inherently social and affective. Yet surprisingly, despite the social, embodied, dynamic, and affective nature of collective effervescence, there is currently no 4E account of collective effervescence. I integrate the empirical literature on collective effervescence into 4E cognition. I argue that whenever there are high degrees of self-organizing bodily activity in a human crowd under the proper boundary conditions, there is collective effervescence. Collective effervescence is the experience of undergoing high degrees of self-organization in a crowd. Taking a 4E dynamic systems approach to collective effervescence demystifies the phenomenon and opens it up for potential use in public policy and therapy.
... Awe is a mixed emotion evoked by things bigger than oneself, and needs to modify existing schemas to fit new circumstances (Chirico & Yaden, 2018;Keltner & Haidt, 2003). It can be felt when facing magnificent natural scenery or confronting an admirable figure (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). ...
... Awe is a mixed emotion evoked by things bigger than oneself, and needs to modify existing schemas to fit new circumstances (Chirico & Yaden, 2018;Keltner & Haidt, 2003). It can be felt when facing magnificent natural scenery or confronting an admirable figure (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). From the perspective of functionalism, awe may initially arise from one's feelings about their shelter (Chirico & Yaden, 2018). ...
This study aimed to verify the effect of positive awe and explore the effect of threatening awe on promoting pro-environmental behavior, as well as examine the role of connection to nature in this relationship. An online experiment (Experiment 1) and a laboratory experiment (Experiment 2) were conducted in two different samples to replicate the results. The results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that both positive and threatening awe promoted participants’ willingness to pay a premium for ecotourism, and the connection to nature played mediating roles in these processes. The results of Experiment 2 demonstrated that positive awe improved participants’ intention to conduct a series of pro-environmental behaviors, and the connection to nature played a mediating role, while threatening awe did not have this effect. These findings suggest that positive awe can encourage people to conduct more pro-environmental behaviors, while threatening awe can encourage pro-environmental behaviors in the form of financial support, and the feeling of connection to nature is one of the psychological mechanisms in these processes. The results of the present research not only enrich the literature related to both awe and pro-environmental behavior, but also provide managerial implications for policy makers and ecotourism operators.
... The more predictive lenses of awe and mysticism differ from dissociation in that they have more positive connotations and have both been linked to well-being outside of drug studies. 37,41 Beyond questions of conceptualisation and measurement, ketamine's perceptual effects may also differ significantly between studies depending on their extra-pharmacological contexts. MUSIK trial participants were randomised to receive music or matched non-music psychological support, but all received their ketamine treatments in a highly supportive context intended to facilitate therapeutic experiences. ...
Background
Ketamine exerts potent but transient antidepressant effects in treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Combinations of ketamine and psychotherapy have attracted interest, but no trial has investigated a psychedelic model of ketamine–psychotherapy for TRD to our knowledge.
Aims
This secondary analysis of a randomised clinical trial (RCT) explores the therapeutic effects and experiential mechanisms of the Montreal Model of ketamine–psychotherapy for TRD, with or without music.
Method
A two-centre, single-blinded, RCT conducted in Montreal, Canada, between January 2021 and August 2022 (NCT04701866). Participants received ketamine–psychotherapy for TRD – six subanaesthetic infusions over 4 weeks and psychological support – with either music or matched non-music support during ketamine doses, as per random group assignments. The primary therapeutic outcome was the Montgomery–Åsberg Depression Rating Scale, assessed by blinded raters. Psychedelic-like experiences, evaluated by the Mystical Experience Questionnaire and Emotional Breakthrough Inventory, and their session-by-session relationships with depression were explored with multilevel, time-lagged covariate models with autoregressive residuals.
Results
Thirty-two participants with severe and highly comorbid TRD, including high rates of personality disorder and suicidality, received 181 ketamine infusions. Therapeutic outcomes and psychedelic experiences did not differ between music ( n = 15) and non-music ( n = 17) interventions. Both groups experienced significant reductions in clinician-rated and self-reported depression ( d = 1.2 and d = 0.87, respectively; p < 0.001), anxiety ( d = 0.8, p < 0.001) and suicidality ( d = 0.4, p < 0.05) at 4 weeks, fully maintained at 8-week follow-up. Ketamine experiences were highly emotional and mystical. Converging analyses supported mystical-like ketamine experiences as mechanisms of its antidepressant effects.
Conclusions
This trial found large and notably sustained benefits of ketamine–psychotherapy for severe TRD, with or without music, and psychedelic experiences of comparable intensity to those observed with psilocybin. Mystical-like experiences may particularly contribute to ketamine’s immediate and persistent psychiatric benefits.
... In this regard, Chu & Chow (2019) propose that it is necessary to guarantee the following conditions in order to develop emotional management in a person: a) Be aware of the relation between emotion, cognition, and behavior, recognizing that there is a direct relation between the emergence of one or more emotions, and that these take place in a cognitive process which is in turn expressed in physical and verbal behavior (Ruvalcaba et al., 2017). b) Adequately expressing emotions in an honest, authentic, and respectful way (Keltner & Haidt, 2017). It is important to be able to recognize and understand emotions and then find ways to express them which are appropriate for the situation and the person with which one is interacting (Tracy & Randles, 2011;Barrett, 2017). ...
Background: Emotions self-regulation is an important field of study in psychology today since it helps people take better decision in their daily life. In the context of education, an emotional self-regulation will help students reach a positive learning environment in their development in society and as students This study focuses on emotional management through the analysis of the abilities to recognize and express emotions. The study aims to explore the relation between emotional self-regulation and socioemotional wellbeing in secondary education students. Methods: A non-experimental design was carried out with a cross-sectional modality in August 2024. It has a quantitative, exploratory, and descriptive approach seeking to describe the phenomenon in its context. The instrument applied was the BarOn EQI Questionnaire (Emotional Quotient Inventory) to measure emotional intelligence in adolescents and adults and evaluate five principal sub-components with subscales. Results: The study found positive correlations between emotional wellbeing dimensions, including the intrapersonal component (CIA) and stress management (CME), with the latter being a key predictive variable. Conclusions: According to the results, the need to implement pedagogical strategies for developing socioemotional skills in students is imperative, considering aspects as the institutional context and gender differences. In the same vein, it is necessary to strengthening stress management in both genders, adapted to the characteristics of each group for a better socioemotional wellbeing. Future research should aim at including longitudinal focus and qualitative data to enrich the comprehension of emotional dynamics in school contexts, exploring this topic in different cultural environments under local educational policies.
... Workshops and community groups focused on positive thinking can provide the necessary support and reinforcement for individuals to shift towards more optimistic and less self-centered patterns of thought. Moreover, these practices are not just solitary; they can be communal, involving family, community, or spiritual groups, which further enhances their impact by creating supportive networks that encourage and reinforce egoless and positive attitudes (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). For instance, community-based programs that encourage members to bless each other and share their experiences of divine surrender can strengthen social bonds and foster a supportive environment conducive to personal and collective well-being. ...
Recent developments in positive psychology and spiritual practices suggest a nuanced pathway to enhancing psychological well-being through the cultivation of mindfulness, interoception, and balanced dual emotions. This article explores the conceptual progression from mindfulness to interoception, further leading to an understanding of internal values and the strategic balancing of the dual emotions of silence and happiness. Mindfulness, defined as the non-judgmental focus on the present moment. Interoception, or the awareness of internal body sensations, complements mindfulness by enhancing self-regulation. The integration of silence and happiness as dual emotions contributes to mental clarity which is crucial for reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression. Happiness, associated with positive social interactions and compassion, plays a critical role in the promotion of relational well-being. By maintaining a balance between these emotions, individuals may experience enhanced well-being through improved hormonal balance and psychological resilience. Supported by spiritual practices that emphasize egolessness and contentment, this model proposes that mindfulness, interoception, and dual emotion management can synergistically foster a health-promoting environment, both psychologically and physiologically. This research involving development of Heal-thy Life Spiritual Psychology Assessment Scale (HLSPAS) aims to synthesize these elements into a coherent model that contributes to the broader understanding of psychological well-being, drawing from spiritual experience and practice in these areas.
... While the concept of the sublime has been much discussed in philosophical aesthetics, pioneered by Burke and Kant, the concept of awe has not been the subject of philosophical scrutiny until recently (Kristjánsson 2017). In contrast, there have been many pieces of psychological research on awe in the last 20 years, starting from the excellent work of Keltner and Haidt (2003), whereas the sublime has rarely been the subject of psychological research. To bridge this gap, some have recently attempted to link philosophical analyses of the sublime with psychological studies on awe (Arcangeli et al. 2020;Arcangeli & Dokic 2021;Clewis 2021). ...
Does consciousness have non-instrumental aesthetic value? This paper answers this question affirmatively by arguing that consciousness is sublime. The argument consists of three premises. (1) An awe experience of an object provides prima facie justification to believe that the object is sublime. (2) I have an awe experience about consciousness through introspecting three features of consciousness, namely the mystery of consciousness, the connection between consciousness and well-being, and the phenomenological complexity of consciousness. (3) There is no good defeater of the justificatory force of my feeling of awe for the sublimity of consciousness. To defend the third premise, I argue against two potential defeaters: The first is that most people do not regard consciousness as sublime. The second is that there does not seem to be physical properties that can ground the sublimity of consciousness. I conclude by emphasizing an important ethical implication of the thesis that consciousness is sublime, namely that it explains why even conscious subjects who cannot have valenced experiences deserve moral consideration.
... Mientras que otras virtudes intelectuales como el pensamiento crítico, el pensamiento creativo, la curiosidad o la prudencia han recibido gran atención por parte de los investigadores, el asombro ha sido curiosamente relegado del ámbito educativo (Kristjánsson, 2018). Después de recibir la atención de los psicólogos como una emoción positiva (Keltner & Haidt, 2003), ha sido reivindicada recientemente por los educadores como una forma de facilitar el desarrollo personal y la enseñanza (Egan, Cant & Judson, 2014;Fuentes, 2021;Kristjánsson, 2018Kristjánsson, y 2020L'Ecuyer, 2012L'Ecuyer, y 2014Pedersen, 2019;Schinkel, 2020). ...
This article proposes the emotion of wonder as a key pedagogical strategy to revitalise the teaching of contemporary history at university level, especially in disciplines such as International Relations, Journalism, Political Science and other related degrees. In a context in which history subjects have seen a decline in their academic weight, it is suggested that wonder can be a powerful tool to rekindle interest in the subject, facilitating not only a deeper understanding of historical processes, but also their connection to the political and social challenges of the present. Through this approach, students are not only expected to acquire knowledge, but also to develop essential critical skills, such as reflective analysis, intellectual curiosity and the ability to contextualise historical events in a contemporary framework. The article proposes three key methods for articulating the teaching of history: historical narrative, autobiography and the history of ideas, adapted to current political and social issues. In this way, a dynamic history is proposed that invites students to explore the past with an active vision that is relevant to the challenges of the present.
... Based on different attributions of pride, scholars distinguish between the positive and negative aspects of pride as two distinct dimensions. Lastly, people experience awe when they encounter something that significantly exceeds their current knowledge and existing mental structures (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). As a typical self-transcendent emotion, awe can extend an individual's perception of time, foster a sense of relatively abundant time, and inspire a greater love of life, which results in high levels of life satisfaction (Rudd et al., 2012). ...
This study examined the diverse factors influencing green consumption behavior among Chinese consumers through a comprehensive, data-driven approach that integrated multiple machine learning models, including Gaussian naïve Bayes, K-nearest neighbor, multilayer perceptron, and XGBoost models. By analyzing emotional, product-related, cultural, social, and personal dimensions, this research identified key determinants that shape consumer engagement in sustainable consumption. Unlike conventional studies that rely on linear models or survey-based analyses, this study leveraged machine learning to uncover complex, nonlinear interactions between these factors. The findings reveal that emotional drivers, particularly guilt and pride, play a pivotal role in green consumption decisions, while cultural and product-related factors also exhibit significant influence. This study contributes methodologically by employing a multidimensional, multilevel analytical framework, enhancing the robustness of the findings. Furthermore, the results underscore the importance of policy and marketing strategies that effectively target emotional and social influences to cultivate a sustainable consumer culture. These insights provide actionable recommendations for policymakers and businesses seeking to promote green consumption and advance global sustainability efforts.
... Thus, consumers (via traditional advertising ploys and sponsorshipfocused strategies) and employees (via hiring materials and company publications) who are made aware of businesses, industries, and governments focusing on agendas aimed at climate change control will experience the 'warm glow' associated with positive affect directed at such entities (Hartmann et al., 2023). Advertising may also capitalize on awe-related ad appeals (e.g., perceived vastness, the supernatural, need for accommodation, threat, beauty) (Keltner & Haidt, 2003), as consumers who feel awe are more likely to engage in proenvironmental consumption behaviors (Kaplan et al., 2024). These findings support the idea that emotional responses resulting from social exchanges influence social relations (Sierra & McQuitty, 2005). ...
Using the futures studies perspective, which centers on predicting probable, preferable, and possible futures, this qualitative research investigates how marketing is positioned to help combat climate change. Collecting data digitally and face-to-face, consumers were questioned about their perceptions and forecasts of climate change. Using grounded theory, responses were analyzed until thematic saturation was attained, revealing consumers’ immediate probable and preferred future climate change perspectives. Consumer voices espouse that individual action is not enough to alter the climate change trajectory. Rather, a social contract-grounded, shared responsibility model, with humanity's best interest in mind, is required to address climate change at three marketing-related levels: macro (government), meso (corporate), and micro (consumer). Leaning on the data, which convey participants’ sustainable (eco-friendly) proclivities, theoretical and practical implications are offered.
... Furthermore, the vastness and abundance of nature portrayed in Haiku may evoke self-transcendent emotions in readers such as a feeling of appreciation and "gratitude for serenity" (Kuranaga and Higuchi 2013;Kato and Hitsuwari 2024). This connection may evoke an awareness of oneself as part of the greater natural world and inspires awe (Keltner and Haidt 2003), potentially heightening emotional engagement and influencing creativity assessments of Haiku. ...
Understanding how creativity is judged in brief, structured texts is essential for exploring aesthetic and emotional engagement in minimalist art forms. Haiku and Senryu, two concise poetic genres, provide a unique lens to investigate how creativity is perceived under constraints of brevity. This study examines how readers' subjective experiences of poems, their personality traits, and the structure of their semantic memory networks influence creativity judgments. Fifty‐one participants evaluated 140 English‐language poems (70 Haiku and 70 Senryu) and 70 nonpoetic control texts in a laboratory experiment. Participants rated each stimulus on aesthetic appeal, vivid imagery, emotionality, originality, and overall creativity. They also completed seven personality assessments, and their semantic memory networks were estimated by a verbal fluency task. We found originality to be the strongest predictor of creativity in both poetic genres. However, the influence of aesthetic appeal and emotionality varied: Haiku balanced aesthetic beauty and emotional resonance, while Senryu prioritized emotional resonance. Personality traits, including the vividness of visual and auditory imagery, significantly influenced creativity judgments. Participants who favored Haiku exhibited more efficient and flexible semantic memory networks. This study provides novel insights into how creativity is evaluated in constrained poetic forms, offering broader implications for creativity in structured art.
... Penelitian Piff et al.(2015) kemampuan broaden and build ini ditemukan dalam salah satu emosi positif yaitu awe. Awe merupakan respons emosional yang melibatkan perasaan kagum, takjub, apresiasi, dan admirasi (Keltner & Haidt, 2003;Piff et al., 2015). Berdasar hasil penelitian Shiota et al. (2021), ditemukan bahwa awe dapat memusatkan perhatian seseorang pada keadaan "here and now". ...
Keberhasilan untuk mengembangkan perilaku prososial pada remaja telah dikaitkan dengan peningkatan self-esteem, prestasi akademik, sense of happiness, dan hubungan sosial berkualitas di saat dewasa. Seiring berkembangnya zaman perilaku prososial pada remaja tidak meningkat namun cenderung menurun. The broaden and build theory menyatakan bahwa emosi positif mampu untuk memperluas perhatian individu termasuk kepada lingkungan sekitar yang diteorikan dapat meningkatkan perilaku prososial. Salah satu emosi positif yang memiliki kemampuan ini adalah awe, khususnya yang dipicu oleh objek seni. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui hubungan antara art-induced awe dengan perilaku prososial remaja di Indonesia. Penelitian ini melibatkan 397 remaja dengan 373 data yang sesuai karakteristik untuk diolah menggunakan non-probability sampling. Alat ukur yang digunakan dalam penelitian untuk mengukur variabel Art-Induced Awe yaitu The Dispositional Positive Emotions Scale (DPS-Awe) yang telah diadaptasi oleh peneliti. Adapun alat ukur yang digunakan untuk mengukur variabel perilaku prososial yaitu skala perilaku prososial yang diadaptasi oleh Fakultas Psikologi Universitas Tarumanagara. Uji korelasi pada penelitian ini menggunakan Spearman rho dan didapatkan hasil r=:0,306 dan p <0.05. Dapat disimpulkan bahwa terdapat hubungan signifikan yang positif antara art-induced awe dengan perilaku prososial pada remaja di Indonesia.
This chapter examines the fundamental role of aesthetic appreciation, highlighting its dual capacity to enhance both personal and societal well-being across cultures. Defined as a core emotional experience within the spectrum of human emotions, aesthetic appreciation involves a nuanced cognitive and emotional engagement with beauty in art, nature, and other culturally valued forms, extending beyond mere personal pleasure. The chapter explores how aesthetic experiences contribute to mental health, emotional resilience, and life satisfaction by activating reward and emotional processing pathways in the brain, as well as supporting mindfulness and stress reduction. Drawing on neuroaesthetic insights, it elucidates the specific brain regions involved in aesthetic experiences, particularly those linked to reward and emotional regulation, thereby shedding light on the psychological mechanisms that underpin the transformative potential of beauty.
At a collective level, shared aesthetic experiences—such as attending cultural events or appreciating natural landscapes—play a critical role in social cohesion, empathy, and the formation of cultural identity. The chapter further discusses the transcultural dimensions of aesthetic appreciation, acknowledging both universal and culturally specific aspects of aesthetic experience that facilitate intercultural understanding and social connectedness. Through these insights, this chapter offers a comprehensive view of the impact of aesthetic appreciation on well-being, positioning it as a significant factor in both personal and societal development.
Since ancient times, philosophers and scholars worldwide have been continuously preoccupied with understanding what beauty is and how the mind responds when encountered with stimuli perceived as beautiful. Nowadays, particular attention has been paid to aesthetic emotions as subjective feelings and affective responses to beauty, and this subject seems to be present in many scientific areas, oriented towards enhancing people’s resilience and well-being. We encounter beauty in much wider contexts than traditionally thought as occurring exclusively in the interaction with art objects. People experience beauty while walking in nature or being in a built environment. The recently grown interest in aesthetic emotions is partly explained by their high complexity and the significant impact produced on people’s well-being but also by their restorative and creative potential for the growth of personality.
The author proposes to explore the potential of aesthetic emotions in improving psychology education, through a series of thematic workshops, aimed to investigate the emotional response to art objects presented as aesthetic stimuli. The Aesthetic Emotions Scale (AESTHEMOS) and the Aesthetic Experience Scale (AES) were the two measurement tools used to understand the way education and familiarity with arts can promote a better understanding of emotional experiences, shaping in that way the aesthetic preferences and assessment of the aesthetic virtues attributed to particular stimuli. Both tools were adapted for the Romanian-speaking population, and participants were requested to fill in the Aesthetic Emotions Scale (AESTHEMOS) while viewing projected paintings of great European artists as aesthetic stimuli.
This chapter further characterizes the target of explanation, i.e., time-consciousness. The chapter considers temporal phenomenology pre-theoretically but thoroughly and introduces its most salient features. It isolates a number of phenomena that theories of time-consciousness should wish to explain or explain away. This chapter also considers cases of deviant temporal phenomenology, both exotic and commonplace, including variability in felt duration (subjective time dilation and contraction) and alleged disorders of subjective time.
This paper explores the role of awe and transcendence in enhancing mental resilience from psychological, physiological, and sociocultural perspectives. Awe—elicited through nature, spirituality, art, and collective experiences— has been shown to foster adaptive coping, emotional flexibility, and post-traumatic growth. Psychologically, awe diminishes self-focus, promotes humility and gratitude, and enhances perspective-taking, all of which support emotional regulation and resilience. Physiologically, awe impacts brain regions associated with stress reduction and emotion regulation, such as decreasing amygdala activity and lowering inflammation, contributing to a calmer nervous system. Socio - culturally, awe strengthens social bonds and shared identity during collective experiences, providing a sense of meaning and belonging that buffers against adversity. Transcendent experiences, often spiritual or existential in nature, help individuals reframe suffering within a broader context, supporting recovery and growth. Integrating awe into interventions—through nature exposure, contemplative practices, or the arts—offers a scalable and inclusive approach to building resilience. Overall, awe and transcendence emerge as powerful, multidimensional tools that enrich our capacity to adapt, recover, and find meaning in the face of life’s challenges.
Nature exposure has been linked to enhanced subjective well-being; however, the underlying psychological mechanisms of this phenomenon remain underexplored. This study explores the mediating roles of connectedness to nature and awe in the relationship between nature exposure and subjective well-being. A sample of 301 high-school students (age = 17.09 ± 0.77) in China was examined via a questionnaire study. The findings indicate that connectedness to nature and awe significantly mediate the relationship between nature exposure and subjective well-being, with a positive correlation between these variables. Specifically, higher levels of nature exposure are associated with greater connectedness to nature and more profound experiences of awe, which, in turn, are linked to increased subjective well-being. These results underscore the important roles of connectedness to nature and the experience of awe in feeling subjective well-being in nature.
Ongoing environmental degradation and continuous research on its impact on human lives have made it clear that one of the ill-effects of ecological imbalance is emergence of life-threatening diseases that can create devastation. Even before mankind fathomed its true implication the world witnessed Covid-19 (2019–2022) that wreaked havoc globally. Among the different areas of life which got affected in the pandemic it is noted that consumers’ choice behavior with regard to consumption during Covid-19 has become very prominent. One plausible reason behind it is that consumers’ behavior now have started shifting towards sustainable consumption. It therefore becomes pertinent to study whether pandemic experience have brought this change.
This study utilizes the theoretical knowledge of Awe which is a powerful emotion conveying perceptual vastness. Within the realm of academic studies, it has been found to create pro-environmental behavior. This research considers it as a construct and further identifies other relevant variables to develop a model of sustainable consumption during Covid-19. Six key elements along with subconstructs are used in the framework. It helps to explain the factors of motivation behind consumers’ shift in consumption behavioral pattern during the pandemic.
This white paper presents a series of perspectives on current and future phytobiome management, discussed at the Wild and Tamed Phytobiomes Symposium in University Park, PA, U.S.A., in June 2018. To enhance plant productivity and health, and to translate lab- and greenhouse-based phytobiome research to field applications, the academic community and end-users need to address a variety of scientific, practical, and social challenges. Prior discussion of phytobiomes has focused heavily on plant-associated bacterial and fungal assemblages, but the phytobiomes concept covers all factors that influence plant function. Here we discuss various management considerations, including abiotic conditions (e.g., soil and nutrient applications), microorganisms (e.g., bacterial and fungal assemblages, bacterial and fungal inoculants, and viruses), macroorganisms (e.g., arthropods and plant genetics), and societal factors (e.g., communication approaches and technology diffusion). An important near-term goal for this field should be to estimate the potential relative contribution of different components of the phytobiome to plant health, as well as the potential and risk of modifying each in the near future.
Conserving the restored, yet fragile, World Nature Heritage Sites has become increasingly important in the aftermath of unforeseen disasters. Sociocultural barriers often pose greater challenges to natural protection than biophysical-technical obstacles do. This research comprised four studies. The first interviewed stakeholders ( N = 25) to investigate key factors in protecting restored natural wonders. The second ( N = 412) and third ( N = 275) explored how tourists’ sense of awe mediates the relationship between perceived authenticity and environmentally responsible behavior intention in two scenarios. The fourth was a field quasi-experiment ( N = 501), examining how the timing and framing of information provided to tourists serve to mitigate the potential broken window effect in sites under restoration and encourage more responsible behaviors. This research elucidates the vital role of awe in shaping tourist experiences at restored natural sites and introduces time perspectives and framing strategies to help site managers safeguard natural heritage sites effectively.
How to justify ascribing intrinsic value to nature ? This task emerged in the 1990s as “the central theoretical quest of environmental philosophy”, especially as concerns non-sentient living nature and superorganismic entities such as species. Since then, many theories have been offered to answer the ontological question of how nature's intrinsic value is to be understood, ranging from Moorean non-naturalist, objectivist theories to Elliot's subjectivist “indexical theory”. The question I shall focus on in this paper is related but different: How can we have evidence for the existence of such a value (however, nature's intrinsic value is to be understood, and whatever properties it is based on)? In other words, my focus is on the question of the epistemology of the (putative) intrinsic value of nature. My proposal is that there is a hitherto underappreciated epistemological resource lurking in aesthetic experiences of nature. Serious aesthetic experiences of nature can awaken emotions such as wonder and awe that, in light of recent perceptual theories of emotion, can be recognized as disclosing the intrinsic value of nature . In summary, I shall argue for what I see as a key epistemic role that aesthetic experience (of a certain sort) can have in grounding ascriptions of intrinsic value to nature.
The aesthetic of our surrounding environment has a significant impact on our behavior. According to the SO -R model, specific features characterizing the environment act as stimuli (S) that affect the internal states of people-organisms (O)-, which, in turn, drive their behavioral responses (R). Specifically, engaging with aesthetically appealing environments has been found to potentially promote positive normative outcomes such as prosocial behaviors. The present study investigates if architectural façades characterized by a specific feature typically associated with beauty-symmetry-can promote prosocial behavior compared to façades characterized by asymmetry, by applying the SO -R model. To do so, in a within-subject design study, two sets of 360 • virtual scenarios portraying both symmetric and asymmetric architectural façades were presented to 40 participants in a randomized order. Following each set of façades, participants were asked to complete an additional self-report questionnaire measuring their aesthetic emotions and to participate in a dictator game, aimed at measuring prosocial behavior. Results revealed that participants donated a larger amount of money to the recipient following the exposure to scenarios featuring symmetric façades compared to those characterized by asymmetry. However, the role of aesthetic emotions, as theorized by the SO -R model, in mediating the perception of symmetry and the prosocial behavior was not fully confirmed.
Possessing high meaning in life can prevent boredom. Recent evidence suggests that awe may increase meaning in life via vastness vis‐à‐vis the self (feeling connected to something bigger than the self) or decrease it through self‐diminishment (feeling insignificant). Accordingly, we proposed and tested in four studies (N = 1173) that awe relates to boredom via these two competing pathways. We consistently found a negative indirect effect of awe on boredom via vastness vis‐à‐vis the self and meaning in life (Studies 1–3). This effect remained for threat‐based awe (Study 3) and even after controlling for co‐occurring emotions (Studies 2b and 3). The evidence for a positive indirect effect of awe on boredom via self‐diminishment and meaning in life was present, albeit to a lesser extent. This research highlights the intricate relationship between awe and boredom, suggesting that awe can impact boredom through opposing effects on meaning in life.
With this paper, I propose an interpretation of Caspar David Friedrich’s works on the 250th anniversary of his birth. Known as a romantic painter, Friedrich explored and cultivated our deep relationship with nature through his art. From the perspective of recent discoveries in the cognitive sciences, I will analyse the ingenuity of the techniques by which, using the vast and open landscape, but also the characters represented with their backs, the artist creates the right context in which the viewer has the feeling of dissolving his self in nature, the experience of identification with the elements around and above all, the living of the present sensation, through the cleavage of the self and the activation of the experiential self. In the works of Caspar David Friedrich, I identify aspects related to existentialism and, above all, a prefiguration of immersive art that generates such existential experiences about nature.
Understanding the connections between our bodies, our emotions and the natural world is fundamental to addressing both personal and global challenges. This clinical commentary explores the profound ways in which trauma affects the nervous system and how practices like mindfulness, awe and gratitude, when used in drama therapy practice, can promote healing, resilience and social action both individually and collectively. The role of the vagus nerve in this process is particularly emphasized, highlighting its critical function in regulating our responses to stress and fostering well-being.
敬畏是一种对浩瀚的刺激以及现有心理结构无法适应的刺激的情感反应。大量实证证据显示, 敬畏可以促进各种形式的亲社会行为。至于其中的心理机制, 小我假说认为, 诱发敬畏体验的浩瀚刺激会导致自我的渺小感, 推动个体的注意力从自我转移至他人, 进而促进了亲社会行为; 真我假说则认为, 敬畏有助于促进个体的注意力从日常的世俗关注向更大的精神存在转移, 激发了个体对其真实自我的追求, 进而促进了亲社会行为。小我与真我假说可以在“大二”框架下进行整合, 即敬畏在自我的能动维度(真我)和共生维度(小我)上通过两条平行的路径促进亲社会行为的产生。未来研究需要更深入地探讨敬畏的亲社会效应的心理机制, 并在此基础上开发出促进捐赠等亲社会行为的干预措施, 以期为第三次分配战略的有效实施提供心理学方案。
Parenthood is challenging but fulfilling. We examined how parental pride and awe may enhance various aspects of well-being across cross-sectional ( N = 505), longitudinal ( N = 130), and experimental ( N = 261) studies, along with an internal meta-analysis. Thematic analyses suggested similar yet unique frequencies and underpinnings of pride (child growth, talent, resilience, and good behavior) and awe (child love/kindness, growth, talent, and shared moments). Beyond this, we found that pride predicted greater pleasure (i.e., high satisfaction and low negative affect), and awe predicted greater pleasure, purpose (i.e., meaning), and variety (i.e., psychological richness). We found that strengthened relationship quality with a child, self-transcendence (for pride and awe), and slowed time perception (for awe) served as mechanisms for these effects. Furthermore, these rewards were consistent across parent and child characteristics and could not be explained by child temperament or other positive emotions. These findings illuminate how pride and awe can make parenting bright, meaningful, and rich.
This scoping review outlines psychological pathways that foster attunement with self, others, and the planet in service of a future composed of more sustainable relationships. Shifts in the social and sustainability sciences represent a relational turn, one that focuses on the interconnectedness of the human and more-than-human earth. In this review, we explore how psychologists can deepen their relational and ecological orientations by attending to the interdisciplinary work that has been done and still needs doing, all in service of personal, interpersonal, and planetary health. Sustainable relationships maintain mutuality, balance, and harmony, minimize harm, and maximize equity, in ways that are viable and persist over time. In this paper, we explore a psychological framework for sustainable relationships through the lens of embodied ecology—a perspective that foregrounds relations instead of bounded entities. Embodied ecology encompasses and transcends ontology and epistemology, where individual and wider relations are in a constant state of motion: being and becoming mutually interdependent. We examine three psychological dimensions of sustainable relationships through the lens of embodied ecology: (1) transcendent moral emotions (2) relational animistic beliefs, and (3) relational moral reasoning. This scoping review provides a conceptual map of psychology’s role in understanding sustainable relationships.
On the basis of the proposition that love promotes commitment, the authors predicted that love would motivate approach, have a distinct signal, and correlate with commitment-enhancing processes when relationships are threatened. The authors studied romantic partners and adolescent opposite-sex friends during interactions that elicited love and threatened the bond. As expected, the experience of love correlated with approach-related states (desire, sympathy). Providing evidence for a nonverbal display of love, four affiliation cues (head nods, Duchenne smiles, gesticulation, forward leans) correlated with self-reports and partner estimates of love. Finally, the experience and display of love correlated with commitment-enhancing processes (e.g.. constructive conflict resolution, perceived trust) when the relationship was threatened. Discussion focused on love, positive emotion, and relationships.
Posted 3/2000. The previously unstudied emotion of elevation is described. Elevation appears to be the opposite of social disgust. It is triggered by witnessing acts of human moral beauty or virtue. Elevation involves a warm or glowing feeling in the chest, and it makes people want to become morally better themselves. Because elevation increases one's desire to affiliate with and help others, it provides a clear illustration of B. L. Fredrickson's (see record
2000-03082-001) broaden-and-build model of the positive emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Reports 7 studies that explored the possibility that the concept of emotion is better understood from a prototype perspective than from a classical one. Specifically it is argued that membership in the concept of emotion is a matter of degree rather than all-or-none (that the concept has an internal structure) and that no sharp boundary separates members from nonmembers (that the concept has fuzzy boundaries). Undergraduates served as Ss in all experiments. As hypothesized, the concept of emotion was found to have an internal structure: Happiness, love, anger, fear, awe, respect, envy, and other types of emotion could be reliably ordered from better to poorer examples of emotion. In turn, an emotion's goodness of example (prototypicality) ranking predicted how readily it comes to mind when one is asked to list emotions, how likely it is to be labeled as an emotion when one is asked what sort of thing it is, how readily it can be substituted for the word emotion in sentences without their sounding unnatural, and the degree to which it resembles other emotion categories in terms of shared features. (54 ref)
A widespread assumption in theories of emotion is that there exists a small set of basic emotions. From a biological perspective, this idea is manifested in the belief that there might be neurophysiological and anatomical substrates corresponding to the basic emotions. From a psychological perspective, basic emotions are often held to be the primitive building blocks of other, nonbasic emotions. The content of such claims is examined, and the results suggest that there is no coherent nontrivial notion of basic emotions as the elementary psychological primitives in terms of which other emotions can be explained. Thus, the view that there exist basic emotions out of which all other emotions are built, and in terms of which they can be explained, is questioned, raising the possibility that this position is an article of faith rather than an empirically or theoretically defensible basis for the conduct of emotion research. This suggests that perhaps the notion of basic emotions will not lead to significant progress in the field. An alternative approach to explaining the phenomena that appear to motivate the postulation of basic emotions is presented.
Some writers assume--and others deny--that all human beings distinguish emotions from nonemotions and divide the emotions into happiness, anger, fear, and so on. A review of ethnographic and cross-cultural studies on (a) emotion lexicons, (b) the emotions inferred from facial expressions, and (c) dimensions implicit in comparative judgments of emotions indicated both similarities and differences in how the emotions are categorized in different languages and cultures. Five hypotheses are reviewed: (a) Basic categories of emotion are pancultural, subordinate categories culture specific; (b) emotional focal points are pancultural, boundaries culture specific; (c) emotion categories evolved from a single primitive category of physiological arousal; (d) most emotion categories are culture specific but can be defined by pancultural semantic primitives; and (e) an emotion category is a script with both culture-specific and pancultural components.
There has long been interest in describing emotional experience in terms of underlying dimensions, but traditionally only two dimensions, pleasantness and arousal, have been reliably found. The reasons for these findings are reviewed, and integrating this review with two recent theories of emotions (Roseman, 1984; Scherer, 1982), we propose eight cognitive appraisal dimensions to differentiate emotional experience. In an investigation of this model, subjects recalled past experiences associated with each of 15 emotions, and rated them along the proposed dimensions. Six orthogonal dimensions, pleasantness, anticipated effort, certainty, attentional activity, self-other responsibility/control, and situational control, were recovered, and the emotions varied systematically along each of these dimensions, indicating a strong relation between the appraisal of one's circumstances and one's emotional state. The patterns of appraisal for the different emotions, and the role of each of the dimensions in differentiating emotional experience are discussed.
Cross-cultural research on facial expression and the developments of methods to measure facial expression are briefly summarized. What has been learned about emotion from this work on the face is then elucidated. Four questions about facial expression and emotion are discussed: What information does an expression typically convey? Can there be emotion without facial expression? Can there be a facial expression of emotion without emotion? How do individuals differ in their facial expressions of emotion?
The authors address 2 questions about embarrassment. First, Is embarrassment a distinct emotion? The evidence indicates that the antecedents, experience, and display of embarrassment, and to a limited extent its autonomic physiology, are distinct from shame, guilt, and amusement and share the dynamic, temporal characteristics of emotion. Second, What are the theoretical accounts of embarrassment? Three accounts focus on the causes of embarrassment, positioning that it follows the loss of self-esteem, concern for others' evaluations, or absence of scripts to guide interactions. A fourth account focuses on the effects of the remedial actions of embarrassment, which correct preceding transgressions. A fifth account focuses on the functional parallels between embarrassment and nonhuman appeasement. The discussion focuses on unanswered questions about embarrassment.
Four studies examined status conferral (decisions about who should be granted status). The studies show that people confer more status to targets who express anger than to targets who express sadness. In the 1st study, participants supported President Clinton more when they viewed him expressing anger about the Monica Lewinsky scandal than when they saw him expressing sadness about the scandal. This effect was replicated with an unknown politician in Study 2. The 3rd study showed that status conferral in a company was correlated with peers' ratings of the workers' anger. In the final study, participants assigned a higher status position and a higher salary to a job candidate who described himself as angry as opposed to sad. Furthermore, Studies 2-4 showed that anger expressions created the impression that the expresser was competent and that these perceptions mediated the relationship between emotional expressions and status conferral.
One of the most important goals and outcomes of social life is to attain status in the groups to which we belong. Such face-to-face status is defined by the amount of respect, influence, and prominence each member enjoys in the eyes of the others. Three studies investigated personological determinants of status in social groups (fraternity, sorority, and dormitory), relating the Big Five personality traits and physical attractiveness to peer ratings of status. High Extraversion substantially predicted elevated status for both sexes. High Neuroticism, incompatible with male gender norms, predicted lower status in men. None of the other Big Five traits predicted status. These effects were independent of attractiveness, which predicted higher status only in men. Contrary to previous claims, women's status ordering was just as stable as men's but emerged later. Discussion focuses on personological pathways to attaining status and on potential mediators.
On the basis of the proposition that love promotes commitment, the authors predicted that love would motivate approach, have a distinct signal, and correlate with commitment-enhancing processes when relationships are threatened. The authors studied romantic partners and adolescent opposite-sex friends during interactions that elicited love and threatened the bond. As expected, the experience of love correlated with approach-related states (desire, sympathy). Providing evidence for a nonverbal display of love, four affiliation cues (head nods, Duchenne smiles, gesticulation, forward leans) correlated with self-reports and partner estimates of love. Finally, the experience and display of love correlated with commitment-enhancing processes (e.g., constructive conflict resolution, perceived trust) when the relationship was threatened. Discussion focused on love, positive emotion, and relationships.
This article examines how power influences behavior. Elevated power is associated with increased rewards and freedom and thereby activates approach-related tendencies. Reduced power is associated with increased threat, punishment, and social constraint and thereby activates inhibition-related tendencies. The authors derive predictions from recent theorizing about approach and inhibition and review relevant evidence. Specifically, power is associated with (a) positive affect, (b) attention to rewards, (c) automatic information processing, and (d) disinhibited behavior. In contrast, reduced power is associated with (a) negative affect; (b) attention to threat, punishment, others' interests, and those features of the self that are relevant to others' goals; (c) controlled information processing; and (d) inhibited social behavior. The potential moderators and consequences of these power-related behavioral patterns are discussed.
Posted 3/2000. The previously unstudied emotion of elevation is described. Elevation appears to be the opposite of social disgust. It is triggered by witnessing acts of human moral beauty or virtue. Elevation involves a warm or glowing feeling in the chest, and it makes people want to become morally better themselves. Because elevation increases one's desire to affiliate with and help others, it provides a clear illustration of B. L. Fredrickson's (see record 2000-03082-001) broaden-and-build model of the positive emotions.
We used multiple methods to examine two questions about emotion and culture: (1) Which facial expressions are recognised cross-culturally; and (2) does the “forced-choice” method lead to spurious findings of universality? Forty participants in the US and 40 in India were shown 14 facial expressions and asked to say what had happened to cause the person to make the face. Analyses of the social situations given and of the affect words spontaneously used showed high levels of recognition for most of the expressions. A subsequent forced-choice task using the same faces confirmed these findings. Analysis of the pattern of magnitude, discreteness, and similarity of responses across cultures and expressions led to the conclusion that there is no neat distinction between cross-culturally recognisable and nonrecognisable expressions. Results are better described as a gradient of recognition.
In this article we examine the role of appeasement in human emotion, social practice, and personality. We first present an analysis of human appeasement. Appeasement begins when the conditions of social relations lead one individual to anticipate aggression from others, is expressed in submissive, inhibited behavior, which in turn evokes inferences and emotions in others that bring about social reconciliation. Our empirical review focuses on two classes of human appeasement: reactive forms of appeasement, including embar- rassment and shame, which placate others after social transgressions; and anticipatory forms of appeasement, including polite modesty and shyness, which reduce the likeli- hood of social conflict and aggression. Our review of the empirical evidence indi- cates that embarrassment, shame, modesty, and shyness share the eliciting conditions, submissive behavior, and social consequences of appeasement. We conclude by discussing social processes that allow humans to appease one another, such as teasing, and those that prevent appeasement, such as legal and negotiation prac- tices, to the benefit and detriment of human relations. Aggr. Behav. 23:359-374, 1997. © 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
In this article, we review diverse studies of the antecedents, facial display, and social consequences of embarrassment. These studies indicate that embarrassment serves an appeasement function, reconciling social relations when they have gone awry. We then speculate about how embarrassment is elaborated into more complex social interactions, such as teasing and flirtation. We conclude by raising questions about the blush and embarrassment that await empirical consideration.
Challenging dominant assumptions of cultural relativism, Donald E. Brown contends that certain behavioral traits are common to human beings everywhere. In "Human Universals," he addresses the problems posed for anthropology by the topic of universals, discusses studies that have caused anthropologists to rethink their position, and provides an ethnography of "The Universal People."
Although human universals were of considerable interest to early anthropologists, a later emphasis on sociocultural determinants of behavior produced an ambivalence toward both universals and the concept of human nature. This ambivalence toward universals has persisted since the 1920s; however, six important case studies involving the classification of basic colors, facial expressions of emotion, sex roles, time, adolescent stress, and the Oedipus Complex have reopened discussion of this nearly taboo topic.
After discussing the distinctions between the various kinds of universals, the history of attempts to study universals, and the means by which universality may be demonstrated and explained, Brown presents a list of some four hundred human universals in the form of an ethnography that describes any and all peoples known to anthropologists. In his conclusion the author charges that, in making universals and human nature virtual non-subjects, anthropology has not adequately performed its major task. While the field has demonstrated well how people vary, it has not provided a sense of the ways in which they are alike. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Originally published in
Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1995, Vol 40(7), 711. Replies to comments made in the S. Mendoza and P. Shaver review (see record
2004-17632-002) of the present author's book,
The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating (see record 199497188-000). Within the broad context of seeming agreement, Buss also notes disagreement. He argues that there is strong evidence that both men and women have a complex repertoire of mating strategies that includes short-term mating and long-term mating. He also answers Mendoza's analysis of two areas in which initial formulations of hypotheses anchored in sexual strategies theory did not pan out exactly as expected empirically and had to be modified--men's concern about chastity as a potential solution to the problem of paternity uncertainty and women's desire for older men as a solution to the problem of resource acquisition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
the social origins of embarrassment / gender differences in embarrassment / functions of subjective embarrassment [socialization, social control, self-regulation] / embarrassment displays [nonverbal behavior, verbal remediation] / the evolutionary significance of embarrassment / emotions as social phenomena (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Disgust is a specific reaction towards the waste products of the human and animal body. The relation of the various types of sensations to the disgust reaction depends upon the degree of intimacy of contact which they imply and upon the degree of specific association between sensory quality and disgusting object. Food substances which in themselves are not disgusting at all may easily become so through the presence of a disgusting object or even thinking of some disgusting situation. Circumstances which make possible an association between the excretory and the sexual functions include the common taboo of shame placed on both and the close anatomical and functional relationship between the excretory and genital organs. As disgust implies mainly the fear of becoming soiled, animals which have a factual or assumed relation to dirt, such as snakes and worms, frequently arouse disgust. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In this chapter, the authors present a social functional account of emotions that attempts to integrate the relevant insights of evolutionary and social constructivist theorists. The authors' account is summarized in 3 statements: (1) social living presents social animals with problems whose solutions are critical for individual survival; (2) emotions have been designed in the course of evolution to solve these problems; and (3) in humans, culture loosens the linkages between emotions and problems so that cultures find new ways of using emotions. In the first half of the chapter the authors synthesize the positions of diverse theorists in a taxonomy of problems of social living and then consider how evolution-based primordial emotions solve those problems by coordinating social interactions. In the second half of the chapter the authors discuss the specific processes according to which culture transforms primordial emotions and how culturally shaped elaborated emotions help solve the problems of social living. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Economic ActionThe concept of economic actionReligious Ethics and Economic RationalityThe Market: Its Impersonality and EthicClass, Status, PartyEconomically Determined Power and the Status OrderDetermination of Class Situation by Market SituationStatus HonorParties
Emotions are viewed as having evolved through their adaptive value in dealing with fundamental life-tasks. Each emotion has unique features: signal, physiology, and antecedent events. Each emotion also has characteristics in common with other emotions: rapid onset, short duration, unbidden occurrence, automatic appraisal, and coherence among responses. These shared and unique characteristics are the product of our evolution, and distinguish emotions from other affective phenomena.
1st publ. as paperback, Repr
Social dominance is usually viewed from the perspective of intragroup competition over access to limited resources. The present paper, while not denying the importance of such competition, discusses the dominance concept among monkeys and apes in the context of affiliative bonding, social tolerance, and the reconciliation of aggressive conflicts. Two basic proximate mechanisms are supposed to provide a link between dominance and interindividual affiliation, namely, formalization of the dominance relationship (i.e., unequivocal communication of status), and conditional reassurance (i.e., the linkage of friendly coexistence to formalization of the relationship). Ritualized submission is imposed upon losers of dominance struggles by winners; losers are offered a "choice" between continued hostility or a tolerant relationship with a clearly signalled difference in status. If these two social mechanisms are lacking, aggression is bound to have dispersive effects. In their presence, aggression becomes a well-integrated, even constructive component of social life. In some higher primates this process of integration has reached the stage where status differences are strongly attenuated. In these species, sharing and trading can take the place of overt competition. The views underlying this "reconciled hierarchy" model are only partly new, as is evident from a review of the ethological literature. Many points are illustrated with data on a large semi-captive colony of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), particularly data related to striving for status, reconciliation behavior, and general association patterns. These observations demonstrate that relationships among adult male chimpanzees cannot be described in terms of a dichotomy between affiliative and antagonistic tendencies. Male bonding in this species has not been achieved by an elimination of aggression, but by a set of powerful buffering mechanisms that mitigate its effects. Although female chimpanzees do exhibit a potential for bonding under noncompetitive conditions, they appear to lack the buffering mechanisms of the males.
Recent work on natural categories suggests a framework for conceptualizing people's knowledge about emotions. Categories of natural objects or events, including emotions, are formed as a result of repeated experiences and become organized around prototypes (Rosch, 1978); the interrelated set of emotion categories becomes organized within an abstract-to-concrete hierarchy. At the basic level of the emotion hierarchy one finds the handful of concepts (love, joy, anger, sadness, fear, and perhaps, surprise) most useful for making everyday distinctions among emotions, and these overlap substantially with the examples mentioned most readily when people are asked to name emotions (Fehr & Russell, 1984), with the emotions children learn to name first (Bretherton & Beeghly, 1982), and with what theorists have called basic or primary emotions. This article reports two studies, one exploring the hierarchical organization of emotion concepts and one specifying the prototypes, or scripts, of five basic emotions, and it shows how the prototype approach might be used in the future to investigate the processing of information about emotional events, cross-cultural differences in emotion concepts, and the development of emotion knowledge.
This paper applies a functional-evolutionary perspective to fear in the context of encounters with animals and threatening humans. It is argued that animal fear originates in a predatory defense system whose function is to allow animals to avoid and escape predators. Animal stimuli are postulated to be differentially prepared to become learned elicitors of fear within this system. Social fears are viewed as originating in a dominance/submissiveness system. The function of submissiveness is to avert attacks from dominating conspecifics. Signs of dominance paired with aversive outcomes provide for learning fear to specific individuals. Data which in general are interpreted as supportive of this conceptualization are reviewed. To explain the mechanism behind the causal relationships suggested in the evolutionary analysis, an information-processing model is presented and empirically tested. It is argued that responses to evolutionary fear-relevant stimuli can elicit the physiological concomitants of fear after only a very quick, “unconsciousness,’ or preattentive stimulus analysis. Support for this notion is presented from backward masking studies where it is demonstrated that conditioned autonomic responses to fear-relevant stimuli can be elicited even with masked stimuli.