Awe and Positive Affect: the Role of Self-Transcendence and Self-Focused Attention
March 20, 2023 Autumn Chall
Awe improves positive affect by increasing self-transcendence, a sense of connection beyond the self. In a randomized experiment, 431 college students wrote about either an awe experience or a neutral event. Only the path from the awe writing condition through self-transcendence to positive affect was significant; self-focused attention did not mediate the effect. The awe writing intervention induced significantly greater feelings of awe than the neutral writing, supporting its use as an effective induction method. The findings clarify the mechanism behind awe's therapeutic benefits, with implications for experiential alternatives to talk therapy.