The Oxford English Dictionary defines awe as a feeling of religious respect mixed with fear or wonder. Now a research, done by teams from the University of California Berkeley and UC Irvine, found that experiencing awe might make people help each other out more.
"Our investigation indicates that awe serves a vital social function." said Paul Piff, an assistant professor of psychology and social behavior at UC Irvine. "By decreasing the emphasis on the individual self, awe may encourage people to give up strict self-interest to improve the well-being of others."
After showing participants images of nature, Piff and his team asked questions. The researchers measured moral behavior. And they measured generosity. Those who reported feeling a sense of awe showed more moral behavior.
Awe is defined partly by the fear one feels in the face of something larger than themselves. In fact, the same generous behavior was observed in people who were shown scenes of natural disasters. According to Hoffman, whether it was watching scenes of the Amazonian rainforest or a violent volcanic eruption, participants were more willing to share resources with each other afterwards.
Awe doesn't just inspire moral behavior. Recent studies suggest that experiencing awe may promote your immune system. And it could make you feel more creative, too. It can even make you feel that you have more time to get things done.
"When people experience awe, they really want to share that experience with other people, suggesting that it has this particularly great part much like virus." Piff tells Hoffman. "Maybe this is another way that awe binds people together—by causing people to want to share their positive experiences collectively with one another."
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