11 Oct New psychology research has found that awe motivates authentic self-pursuit by amplifying self-transcendence
You’re probably familiar with the word “awesome”. In fact, you possibly use the term frequently.
But did you know that “awe” is actually a word formally used within psychology to describe “a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder”?
Within Positive Psychology there are many types of positive emotions and awe is an under-appreciated but wonderfully important one. Which is why I’m sharing this article with you because understanding it better can be very useful …
via PsyPost by Eric Dolan
New research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology provides evidence that experiencing awe can help to invigorate the pursuit of one’s authentic self.
Awe is an emotion often elicited by experiences of vastness. This can take the form of physical vastness, such as gazing at the stars on a clear night or standing at the edge of a vast body of water. It can also take the form of conceptual vastness, such as when we contemplate the vastness of time or space. In either case, awestruck individuals report feeling small and insignificant in the face of something much larger than themselves.
This sense of vastness can be overwhelming or even unpleasant, but it is also often accompanied by a sense of wonder and elation. The authors of the new research posited that the experience of awe provides an opportunity to re-assess one’s value as a person, and might motivate people to act in accordance with what they perceive to be their true or genuine self
“When I look up at the Milky way, I feel awe, and I feel like I want to be my true self, to pursue what is really important to me. This intuition propels me to do this project,” explained study author Tonglin Jiang, an assistant professor at Peking University in Beijing,
In a series of 14 studies, which included 4,438 participants in total, the researchers found that awe was linked to authentic-self pursuit. The studies included a mix of correlational and experimental designs, and a mix of laboratory and field experiments…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE