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Moral beauty inspires the most awe
What awe is
Awe is touching something vast and beyond your comprehension. Berkeley scientist Dacher Keltner studied it across thousands of people in 26 different countries, so his findings reach across geography and time.
Eight sources of awe
His research identified eight reliable catalysts for awe: nature, intellectual epiphany, art and visual design, spiritual experience, birth and death, music, collective effervescence, and moral beauty, which ranks first. Moral beauty is the encounter with extraordinary acts that normal human beings do, from selflessness and generosity to kindness, bravery, and courage.
The media emphasizes the worst aspects of human nature, and evil exists in lots of corners and among all peoples. Yet acts of moral beauty from normal people happen every day, which makes human beings the greatest source of awe in the world.
Awe at funerals
Funerals bring a lot of sadness and sometimes tragedy, and in every death there is also a huge amount of awe. It gives a glimpse of the world beyond, and it makes a person want to live better and more meaningfully. What is important comes into sharp focus every time.
How does awe change the body?
In a 2015 study in the journal Emotion, Jennifer Stellar, Dacher Keltner, and colleagues measured inflammatory proteins called cytokines in the blood. Awe was the strongest predictor of lower levels of interleukin-6, a marker linked to inflammation. The other emotions they tested were amusement, compassion, contentment, joy, love, and pride.
Why does awe make people more generous?
In a 2015 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Paul Piff and colleagues argued that awe shrinks a person's sense of self-importance, which they called the small self. In one experiment, participants who spent a minute looking up at tall eucalyptus trees helped more when a stranger dropped a handful of pens than participants who looked at a tall building. In other experiments, people who watched awe-inspiring videos were more generous in sharing lottery tickets with a stranger.
Why does witnessing goodness inspire people?
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt named the emotion elevation in 2000, describing the uplifted feeling people report after seeing acts of moral beauty. In a 2009 paper in the Journal of Positive Psychology, Sara Algoe and Haidt found that people who watched such acts reported stronger wishes to help others and to become better people. Participants often described a warm or open feeling in the chest.
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