Why Does Awe Have Prosocial Effects? New Perspectives on Awe and the Small Self

Why Does Awe Have Prosocial Effects? New Perspectives on Awe and the Small Self

Abstract

Awe is an emotional response to stimuli that are perceived to be vast (e.g., tall trees, sunsets) and that defy accommodation by existing mental structures. Curiously, awe has prosocial effects despite often being elicited by nonsocial stimuli. The prevailing explanation for why awe has prosocial effects is that awe reduces attention to self-oriented concerns (i.e., awe makes the self small), thereby making more attention available for other-oriented concerns. However, several questions remain unaddressed by the current formulation of this small-self hypothesis. How are awe researchers defining the self, and what implications might their theory of selfhood have for understanding the "smallness" of the self? Building on theories regarding psychological selfhood, we propose that awe may interact with the self not just in terms of attentional focus but rather at multiple layers of selfhood. We further reinterpret the small self using the notion of the quiet ego from personality psychology. Linking awe to an enriched model of the self provided by personality psychology may be fruitful for explaining a range of phenomena and motivating future research.

Awe can transform people and reorient their lives, goals, and values. Awe-inducing events may be one of the fastest and most powerful methods of personal change and growth. The potential power of awe, combined with the mystery of its mechanisms, may itself be a source of awe.

In two thousand three, Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt revived an area of study that has, for the vast majority of psychology's intellectual history, been given short shrift. Building on the work of just a few bygone pioneers, Keltner and Haidt defined awe in terms of two prototypical features: perception of vastness and need for accommodation. In short, awe is elicited by stimuli that are perceived to be greater than the self (i.e., vast), and this perceived vastness requires new mental representations to make sense of the experience (i.e., accommodation).

Recent work found that awe produces profound social effects. Awe leads people to feel connected with others,

identify with broad group categories such as "humanity" or "inhabitant of the Earth," and behave prosocially. It is curious that awe has these social effects given that awe is often evoked by nonsocial stimuli. This raises the question: Why does awe, an emotion often triggered by nonsocial stimuli, lead to prosocial outcomes?

The prevailing explanation is that awe makes the self small. Piff et al.'s small-self hypothesis posits that the perceived vastness of what is beheld leads to the perception that one's self is small relative to the stimulus. Thus, awe facilitates "a shift in attention toward larger entities and diminishment of the individual self." According to this position, awe promotes prosociality by diminishing attention to self-oriented concerns, which in turn makes more attention available for other-oriented concerns. The small-self hypothesis has been supported by empirical findings that feelings of a small self robustly mediate awe's effects on prosociality.

Nevertheless, the small-self hypothesis may benefit from further clarification and elaboration. Most notably, the small-self hypothesis does not give sufficient consideration to what is meant by the self. Within the small-self framework, the self is construed as a locus of attention varying along one dimension-its size. However, the self is more complex than a mere locus of attention; as described by personality researchers, the self is rich, multilayered, and idiosyncratic. If awe's prosocial effects are due to its interactions with the self, and if the self is more complex than a locus of attention, then it stands to reason that awe's prosocial effects may be due to awe's interactions with multiple levels of the self. In turn, connecting awe to an enriched model of the self may elucidate exactly what is going on when the self becomes "small."

We propose a revised model of the small-self hypothesis. We argue that a viable reinterpretation of the small self may be Wayment and Bauer's notion of the quiet ego. The quiet ego is a description of the self at higher levels of psychological maturity-a self characterized by an appreciation of self-other interdependence, internal motivations to behave prosocially, and an orientation toward growth. Awe may facilitate identity reconstruction in the direction of a "quieter" ego through its criterion of need for accommodation. Accommodation (i.e., the revision of one's ordinary frame of reference to make sense of and integrate disruptive life experiences) has been shown to drive personality development in ways that promote greater psychological maturity. In sum, we propose that awe, rather than strictly diminishing attention to the self, facilitates growth in the form of a quiet ego. In turn, a quiet ego increases prosocial motives and results in enhanced prosocial action.

To justify this revised model, we begin by detailing three novel critiques of the small-self hypothesis. Next, we address these three critiques with reference to the three layers of selfhood described by McAdams's integrative framework, thereby elaborating on what is meant by the self. Then, we describe the personality development processes that may underlie awe's promotion of a quiet ego, thereby clarifying what is meant by the self becoming small. Answering these two questions enables us to answer our overarching question: Why does awe have prosocial effects?

Three Critiques of the Small-Self Hypothesis

The small-self hypothesis puts a premium on attentional shifts as the driving force in awe's prosocial effects. However, a more nuanced interpretation of awe's effects may be necessary when linking awe to an elaborated account of what is meant by the self. Furthermore, an enriched model of selfhood may clarify what is meant by the self becoming small. In this section, we submit three specific critiques of the small-self hypothesis that have not been raised or addressed in the awe literature to date. These critiques guide our analysis of the existing research on awe and inform our revised model of awe's prosocial effects.

First, the small-self hypothesis contends that awe prompts shifts in attention from self-oriented concerns to other-oriented concerns; however, this shift necessarily pits self-oriented concerns against other-oriented concerns. Indeed, it is argued that awe "influences whether individuals behave in ways that prioritize the self versus others in the social environment." However, it is questionable whether these two types of concerns are always in conflict; arguably, they may not be mutually exclusive or even independent. Indeed, humans evolved in cooperative, interdependent contexts in which self-oriented and other-oriented concerns were in alignment. Furthermore, a long line of empirical work suggests that the two primary motivational themes of agency (i.e., concerns about autonomy and mastery) and communion (i.e., concerns about affiliation with others) are orthogonal. In other words, individuals can express both high agency and high communion, and those who integrate both themes often exhibit profound prosocial motives and deep concern for others. The primary implication of this critique is that attention may not shift entirely away from the self in the wake of awe-the self may actually exert an influence on awe's prosocial effects.

Indeed, attention cannot be the whole story. The second critique pertains to the assumption that attentional prominence may be equated to motivational prominence such that increased attention to others necessarily entails increased motivation for acting on other-oriented concerns. However, the mere fact that attention has shifted to others does not mean that one would be motivated to act in prosocial ways. The implication of such a critique is that some intrinsic factor may be at play in generating awe's prosocial effects. Personality psychology has long been interested in questions regarding internal motivation, and leaning on this research may prove fruitful for understanding awe's effects. Of course, we do not mean to say that-at some abstract level-attending to the concerns of others would not in and of itself be motivating. That said, we ask: What processes internal to the self are driving motivational prominence?

Third, the small-self hypothesis does not sufficiently address awe's transformative capacities. Returning to the epigraph, it is noted in seminal work that awe often exerts transformative effects on individuals that affect their "lives, goals, and values" and facilitate "personal change and growth." Additional qualitative and theoretical work echoed this sentiment. The potential for awe to promote psychological growth is, of course, highly impressive and deserving of further clarification. However, scant attention has been given to "the mystery of its mechanisms"; in other words, how do these processes of growth and transformation actually unfold, especially in relation to awe's prosocial effects? Arguably, these transformative effects are not reducible to the attentional shifts of the small-self mechanism.

Clearly, the small-self hypothesis as it currently stands is incomplete. To be sure, we do not intend to negate the small-self hypothesis; on the contrary, the aim of this article is to redress several of its theoretical shortcomings to ultimately enhance its explanatory power. We do so by linking the small-self hypothesis to enriched notions of the self predicated on McAdams's integrative framework of psychological selfhood. According to McAdams, selfhood is a confluence of three distinct layers: (a) the self as social actor, (b) the self as motivated agent, and (c) the self as autobiographical author. McAdams's multilayered framework is well suited for unifying scattered empirical and theoretical research about the self. Therefore, we use it to detail the ways in which awe interacts with the various layers of selfhood.

McAdams's three layers each correspond to one of the three critiques of the small-self hypothesis. First, considerations of the self as social actor explain why self-oriented and other-oriented concerns are not mutually exclusive. In line with this idea, we argue that awe may enhance attention not to other-oriented concerns but rather to interdependence concerns, which balance the interests of self and other. Second, analyzing the self as motivated agent accounts for the missing feature of motivational prominence. We argue that the dichotomizing of self and other (with attention directed away from the self according to the small-self hypothesis) has foreclosed considerations of internal motivation in awe's effects. We discuss how central motives, valued goals, and personal beliefs moderate awe's effects and create meaningful individual differences in prosocial motives. Third, examining the self as autobiographical author sheds light on the processes underlying awe's transformative effects as well as how these processes may bear on awe's prosocial effects. We argue that awe, through its criterion of need for accommodation, promotes accommodative processing in the life story. This self-transformation gives rise to greater psychological maturity, which is indeed associated with enhanced interdependence concerns and prosocial motives.