Awe and wonder are powerful emotions that most people take for granted. Many experiences that might seem routine can arouse them, from scenic views on mountaintops to moving symphonies. Few people realize the power they have to change our lives. Though awe and wonder are slightly different emotions, I have grouped them together in the interest of broadening our understanding of awe, which is the term used in most of the studies referenced. This is because it would be very difficult to define awe without its product, wonder; in human psychology, it appears you can’t have one without the other.
A proper definition of these emotions is required before we delve into them. Weger & Wagemann (1,394), in their efforts to define awe and wonder, describe them as experiences that are both selfless and full of vastness. They describe highly charged experiences of selflessness as phenomena that stretch our cognitive capacities beyond familiar knowledge structures, leading to broader understandings and increased curiosity (Weger & Wagermann, 1386). Feelings of selflessness, vastness, and the need for accommodation are key descriptors of awe and wonder across the literature (Weger & Wagermann, 1387, 1394; Keltner & Haidt, 304; Stellar, Gordon, Anderson, Piff, McNeil, & Keltner, 2018, 267). Keltner and Haidt (2003, 307) note that vastness does not only apply to physical vastness, but other forms involving abstract concepts like artistic expression. While awe can induce vastness in natural settings by feelings that transcend one’s previous knowledge, it can also be induced when works of art challenge the viewer, involve obscurity, or when they are larger than the viewer is used to seeing (Keltner & Haidt, 2003, 310). Awe and wonder can change the way we look at the world, moving us in directions that involve social movements (Keltner & Haidt, 307-308) or personal change and growth, satisfying the curiosity aroused by wondrous experiences (Keltner & Haidt, 2003, 312).
This paper will focus more on personal changes in the context of education and career development in prosocial environments. I will outline several recent studies that reveal how awe and wonder contribute to career development, then make a case for implementing awe-inspired activities into educational programs. In the conclusion, I will show why it is important to cultivate awe and wonder into educational programs that facilitate cooperation and career counseling.
Prosocial Career Development
Central to prosocial career development is the trait of selflessness, which awe and wonder are known to enhance. Bai et al. (2017, 185) found that awe increased collective engagement, promoting integration into social groups. They highlight a small-self effect, where the sensation of awe does not diminish one’s sense of status, rank, or self-esteem, but instead increases orientation to the collective by diminishing the perceived size of the self (Bai et al., 201). The effect is that awe and wonder tend to orient people to the interests of others, helping them assume collective identities that ferment collaboration (Bai et al., 201). It may be helpful to think of instances when these findings apply to our own lives. For example, in my career there have been people who left me awestruck by their capabilities, which inspired me to improve my performance for the benefit of the team. Even as a child there were countless times when I saw people playing a sport or game that left me awestruck by their abilities, making me wanting to try it and get more involved in a team environment.
Also central to selflessness is the generosity involved in helping others. Prade and Saroglou (2016, 522) found that experiences of awe prime people for prosociality in contexts where generosity is concerned, particularly when helping a person in need in everyday situations. As one’s career often involves everyday activities, situations where prosocial decisions are needed seem ubiquitous among professions involving selflessness, including medicine, counseling, teaching, law, and many others.
Another aspect of career development is Piaget’s need for accommodation, which is the restructuring of cognitive processes based on new information (Keltner & Haidt, 2003, 304). Though Piaget’s paradigm is a tool used in child development, accommodation can apply to all age groups. Shiota, Kelter, & Mossman (2007, 958) found that awe-prone individuals were more comfortable revising mental structures when they are incompatible with new information. They found that the experience of awe and wonder was associated with a low need for cognitive closure- a preference for arriving at unambiguous conclusions- making awe-prone individuals more open to information processing and less judgment. A low need for cognitive closure allowed them to collect experiences that challenged their normal way of thinking about the world, which tended to evoke awe more than other elicitors (Shiota, Kelter, & Mossman, 2007, 950). This may partially explain why college creates better career opportunities for students: because the student is more likely to find themselves in an awe-inspiring environment than in high school, the military, or when training for an apprenticeship.
Vastness, Cultural Magnificence, and Selflessness
Vastness in all its forms can also inspire individuals to reorient or re-evaluate career direction. Awe was related to a higher sense of cooperation, belongingness, and sense of importance because of the humility one feels when confronted by the vastness and complexity of the world (Stellar et al., 2018, 267). In another study, openness to vast, new experiences in nature and music was the only significant predictor of awe, generating aesthetic states that challenge one’s worldview (Silvia, Fayn, Nusbaum, & Beaty, 2015, 381). The vastness associated with natural wonders, aesthetics, or complexity, from witnessing the immensity of stars to the composition of a piece writing, music, or painting, can move people so much that their worldview shifts to align with the new material.
It's important to stress how vastness can be considered a prosocial phenomenon when one considers the multitude of beings involved in a community, nation, social group, or movement. Those who strive for magnificence in community settings, whether they be artists, scientists, clergy, or leaders can generate powerful feelings of awe and wonder on every social level. For instance, awe was found to be induced by the remarkable achievements of others in social professions, helping identify community leaders (Shiota, Keltner, & Mossman, 2007, 950; Keltner & Haidt, 2003, 307-308). Likewise, remarkable achievements produced by artists, scientists, and clergy are equally important when one considers the cultural significance of a Shakespeare, Einstein, or Martin Luther King Jr. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been so amazed by a passage in literature or poetry that it inspired me to attempt writing something similar, using my own words. That makes it easy for me to believe the most influential people in the world also spread the most awe and wonder to others.
Related to inducing awe and wonder through cultural magnificence is the ability of influential people to cultivate it in their work. De Cruz (2020, 161), in their research on awe and wonder in scientific practice, notes that awe tends to shift the focus away from the self, reducing feelings of self-importance as people cultivate a scientific path. This also applies to religious teachers and leaders (De Cruz, 2020, 164), which is interesting when one considers how different their career paths are to scientists. Preston & Shin (2018, 213) concluded that spirituality induces awe through the feelings of smallness that are shared by religious and non-religious individuals. As spirituality is not necessarily required to be religious, this would explain how awe and wonder can have a similar effect on career paths as seemingly distant as those in science, religion, government, or art.
Creativity in Career Development
Creative capacity is another strong element of career development, which can be improved in children who are exposed to awe-inducing events. Results from Chirico et al. (2018) showed that “awe affected key creative thinking components—fluency, flexibility and elaboration”. Priming spatial distance induced higher levels of awe in children, fermenting their creativity by increasing fluency and originality (Liberman, Polack, Hameiri, & Blumenfeld, 2012). Awe was also found to expand people’s perception of time, alter decision-making, and enhance well-being (Rudd, Vohs, & Aaker, 2012, 1130). The same study found that awe made people feel more in the present moment, like they had more time available; and they felt more patient as a result. Furthermore, expanding time perception led awe-induced participants to more strongly desire helping other people and to “partake in experiential goods over materials ones” (Rudd, Vohs, & Aaker, 1136). This study makes the connection between selflessness and creativity that awe and wonder are seemingly able to forge. As these traits are so central to career development, including the patience, experimentation, fluency, well-being, and originality that derives from them, it would be difficult to ignore the impact awe and wonder has on it.
Financial Success and Cultural Influence
One might assume that just because awe and wonder are better for career development, it would make people desire financial success more. However, it is interesting to note that awe weakens the desire for money (Jiang et al., 2018, 10), suggesting that those inspired by it tend to pick career paths that benefit humanity as opposed to themselves. Those who pick careers just to earn money are probably less influential than those who genuinely want to help people by demonstrating prosocial behavior, though this is a generalization. If one does not ever experience awe or wonder in their chosen career, it seems they would be more likely to desire changing it.
It is worth mentioning a cross-cultural study on the cultural effects of awe and wonder. In a study comparing the effects of awe in Iranian and U.S. participants, Razavi et al. (2016, 1100) found that Iranians experienced far less instances of awe than those in the U.S. This may suggest cultural values or social circumstances play a role in the experience of awe and therefore career direction and other freedoms. We must consider how important the freedoms that allow educational opportunities in career development are. In narrow societies like Iran, which ranks low in positive emotions in general (Razavi et al. (2016, 1100), we can see the impact a rigid educational system has on its citizens. That is why western societies would be wise to maintain their open education systems, perhaps even enhancing them.
Self-actualization
In theory, the connection between awe, wonder, and career development suggests that awe is essential to self-actualization on Abraham A Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, though it would be hard to measure such a hypothesis by experiment. Self-actualization is the highest need on Maslow’s hierarchy, involving “peak experiences” and the fulfillment of one’s talent or full potential. According to Keltner & Haidt (302), Maslow’s descriptions of peak experiences coincide with many of the traits brought by experiences of awe: ego-transcendence, self-forgetfulness, humility, a perception of the goodness of the world, feeling lucky or graced, and a sense that “polarities and dichotomies have been transcended or resolved”. Comparing this list to the other studies I have mentioned, it becomes clear that awe and wonder are essential to a prosocial education and career paths for those who seek to self-actualize, or who want to change the world in a big way.
Conclusion
As I have demonstrated, awe and wonder are emotions that strengthen career development in fields involving high levels of cognition, creativity, and cooperation (the three Cs). An ideal educational program would implement awe-inspiring activities that evoke feelings of vastness, selflessness, and the need to accommodate for higher levels of information. Due to the tendency for these emotions to increase selflessness and promote creative solutions, those seeking careers involving high levels of cooperation would benefit immensely from educational programs that use awe and wonder in their curriculum.
An interesting research project would be to measure the relationships between awe and the three Cs in an educational context over a long period of time. Such a longitudinal study would ideally show the kind of influence awe-inducement has on careers, both in how prosocial they are or by the level of influence their work inspires (which admittedly can be subjective), or by a measurement of career satisfaction. Education systems that are too traditional, bland, or simple do little to inspire students to greatness; teaching them things that really expand their minds can make a big difference in their lives.
References
Bai, Y., Maruskin, L. A., Chen, S., Gordon, A. M., Stellar, J. E., McNeil, G. D., Peng, K., Keltner, D. (2017). Awe, the diminished self, and collective engagement: Universals and cultural variations in the small self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(2), 185-209. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000087
Chirico, A., Glaveanu, V. P., Cipresso, P., Riva, G., & Gaggioli, A. (2018). Awe enhances creative thinking: An experimental study. Creativity Research Journal, 30(2), 123-131. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10400419.2018.1446491
De Cruz, H. (2020). Awe and Wonder in Scientific Practice: Implications for the Relationship Between Science and Religion. Issues in Science and Technology: Nature and Beyond, 155-168. DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-31182-7_13
Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 17(2), 297-314. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699930302297
Jiang, L., Yin, J., Mei, D., Zhu, H., & Zhou, X. (2018). Awe weakens the desire for money. Journal of Pacific Rim Psychology, 12, 10. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/prp.2017.27
Liberman, N., Polack, O., Hameiri, B., & Blumenfeld, M. (2012). Priming of spatial distance enhances children's creative performance. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 111(4), 663-670. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2011.09.007
Prade, C., & Saroglou, V. (2016). Awe’s effects on generosity and helping. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 11(5), 522-530. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1127992
Preston, J. L., & Shin, F. (2017). Spiritual experiences evoke awe through the small self in both religious and non-religious individuals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70, 212-221. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.11.006Preston, J. L., & Shin, F. (2017).
Razavi, P., Zhang, J. W., Hekiert, D., Yoo, S. H., & Howell, R. T. (2016). Cross-cultural similarities and differences in the experience of awe. Emotion, 16(8), 1097-1101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000225
Rudd, M., Vohs, K. D., & Aaker, J. (2012). Awe expands people’s perception of time, alters decision making, and enhances well-being. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1130-1136. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797612438731
Shiota, M. N., Keltner, D., & Mossman, A. (2007). The nature of awe: Elicitors, appraisals, and effects on self-concept. Cognition and Emotion, 21(5), 944-963. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699930600923668
Silvia, P. J., Fayn, K., Nusbaum, E. C., & Beaty, R. E. (2015). Openness to experience and awe in response to nature and music: Personality and profound aesthetic experiences. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 9(4), 376-384. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/aca0000028
Stellar, J. E., Gordon, A., Anderson, C. L., Piff, P. K., McNeil, G. D., & Keltner, D. (2018). Awe and humility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 114(2), 258-269. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000109
Weger, U., & Wagemann, J. (2021). Towards a conceptual clarification of awe and wonder: A first person phenomenological enquiry. Current Psychology: A Journal for Diverse Perspectives on Diverse Psychological Issues, 40(3), 1386-1401. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-0057-7
No comments:
Post a Comment