In a new study, researchers found that a regular dose of awe is a simple way to boost healthy ‘prosocial’ emotions such as compassion and gratitude.
They found older adults who took weekly 15-minute “awe walks” for eight weeks reported increased positive emotions and less distress in their daily lives.
This shift was reflected in “selfies” participants took on their weekly walks, in which an increasing focus on their surroundings rather than themselves was paralleled by measurably broader smiles by the end of the study.
The research was conducted by a team at UC San Francisco and elsewhere.
Negative emotions, particularly loneliness, have well-documented negative effects on the health of older adults, particularly those over age 75.
But the study showed that a very simple intervention—essentially a reminder to occasionally shift our energy and attention outward instead of inward—can lead to significant improvements in emotional well-being.
Awe is a positive emotion triggered by awareness of something vastly larger than the self and not immediately understandable—such as nature, art, music, or being caught up in a collective action such as a ceremony, concert or political march.
Experiencing awe can contribute to a host of benefits including an expanded sense of time and enhanced feelings of generosity, well-being, and humility.
The researchers recruited 52 healthy older adults. They asked each to simply take at least one 15-minute walk each week for eight weeks.
For half of the participants, the researchers also described the emotion of awe and suggested trying to experience that emotion during their walks.
Answers to open-ended survey questions reflected awe walk participants’ growing sense of wonder and appreciation for the details of the world around them.
For example, one participant reflected on “the beautiful fall colors and the absence of them amidst the evergreen forest… how the leaves were no longer crunchy underfoot because of the rain and how the walk was more spongy now… the wonder that a small child feels as they explore their expanding world.”
The researchers also asked participants to take selfies at the beginning, middle, and end of each walk.
Analysis of these photos revealed a parallel, visible shift in how participants portrayed themselves: people in the awe group increasingly made themselves smaller in their photos over the course of the study, preferring to feature the landscapes around them.
At the same time, the smiles on participants’ faces grew measurably more intense.
The researchers also sent participants daily surveys throughout the eight-week study to assess their day-by-day emotional state.
The responses revealed that those in the awe group experienced significant boosts in their daily experience of positive prosocial emotions such as compassion and gratitude over the course of the study.
Participants in the control group actually took more frequent walks during the study, the researchers found, perhaps because some of them suspected that the study was focused on exercise.
However, this did not result in significant shifts in emotional well-being—or in the composition of their selfies.
This suggests the results in the awe group were really due to the experience of awe, and not just time spent exercising outside.
The effects the researchers observed were relatively moderate but were easy to evoke and grew stronger over time, suggesting the benefits could continue to grow with longer practice.
One author of the study is Virginia Sturm, Ph.D., an associate professor of neurology and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.
The study is published in Emotion.
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