Journal of Positive Psychology
February 6, 2025
Yuling Wang, Tonglin Jiang, Wei Yan
Awe, an emotion that makes people feel part of something larger than themselves, appears to promote wise reasoning—the ability to consider different perspectives, seek compromise, and recognize the limits of one's own knowledge. Across four studies involving 3,700 participants, including cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental designs, awe consistently predicted or enhanced wise reasoning. This effect was not simply due to awe being a positive emotion, nor to feeling small. Instead, the relationship was explained by a sense of self-transcendence, or feeling connected to something beyond the self. The findings suggest that experiencing awe can help people reason more wisely, especially in conflicts.
Journal of Positive Psychology
August 21, 2024
Xinyu Pan, Tonglin Jiang
Awe, a self-transcendent emotion, fosters optimism by promoting a sense of self-transcendence. Four experiments showed that experiencing awe boosted optimism more than amusement, and that this effect was driven by self-transcendence rather than feelings of self-smallness. The findings suggest that cultivating awe can enhance optimism through self-transcendence.
Journal of Positive Psychology
September 14, 2023
Abigail P. Blyler, M. Seligman
Combining artificial intelligence with stream-of-consciousness can make personal narratives explicit. Twenty-six adults each provided 50 stream-of-consciousness thoughts, which ChatGPT-4 used along with demographics and prompts to generate a personal narrative. Participants rated these AI-generated narratives as highly accurate, surprising, and insightful. Twenty-five of 26 participants rated the narratives as 'Completely Accurate' or 'Mostly Accurate', 19 found them 'Very Surprising' or 'Somewhat Surprising', and 19 learned something new about themselves. This suggests AI can support self-discovery in therapy and coaching.
Journal of Positive Psychology
September 7, 2023
Yuwan Dai, Tonglin Jiang
Awe promotes inspiration, and this effect is explained by self-transcendence—the feeling of being part of something larger than oneself. Across five studies with 941 participants, awe increased inspiration as measured by actual behavior, ratings by others, and self-reported scales. The effect held when awe was compared with general positive emotions (amusement and happiness) and with nature, and when the awe experience was threatening. Self-transcendence consistently mediated the link between awe and inspiration.
Journal of Positive Psychology
August 7, 2022
Millicent S. Curlee, A. Ahrens
Practicing the Ignatian examen, a Catholic contemplative exercise, increased momentary self-transcendent positive emotions (STPE) and the value placed on those emotions. Autonomy did not influence this effect, but people who valued autonomy more experienced fewer STPE. No significant changes in eudaimonic motivation occurred. The work highlights the value of studying diverse contemplative practices from ancient traditions.