Michelle Shiota, a professor of social psychology at Arizona State University, was one of the first to discover the benefits of awe. She is particularly interested in how awe can remove our “mental filters” to encourage more flexible thinking.
Take a look at memory. If someone tells us a story, we usually remember what we think we should have heard rather than the specifics of the whole event. This can mean that we miss unexpected or unusual elements that reinforce the clarity and specificity of what happened. We may even form false memories of things that didn’t happen, but that we think probably happened.
What’s in it for you?
Last, but not least, awe has tremendous benefits for our mental health. Like our generous uplift, this comes from a shrinking sense of self and a reduction in thinking anxiously.
This can be very important because rumination is a known risk factor for depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. “You’re often so narrowly focused on one situation that you don’t think about anything else,” says Cross, whose book Chatter explores the effects of this negative self-talk. Awe forces us to open up, he says, so that we can break the regurgitated cycle of thinking. He said. “When you’re confronted with something huge and indescribable, you feel small, and your negative talk ends there.”
As evidence, Cross points to a remarkable experiment conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). The participants were veterans and troubled youth, many of whom were under severe life stress. (Some even had the aftermath of post-traumatic stress disorder.)