The Science of Awe
Awe is one of the most powerful neurological and physiological interventions available to you — and it’s almost entirely free.
The Most Underused Psychological Resource
There is a particular kind of moment that most people can recall but rarely seek out deliberately. Standing at the edge of something vast — the ocean, a mountain range, a night sky unobscured by city light. Hearing a piece of music that seems to reach somewhere you didn’t know could be reached. Watching something happen that you cannot quite account for — an act of unexpected courage or generosity, a natural phenomenon that overwhelms your ability to immediately categorize it. The moment just before the mind catches up with the experience.
That is awe. And while it has been part of human experience for as long as humans have existed, it has only recently become the subject of serious scientific investigation — with results that are, appropriately, a little astonishing.
The modern scientific study of awe begins primarily with the work of psychologist Dacher Keltner at UC Berkeley, who proposed the first formal definition of the emotion in 2003. Keltner and colleague Jonathan Haidt defined awe as the experience of encountering something that is both vast — in scale, complexity, or power — and that challenges or exceeds your existing mental frameworks. It is not merely wonder, which can be contained within what you already understand. Awe specifically requires a moment of accommodation: the mental process of updating or expanding your existing frameworks to take in something that doesn’t fit within them.
This two-part structure — vastness plus accommodation — is what makes awe neurologically distinct from other positive emotions. It is not simply pleasure or excitement or even beauty. It is the specific cognitive and emotional experience of being temporarily larger than you were a moment ago.
What Awe Does to the Brain
The neuroscience of awe is still developing, but what has emerged in the last decade is striking. The most immediately measurable effect of awe is what Keltner and colleagues call the “small self” effect: a reliable, transient reduction in self-focused cognition. When we experience awe, activity in the default mode network — the brain’s self-referential processing system — decreases. The internal monologue quiets. The chronic preoccupation with personal concerns, social comparison, and the management of self-image loosens its grip.
This is not a trivial effect. The default mode network, when dominated by rumination, self-criticism, and anxious self-monitoring, is associated with depression, anxiety, and the kind of chronic psychological distress that many high-functioning people carry as a background condition. Awe temporarily interrupts this pattern — not by suppressing it, but by genuinely redirecting attention toward something larger than the self. The result is a measurable reduction in subjective stress and an increase in the sense of connection, meaning, and perspective that most people find immediately recognizable when it happens.
The physiological effects are equally significant. A series of studies by Jennifer Stellar at the University of Toronto demonstrated that awe — among all positive emotions tested — was the single strongest predictor of lower levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, the immune system proteins most directly associated with chronic inflammation and its downstream health consequences. Not happiness. Not gratitude. Not enthusiasm. Awe.
Research: Stellar, J.E., John-Henderson, N., Anderson, C.L., et al. (2015). Positive affect and markers of inflammation: Discrete positive emotions predict lower levels of inflammatory cytokines. Emotion, 15(2). This study demonstrated that awe predicted lower pro-inflammatory cytokine levels more strongly than any other positive emotion tested, establishing a direct physiological pathway between awe experience and immune function.
Nature, Summer, and the Awe We Keep Almost Having
Nature is the most reliable and most accessible awe trigger available to most people. This is not a romantic assertion — it is what the research consistently shows. Studies on awe induction across cultures and demographics find that natural environments — forests, bodies of water, open sky, mountains, coastlines — generate awe more reliably, and with greater intensity, than virtually any other category of experience.
The reasons are neurological. Natural environments engage what researchers call soft fascination — gentle, effortless interest that requires no directed attention and produces no cognitive fatigue. The visual complexity of natural settings — the fractal patterns in trees, the movement of water, the shifting of light across an open landscape — engages the brain’s pattern-recognition systems in a way that is both stimulating and restorative. Add vastness — the scale of a mountain range, the depth of a night sky, the expanse of the ocean — and the conditions for awe become nearly optimal.
Summer in particular creates a rare convergence of awe-favorable conditions: longer light, more time outdoors, travel to unfamiliar landscapes, the kind of slowing-down that makes noticing possible. And yet most people spend the summer managing it rather than inhabiting it — photographing sunsets rather than watching them, filling every moment with plans, checking in even on vacation, treating the natural world as a backdrop rather than a foreground.
“The most common response to the most beautiful things in the world is to take a photograph of them. The second most common response is to share the photograph. The rarest response is to simply be there, without mediation, for a moment longer than feels comfortable.”
The research on awe and time perception is particularly relevant here. Studies by Melanie Rudd at Stanford found that experiencing awe produces a subjective expansion of time — the sense that there is more of it available, that the present moment is larger than it normally feels. This effect is the direct opposite of the time-pressure and scarcity that characterizes most modern experience. Awe does not just change how you feel. It changes how time feels. And a summer in which you have genuinely experienced awe is a summer that will feel, in retrospect, like it contained more than a summer ordinarily does.
Research: 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). This study demonstrated that awe experiences produce a reliable subjective expansion of time, increase patience, and reduce the sense of time scarcity — effects not found with other positive emotions tested.
Three Things To Try This Week
The full 21-day Awe Practice Guide, the personal awe inventory, and the summer awe planning page are exclusive to Elite subscribers. Here are three things you can begin today.
01 GO SOMEWHERE VAST AND LEAVE YOUR PHONE IN YOUR POCKET
The single most reliable awe intervention is also the simplest: put yourself in the presence of something large and give it your full, unmediated attention for longer than feels comfortable. Not to photograph it, not to share it — just to be in it. The ocean. A park at dusk. An open field. A clear night sky. Researchers who study awe induction find that the duration of unmediated exposure matters: awe requires enough time for the accommodation process to begin. Two minutes of looking while also checking your phone is not the same as five minutes of genuine presence.
02 SEEK OUT ONE THING THIS WEEK THAT IS BIGGER THAN YOU CAN EXPLAIN
Awe can be induced by more than natural landscapes. Great music heard with full attention. A film or book that ends and leaves you sitting quietly before you move. A conversation with someone whose life experience or k
nowledge genuinely expands something in you. A moment of human courage or generosity that you witness. The common thread is vastness and accommodation — something that exceeds your current framework and asks it to grow. This week, seek one thing in that category deliberately, rather than stumbling into it by accident.
03 NOTICE THE ALMOST-AWE MOMENTS YOU’RE CURRENTLY MOVING THROUGH
Most people encounter the preconditions for awe regularly and pass through them without allowing the experience to fully develop. A beautiful sky glimpsed while walking to the car. A piece of music that starts to reach something before it gets turned down. A view from a window that is noticed and then left. Begin noticing these almost-awe moments — not to manufacture emotion, but to pause long enough to let what is already beginning to happen actually happen. The experience is usually there. What is missing is the permission to stop and stay in it.
The 21-Day Awe Practice Guide
The complete Awe Practice Guide — including your personal awe inventory, the 21-day practice sequence, the reflection journal, and the summer awe planning page — is available to download below. The guide is designed to be used across July: one practice per day, building from the most accessible awe triggers toward the more expansive ones.
Join my Elite Subscribers to access today.
