lottery tickets, telling them they were free to give some away to
people who didn’t get any. The researchers found that people who
reported experiencing the most awe gave away 40 percent more
tickets than those who reported the least feelings of awe. Those who
experienced other emotions didn’t behave more generously.
Next, they attempted to induce awe in real time by taking subjects
to a tall grove of Tasmanian blue gum eucalyptus trees, and asking
them to look up for one minute. They sent other subjects to look up at
a tall science building. In both settings, a lab assistant “accidentally”
dropped a handful of pens. Even after just one minute of awe, the
tree-gazers were more helpful, picking up more pens on average than
their counterparts.
But in one of the most provocative studies of all, Keltner and
colleagues asked participants how many times in the previous month
and on that very day they experienced up to twenty negative and
positive emotions such as fear, anger, joy, surprise, etc. They also
took saliva samples from the subjects and measured their levels of
cytokine IL-6, a marker for inflammation. Part of the immune system,
these signal molecules help heal wounds and fight illness. In healthy
people, lower levels are considered better, while chronic high levels
have been linked to depression, stress and poor muscle repair. Of all
the positive emotions, experiencing awe was the only one that
predicted significantly lower levels of IL-6. Why would this be the
case? Keltner posits it’s because awe causes us to reinforce social
connections, which are in turn known to lower inflammation and
stress. Awe wants to be shared.
Not all awe is positive. But even really scary awe—the kind that
happens when a hurricane or a twister levels your town—has a
remarkable ability to spur people to help each other and to unite a
community toward common goals. It’s evolutionarily adaptive to
reach out and connect when confronted with vast forces we don’t
totally understand. That’s how we get by.