results. In accordance with his overall study data, my heart rate did
decline while viewing the monitor. But not much happened with my
skin conductance, nor with my facial muscles that Anderson had been
surreptitiously monitoring with a hidden camera.
As to why the heart rate slows while viewing the sublime,
Anderson has a theory. “Things that cause people to feel awe tend to
be information-rich, vast, and things that we have trouble wrapping
our minds around,” he said. “So basically, the body is quieting down a
bit so that it can take in information in the environment.”
My vagus nerve did not seem to get the memo. I was not even
experiencing one of the telltale signs of awe that is surely one of the
best words in science: piloerection, or hair standing on end. Sitting in
a cubicle with electrodes sticking out of my finger, I did not feel like
I was hurtling through deep space, nor, as Strayer had argued in Utah,
is watching videos of nature much like the real experience of standing
in some enormous viewshed taking in the sensory gifts of the
biosphere. In fact, perhaps the absence of scale-induced awe is one of
the reasons virtual nature will likely never match the real thing.
Burke’s essential ingredient of vastness is hard to simulate on a
screen, although a background soundtrack by John Williams certainly
helps.
Among other things, awe promotes curiosity, explains Anderson.
This is because we experience things out of our normal frame of
reference, things we can’t easily categorize or understand. When we
are curious, we are drawn out of ourselves. We seek information from
others. With their mixture of fear, beauty and mystery, these
experiences also tend to get seared into our memory. I will probably
never forget seeing my son’s face for the first time, or peering into
the Grand Canyon as a child, or watching Northern Lights swirl in an
Alaskan sky or driving through a surreal lightning storm in Texas.
We can also experience awe before very charismatic individuals
like cult leaders, celebrities, kings and fascist dictators, who embody