How does "Use documentary and large-scale art to trigger awe" work?

Awe requires perceived vastness, and visual and narrative content that conveys scale beyond human experience can induce the emotion without requiring physical travel. The critical variable is attentional engagement: vast content watched as background wallpaper does not produce the accommodation response — the mental frameworks must actually be challenged, which requires focused engagement.

How does "Write from a small-self perspective after awe" work?

Awe spontaneously produces the small-self effect — a temporary diminishment of the ego that reduces self-focused worry and increases prosocial orientation. Journaling immediately after an awe experience captures and extends this state by requiring language that explicitly frames personal problems within a larger context. The contrast between "my big problem" and the vastness just experienced is cognitively and emotionally reorganizing.

How does "Attend to moral beauty as an everyday awe source" work?

Keltner’s research identified moral beauty — witnessing human virtue, excellence, or extraordinary skill — as a reliable awe trigger that does not require physical vastness. The mechanism is the same: a stimulus so beyond the ordinary that current mental frameworks must accommodate. Moral beauty also triggers "elevation" — Jonathan Haidt’s concept for the warm, expansive feeling that motivates us to be better ourselves.

How does "Use awe to expand perceived time" work?

Awe disrupts the brain’s ordinary temporal tracking by loading the perceptual and appraisal systems with novel, complex stimuli that require effortful processing. This engaged processing makes the subjective duration of the experience feel longer — the opposite of the time compression produced by familiar, automatic activity. Awe also reduces the urgency that drives time pressure.

How does "Build a personal catalog of micro-awe triggers" work?

Keltner’s later work, including his book "Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder," emphasized that awe does not require grand experiences — it can be found in music, mathematical elegance, a moment of human connection, or a well-crafted sentence. Identifying your personal micro-awe triggers makes awe a resource you can access daily rather than once per visit to a national park.

How does "Use awe to reconnect with something larger than yourself" work?

The small-self effect produced by awe does not leave a vacuum — it creates a temporary permeability between the self and its context. This openness predicts prosocial behavior, increased identification with larger groups (humanity, nature, the cosmos), and decreased in-group/out-group bias. Following the impulse deliberately — reaching toward what you feel part of during an awe state — amplifies and extends the prosocial and meaning effects.

Dacher Keltner

How does experiencing awe improve well-being and what practices cultivate it?

The science of vastness — and why your default mode network is the target

Short answer

Awe — the emotion triggered by encountering something vast that challenges your current mental frameworks — reliably reduces self-focused thinking, lowers inflammatory markers in some studies, increases prosocial behavior, and expands the perceived sense of time available. Dacher Keltner’s research shows awe is more accessible than people think and can be deliberately cultivated without waiting for once-in-a-decade peak experiences.

Awe has been called the emotion that makes you feel small in the best possible way. Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt’s foundational work identified its two hallmarks: perceived vastness (something much larger than the self) and the need to accommodate (the experience defies your existing mental models). What followed from their research was surprising: awe reliably quiets the self-narrative, extends perceived time, and increases generosity. It is also measurable, inducible in labs, and accessible in ordinary life far more often than people use it. Below are the practices with the mechanisms and the honest evidence.

The practices (7)

Why it works

A standard walk engages the default mode network’s self-referential processing: people use walks to think about themselves, plan, and ruminate. An awe walk — one taken with an explicit attitude of curiosity and openness to wonder — shifts attention away from the self-narrative toward the external world, producing the "small self" effect: a temporary quieting of the ego that is reliably associated with increased positive affect.

How to do it

1Schedule a 20-minute walk with one intention: to notice something vast, beautiful, or hard to explain.
2Leave earphones behind.
3When you notice something that produces even a mild sense of wonder, stop and attend to it fully for at least 30 seconds.
4Afterward, spend two minutes writing one sentence about what you noticed.

Evidence

RCT / meta-analysis

Sturm et al. (2020) found that eight weeks of weekly awe walks produced greater well-being, more prosocial emotions, and reduced self-focused attention compared to standard walks, in older adults — a randomized controlled design.

Honest caveat: The study was in older adults; generalizability to other age groups and the precise dose required are not yet established.

— Sturm et al. (2020), "Big smile, small self: Awe walks promote prosocial positive emotions in older adults," Emotion

Common mistake: Taking the walk but listening to a podcast or music — this keeps attention inward and negates the attention-outward mechanism.

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