Abstract:

Emotions shape important cognitive and social functions, such as processes of identity and relationship formation. Specifically, awe is a self-transcendent emotion that shifts our focus from inward concern to an outward sense of universality and interconnectedness. Past researchers have typically used nature or outer space scenes to elicit awe in the lab, and have measured its effects on a general sense of connectedness to others. Research on interpersonal types of awe is scarce. Plus, we do not know whether awe has the power to bind people together even in challenging contexts that include instances of social rejection and discrimination, and more research is needed to understand this emotion in diverse, non-student underrepresented samples.

We investigate the role of awe in the context of acculturation, in a community sample of immigrants residing in Spain (N = 100), and we use general (i.e., “to humanity”) and specific (“to the host culture”) measures of connectedness. Participants were exposed to two awe-inducing videos: (a) a prototypical nature awe video and (b) a cultural interpersonal awe video (i.e., depicting a collective tradition of the host culture), in a counterbalanced order. In between the awe-inducing videos, they all visualized an ethnic rejection video, that elicited a negative emotional response. Repeated measures ANOVA and conditional process analyses indicate that it was the cultural interpersonal awe experience that significantly triggered connectedness to both the host culture and to humanity, even after the ethnic rejection experience.

This webinar aims to present the substantive results of this lab study on the emotion of awe, while discussing some methodological points and challenges characteristic of cross-cultural research on emotions, related for example to the construction and design of studies, choice of methodologies, samples, items’ translation, types of data collected, or interpretation of data.

Authors: Elia Soler Pastor, Maria Monroy, Craig L. Anderson, Dacher Keltner

Join via Zoom: https://upf-edu.zoom.us/j/92502053068

Meeting ID: 925 0205 3068