Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2015, Vol. 108, No. 6, 883– 899

© 2015 American Psychological Association
0022-3514/15/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000018

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Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior
Paul K. Piff

Pia Dietze

University of California, Irvine

New York University

Matthew Feinberg

Daniel M. Stancato and Dacher Keltner

University of Toronto

University of California, Berkeley

Awe is an emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli that transcend current frames of reference.
Guided by conceptual analyses of awe as a collective emotion, across 5 studies (N ⫽ 2,078) we tested
the hypothesis that awe can result in a diminishment of the individual self and its concerns, and increase
prosocial behavior. In a representative national sample (Study 1), dispositional tendencies to experience
awe predicted greater generosity in an economic game above and beyond other prosocial emotions (e.g.,
compassion). In follow-up experiments, inductions of awe (relative to various control states) increased
ethical decision-making (Study 2), generosity (Study 3), and prosocial values (Study 4). Finally, a
naturalistic induction of awe in which participants stood in a grove of towering trees enhanced prosocial
helping behavior and decreased entitlement compared to participants in a control condition (Study 5).
Mediational data demonstrate that the effects of awe on prosociality are explained, in part, by feelings
of a small self. These findings indicate that awe may help situate individuals within broader social
contexts and enhance collective concern.
Keywords: awe, prosocial behavior, altruism, helping, small self

Firsthand accounts of awe felt during experiences with religion
and spirituality, nature, art, and music often center upon two
themes: the feeling of being diminished in the presence of something greater than the self, and the motivation to be good to others
(Emerson, 1836/1982; James, 1902/1985; Keltner & Haidt, 2003).
From one perspective, this is surprising. Awe is an emotional
response to perceptually vast stimuli that defy one’s accustomed
frame of reference in some domain (Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Shiota,
Keltner, & Mossman, 2007). People typically experience awe in
response to asocial stimuli like natural wonders, panoramic views,
and beautiful art. Why, then, would awe produce the sense of a
small self and more prosocial tendencies?
One answer to this question is found in treatments of awe as a
collective emotion (e.g., Durkheim, 1887/1972; Horberg, Oveis, &
Keltner, 2011; Keltner & Haidt, 1999, 2003; Spears et al., 2011).
Within these analyses, it is claimed that awe produces specific
cognitive and behavioral tendencies that enable individuals to fold
into collaborative social groups, and engage in collective action.
Action within collectives, including collaboration, cooperation,
and coaction, requires a diminished emphasis on the self and its
interests and a shift to attending to the larger entities one is a part
of (e.g., small groups, social collectives, and humanity). Enhanced
prosocial tendencies—inclinations to share, care, and assist—further enable individuals to function more effectively within social
collectives (de Waal, 2008; Keltner, Kogan, Piff, & Saturn, 2014;
Nowak, 2006; Sober & Wilson, 1998). Experiences of awe, this
reasoning holds, enable individuals to be effective members of
social collectives, through shifts in attention to the self and through
prosocial behavior. It is perhaps for this reason that awe is central
to experiences in religion, spirituality, and political engagement,
all processes in which the individual engages in collective action

The saintly character is the character for which spiritual emotions
are the habitual center of the personal energy. . . . They are these:
A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world’s selfish
little interests; and a conviction, not merely intellectual, but as it
were sensible, of the existence of an Ideal Power. . . . An immense
elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt
down. . . . A shifting of the emotional center toward loving and
harmonious affections . . . [which brings] increase of charity,
tenderness for fellow-creatures. (James, 1902/1985, pp. 219 –221)
Calvin: Look at all the stars! The universe just goes out forever and ever!
Hobbes: It kind of makes you wonder why man considers himself
such a big screaming deal. (Watterson, 2005, Vol. 3, p. 370)

Awe is a cherished and transformative experience that is at the
center of many collective processes (Keltner & Haidt, 2003).

Paul K. Piff, Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine; Pia Dietze, Department of Psychology,
New York University; Matthew Feinberg, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; Daniel M. Stancato and Dacher Keltner,
Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley.
We thank Yasmin Abbaszadeh, Christian Cazares, David Chen, Liana
Gheorma, Millie Huckabee, Xiaoshan Li, Maia Menschik, Sally Ng, Matthew Nguyen, Oswaldo Rosales, Koji Takahashi, Nina Tian, and Stephanie
Yu for their invaluable help with data collection. We would also like to
thank E. J. Horberg, whose insights significantly strengthened this work.
This research was supported in part by a grant from the John Templeton
Foundation (24288) awarded to Dacher Keltner.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Paul K.
Piff, 4554 Social and Behavioral Sciences Gateway, Irvine, CA 926977050. E-mail: paulpiff@gmail.com
883

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PIFF, DIETZE, FEINBERG, STANCATO, AND KELTNER

and derives a more acute sense of collective identity (e.g., Shariff
& Norenzayan, 2007).
Guided by this theorizing, in the current research we investigate
the influence of awe on different forms of prosociality. We predict
that the experience of awe will increase prosocial behavior, and
that these effects will be driven by what we refer to as the “small
self”—a relatively diminished sense of self (i.e., feeling one’s
being and goals to be less significant) vis-à-vis something deemed
vaster than the individual.1 In pursuing this line of inquiry, we
provide the first experimental evidence that documents the effects
of awe upon prosocial tendencies and that illuminates the mechanism underlying these effects, which to date have only been the
subject of theoretical speculation.

Awe, Vastness, Accommodation, and
the Small Self
Social relationships are central to social life and vital to human
survival (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995; House, Landis, & Umberson, 1988; Piff, Stancato, Martinez, Kraus, & Keltner, 2012;
Sober & Wilson, 1998). Decisions about where, when, and with
whom to act in a prosocial fashion are critical to the formation and
maintenance of relationships. On the one hand, prosocial behavior
can enable social ties that are reciprocal and mutually beneficial
(Keltner et al., 2014). On the other hand, prosocial behavior incurs
many costs, and those who act prosocially risk their sacrifices
being unreciprocated or even exploited.
This cost-benefit analysis of prosociality has prompted studies
of the ways in which emotions guide how individuals negotiate
this trade-off, which is sometimes referred to as the “trust problem” or the “commitment problem” (e.g., Frank, 1988). Research
finds that what might be called more social emotions like gratitude,
love, moral elevation, and compassion can prompt behaviors that
benefit others, often at an expense to oneself (e.g., Bartlett &
DeSteno, 2006; DeSteno, Bartlett, Baumann, Williams, & Dickens, 2010; Gonzaga, Keltner, Londahl, & Smith, 2001; Schnall,
Roper, & Fessler, 2010; Piff, Kraus, Côté, Cheng, & Keltner,
2010). Next to nothing is known about how awe, which is typically
elicited by information-rich stimuli like panoramic nature views
instead of social stimuli (Shiota et al., 2007), can likewise influence prosocial tendencies so vital to trust and commitment.
Awe involves positively valenced feelings of wonder and
amazement. Awe arises via appraisals of stimuli that are vast, that
transcend current frames of reference, and that require new schemata to accommodate what is being perceived (Keltner & Haidt,
2003). Although many stimuli can inspire awe, from beautiful
buildings to elegant equations, the prototypical awe experience, at
least in Western cultures, involves encounters with natural phenomena that are immense in size, scope, or complexity (e.g., the
night sky, the ocean; Shiota, Campos, & Keltner, 2003; Shiota et
al., 2007). However elicited, experiences of awe are unified by a
core theme: perceptions of vastness that dramatically expand the
observer’s usual frame of reference in some dimension or domain
(Shiota et al., 2007).
Past studies have begun to document the influences of awe on
social cognition, effects that can be understood in terms of how
awe is based in perceived vastness that challenges one’s normal
frame of reference. For example, awe can cause people to feel they
have more available time, which can enhance their well-being

(Rudd et al., 2012). Some experiences of awe may also trigger a
sense of uncertainty and motivate people to seek out order—for
example, by perceiving intentionality in randomness (Valdesolo &
Graham, 2014).
Awe has also been associated with a sense that one is a part of
something larger than oneself, most typically larger categories
such as a community, a culture, the human species, or nature.
Shiota and colleagues (2007) found that people high in dispositional awe (but not pride or joy) were less likely to define themselves using individuated terms such as “special” or “one-of-akind” and more likely to emphasize their membership in larger
categories, for example by describing themselves as “a person” or
“an inhabitant of the Earth.” An induction of awe in which participants stood next to a full-sized replica of a Tyrannosaurus Rex
skeleton—that elicited feelings of awe but not other positive
emotions—similarly expanded participants’ self-definitions to include more universal social categories (Shiota et al., 2007). In a
similar vein, Van Cappellen and Saroglou (2012) found that eliciting awe via a nature video caused participants to feel more
connected to people in general on the Inclusion of the Other in the
Self Scale (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992).
Most relevant to our theorizing, awe appears to also trigger an
almost metaphorical sense of smallness of the self. In one study,
participants who recalled an experience of awe recounted feeling
small relative to the environment (Campos, Shiota, Keltner,
Gonzaga, & Goetz, 2013). In other research, participants primed to
recall a past personal experience of awe reported perceptions of
something greater than themselves, feeling smaller and less significant, and a sense that their attention was less focused on
personal day-to-day concerns (Shiota et al., 2007).2 Taken together, these studies suggest that awe directs attention to entities
vaster than the self and more collective dimensions of personal
identity, and reduces the significance the individual attaches to
personal concerns and goals. We note, though, that much of this
evidence involves narrative data in which the individual recalls
salient themes of a past experience of awe; clearly, more experimental work is needed to show that awe causes such shifts in
self-representation.
These lines of research on awe, self-categorization, and feelings
of smallness indicate that awe can significantly alter the selfconcept, in ways that reflect a shift in attention toward larger
entities and diminishment of the individual self—a shift that is
vital to the collaboration and cooperation required of social groups
(e.g., Keltner et al., 2014; Nowak, 2006; Sober & Wilson, 1998).
Guided by these results and our conceptual analysis, we examine
how awe, beyond influencing self-construal, also influences
whether individuals behave in ways that prioritize the self versus
others in the social environment. We test the overarching hypoth1
“Small self” may have many instantiations that one would derive from
the study of the self, including reduced self-awareness, less self-conscious
emotions, and decreased emphasis given to self-relevant goals. Here we
conceptualize the small self as a relative diminishment of the individual
self and its interests vis-à-vis something perceived to be more vast and
powerful than oneself.
2
We conceptualize these self-related appraisals as related to but distinct
from perceptions of vastness per se, which refer to the sense that one has
encountered something immense in size, scope, number, or complexity and
do not directly or necessarily implicate the self.

 AWE, THE SMALL SELF, AND PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

esis that awe should enhance prosociality by causing people to be
more willing to forego self-interest in favor of others’ welfare.

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Awe and Prosocial Behavior
Although there is no direct evidence linking awe to prosocial
behavior, several lines of research lend credence to our hypothesis
that awe will increase prosocial tendencies via a sense of a small
self. A first is a literature indicating that processes that diminish
attention to the individual self and its interests can increase prosocial tendencies. In one study, individuals who reported decreased
feelings of self-importance donated more to a collective resource
and were more selfless in their relationships (Campbell, Bonacci,
Shelton, Exline, & Bushman, 2004). Similarly, narcissism—a trait
reflecting an inflated evaluation of the self—is associated with a
disregard for others’ needs (McGregor, Nail, Kocalar, & Haji,
2013; Wink, 1991). In the study of values, self-transcendence
values, which emphasize diminished self-importance and increased attention to others and nature, are positively related to
prosocial tendencies and empathy; self-enhancement values, which
include an increased valuation of power and achievement, correlate negatively with these outcomes (Boer & Fischer, 2013; Caprara, Alessandri, & Eisenberg, 2012). Finally, those individuals
who report feeling part of a greater entity, such as humanity,
nature, or a spiritual force tend to report increased gratitude and
empathy— emotions tightly linked to prosociality (McCullough,
Emmons, & Tsang, 2002). Together, these findings indicate that
placing less significance on the self and self-interest vis-à-vis
something vaster than the self can increase prosociality. To the
extent that awe triggers feelings that one’s being and goals are less
significant relative to something vaster than the self, it should also
increase prosocial tendencies.
A second literature that sets the stage for our hypothesis involves studies of the social effects of nature—a primary elicitor of
awe (e.g., Davis & Gatersleben, 2013; Griskevicius, Shiota, &
Neufeld, 2010; Shiota et al., 2007). Nature broadly refers to areas,
from parks to pristine wilderness, containing elements of living
systems, such as plants and nonhuman animals (Bratman, Hamilton, & Daily, 2012). Weinstein, Przybylski, and Ryan (2009)
found that exposure to nature versus urban environments can
differentially influence sociality, as evident in the self-reported
importance people place on social relationships and their levels of
generosity. In investigations in this realm, participants behaved
more generously when in a room with plants as opposed to a
plant-free room (Weinstein et al., 2009). After being exposed to
more beautiful as opposed to less beautiful nature, participants
offered more help to an experimenter by folding Japanese paper
cranes for victims of a tsunami, tendencies that were driven by
heightened positive affect (Zhang, Piff, Iyer, Koleva, & Keltner,
2014). Our research diverges from this prior work in several
critical ways, by focusing on awe rather than on nature or beauty,
by ascertaining whether nonnature-based awe triggers prosociality,
and by disentangling these effects from other positive emotions
and more general positive mood (for distinctions between awe and
beauty, see Burke, 1757/1990; Cohen, Gruber, & Keltner, 2010;
Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Nonetheless, these prior studies indicate
that experiences of awe toward nature may increase prosocial
behavior.

885

Our conceptual analysis of awe as well as the empirical findings
we have just described lay the groundwork for this investigation.
None of the studies we have reviewed offer direct evidence for
how experiences of awe increase prosocial tendencies. To test this
possibility, awe needs to be both measured and manipulated, and
contrasted with other prosocial emotions, in controlled interactions
in which prosocial behavior is directly assessed. These considerations guided the present investigation.

The Present Research
Following others, we reason that the experience of awe is
self-diminishing vis-à-vis something vaster than the individual,
and reduces emphasis on the desires and concerns of the self (e.g.,
Campos et al., 2013; Shiota et al., 2007). We hypothesize that the
experience of awe will trigger a sense of a small self and, in turn,
lead to greater prosocial behavior. The five studies reported here
directly examined this hypothesis, testing the effects of awe upon
several kinds of prosociality, including generosity, helping, and
ethicality. In Study 1, we tested whether dispositional (or trait)
tendencies to experience awe predicted generosity in an economic
game. In follow-up experiments, we investigated whether manipulations of awe increased ethical decision-making (Study 2), generosity (Study 3), and prosocial values (Study 4), and whether a
sense of a small self mediated these effects. Finally, in Study 5, we
immersed participants in an awe-inspiring environment to test its
effects on entitlement, ethical decision-making, and prosocial
helping behavior. In light of recent concerns about biases in
college samples (e.g., Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010), we
took pains to ensure that our studies were demographically diverse,
incorporating nationally representative and online samples, as well
as student samples. Moreover, we captured the experience of awe
at the trait and state level, and through varied manipulations of
awe, including narrative recall, compelling videos, and in vivo
experience amid tall trees. Our investigation also examined naturerelated awe and awe produced by nonnature stimuli.
We also tested alternative explanations of the hypothesized
association between awe and prosociality. Most importantly, positive emotions can lead to increases in prosocial behavior (e.g.,
George & Brief, 1992; Isen, 1987; Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener,
2005). This empirical literature raises the question of whether the
hypothesized influences of awe upon prosociality are unique to
awe or simply part of the more general tendency for positive states
to increase prosociality. In light of this concern, in Study 1 we
controlled for other positive prosocial states (e.g., love, compassion), in Study 2 we pitted awe against pride, in Study 3 we pitted
awe against amusement, and in Study 4 we pitted a negative
induction of awe against a positive one, all means by which we
sought to establish the specific contribution of awe to prosociality.

Study 1: Dispositional Levels of Awe Predict
Generosity in an Economic Game
In Study 1 we tested whether awe is associated with increased
prosocial behavior in a nationally representative sample. Participants reported their dispositional tendencies to experience several
distinct positive emotions, including awe (Shiota, Keltner, & John,
2006; Stellar, Manzo, Kraus, & Keltner, 2012). Participants also
completed a version of the “dictator game”—a widely used single

 886

PIFF, DIETZE, FEINBERG, STANCATO, AND KELTNER

trial economic game that assesses prosocial sharing (Forsythe,
Horowitz, Savin, & Sefton, 1994), and is predictive of “real world”
prosociality (e.g., returning a misdirected letter containing money;
Benz & Meier, 2008; Franzen & Pointner, 2013; Stoop, 2014).
Measuring dispositional tendencies to experience positive emotions other than awe, such as love and compassion, allowed us to
ascertain the unique contribution of awe to prosocial behavior.

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Method
Participants. There were 1,519 participants (752 male, 767
female) who were drawn from a Knowledge Networks nationally
representative panel and paid to complete the study (see Skitka &
Sargis, 2006). Participants ranged in age from 24 to 93 years (M ⫽
50.19, SD ⫽ 16.72). Seventy-two percent were European American, 12% were Latino/a, 10% were African American, 2% identified as mixed race, and 4% indicated “other.” Participants represented all 50 U.S. states with ⬃11% living in California, 8% in
Texas, 6% in Florida, 6% in New York, and 5% in Pennsylvania,
and the remaining states each representing under 5% of the sample.
Materials and procedure. As part of a larger survey examining individual differences in morality (http://kenan.ethics.duke
.edu/attitudes/resources/measuring-morality), participants completed a series of demographic questions. Participants also
completed an abbreviated version of the revised Dispositional
Positive Emotions Scale, a well-validated measure of individual
differences in dispositional tendencies to experience seven distinct
positive emotions, including awe (DPES-r; Shiota et al., 2006).
The questionnaire contained seven subscales, each consisting of
three items, to assess amusement (e.g., “There is a lot of humor in
my life”; ␣ ⫽ .85; M ⫽ 5.05, SD ⫽ 1.13), awe (e.g., “I often feel
awe”; ␣ ⫽ .83; M ⫽ 4.62, SD ⫽ 1.16), compassion (e.g., “I am a
very compassionate person”; ␣ ⫽ .78; M ⫽ 5.27, SD ⫽ 1.02),
contentment (e.g., “When I think about my life I experience a deep
feeling of contentment”; ␣ ⫽ .83; M ⫽ 5.02, SD ⫽ 1.10), enthusiasm (e.g., “I get great pleasure from pursuing my goals”; ␣ ⫽
.63; M ⫽ 5.27, SD ⫽ .90), love (e.g., “I grow to love people who
are kind to me”; ␣ ⫽ .77; M ⫽ 5.24, SD ⫽ .97), and pride (“It feels
good to know that people look up to me”; ␣ ⫽ .78; M ⫽ 5.50,
SD ⫽ .89). Participants responded to each item on a scale ranging
from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Participants could
also select ⫺1 (refuse to answer); 13 participants (less than 1%)
selected this response and their data were treated as missing.
Participants were then randomly assigned to complete one of
two versions of the dictator game (e.g., Bolton, Katok, & Zwick,
1998). For both versions, participants learned that they would play
as a “decider” in a distribution task. As deciders, participants were
told they would receive 10 raffle tickets that were theirs to keep.
Depending on the version, these 10 raffle tickets were each worth
one entry into a drawing for either $10 or $500. Participants in
both conditions then decided how many of the 10 raffle tickets, if
any, they wanted to share with another participant they had been
paired with that had been randomly assigned to the role of a
“receiver,” who did not have any raffle tickets to start with and
would receive any tickets they decided to transfer to him or her.
Participants could also select ⫺1 (refuse to answer); 21 participants (1.4%) chose this response and their data were treated as
missing. The average number of tickets given to the partner across
both dictator games was M ⫽ 4.24 (SD ⫽ 2.49)—a level of

generosity comparable with that observed in similar studies (e.g.,
Fowler & Kam, 2007; Piff et al., 2010). Upon conclusion of the
study, participants were entered into the raffle on the basis of the
number of tickets they had kept and winners were selected.

Results and Discussion
Is dispositional awe associated with increased generosity?
We first tested the zero-order correlations between each of the
DPES-r subscales and dictator game giving. These correlations are
displayed in Table 1. As the table clearly shows, increased tendencies to experience awe were positively and significantly associated with generosity in both the $10 and $500 versions of the
dictator game as well as with a composite of the two (to which
each participant contributed one score). Other emotions were also
associated with generosity, including compassion and love.
Does awe predict generosity over and above other positive
emotions? We next tested whether the positive correlation between awe and generosity might be confounded by other variables.
For instance, this relationship could be accounted for by the
overlap between awe and other positive emotions or by a demographic variable (e.g., age, gender) that might covary with both
awe and generosity. We tested this in the context of a regression
analysis in which we examined the association between awe and
generosity while controlling for each of the other positive emotion
subscales, as well as age, gender (1 ⫽ male, 2 ⫽ female), and
ethnicity (0 ⫽ non-White, 1 ⫽ White). We present the results of
these regression analyses in Table 2. As Table 2 shows, individual
differences in dispositional awe tended to predict prosocial giving
in the dictator game even when controlling for other positive
emotions and demographic variables. Of interest to the authors,
though in the expected direction, awe was not a statistically significant predictor of giving in the $10 raffle. However, awe did
significantly predict increased generosity in the higher payoff $500
raffle. Considering that the greater stakes of the second raffle may
outweigh social desirability or impression management concerns,
behavior in this raffle may represent a more authentic type of
prosociality (see also Andersen, Ertaç, Gneezy, Hoffman, & List,
2011). Nonetheless, when giving in the $10 and $500 dictator
games were combined into a single measure of generosity, shown
in the rightmost column of Table 2, awe was a significant predictor. It is important to note that other emotions were also indepen-

Table 1
Zero-Order Correlations Between Subscales of DPES-R and
Generosity in the $10- and $500-Lottery Payout Versions of the
Dictator Game as Well as the Two Games Combined

Amusement
Awe
Compassion
Contentment
Enthusiasm
Love
Pride

$10 dictator
game

$500 dictator
game

Combined

0.019
0.099ⴱⴱ
0.132ⴱⴱⴱ
0.100ⴱⴱ
0.029
0.072ⴱ
0.037

0.018
0.151ⴱⴱⴱ
0.116ⴱⴱ
0.148ⴱⴱⴱ
0.003
0.063
⫺0.016

.018
.123ⴱⴱⴱ
.119ⴱⴱⴱ
.123ⴱⴱⴱ
.014
.064ⴱ
.010

Note. DPES-r ⫽ Dispositional Positive Emotions Scale.
ⴱ
p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01. ⴱⴱⴱ p ⬍ .001.

 AWE, THE SMALL SELF, AND PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

887

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Table 2
Predicting Prosocial Giving From Age, Gender (1 ⫽ Male, 2 ⫽ Female), Ethnicity
(0 ⫽ Non-White, 1 ⫽ White), and All Positive Emotion Subscales of DPES-r

Age
Gender
Ethnicity
Amusement
Awe
Compassion
Contentment
Enthusiasm
Love
Pride

$10 dictator game

$500 dictator game

Combined

0.009 (0.064)
0.093 (0.019)
⫺0.369 (⫺0.068)
⫺0.040 (⫺0.019)
0.096 (0.046)
0.301 (0.126)ⴱ
0.088 (0.039)
⫺0.096 (⫺0.034)
0.032 (0.013)
⫺0.132 (⫺0.049)

0.006 (0.038)
0.183 (0.037)
0.340 (0.061)
⫺0.204 (⫺0.094)ⴱ
0.238 (0.111)ⴱ
0.264 (0.107)†
0.328 (0.146)ⴱⴱ
⫺0.120 (⫺0.045)
0.089 (0.034)
⫺0.419 (⫺0.148)ⴱⴱ

0.009 (0.058)ⴱ
0.106 (0.021)
⫺0.051 (⫺0.009)
⫺0.109 (⫺0.050)ⴱ
0.167 (0.078)ⴱ
0.260 (0.107)ⴱⴱ
0.204 (0.090)ⴱ
⫺0.125 (⫺0.045)
0.067 (0.026)
⫺0.249 (⫺0.089)ⴱ

Note. Unstandardized and standardized regression weights (in parentheses) are shown. DPES-r ⫽ Dispositional Positive Emotions Scale.
†
p ⫽ .05. ⴱ p ⬍ .05. ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01. ⴱⴱⴱ p ⬍ .001.

dently associated with generosity (such as compassion and contentment), suggesting unique pathways from these emotions to
prosocial behavior.
These results support our hypothesis that awe is associated with
increased prosociality. Though the size of this effect was modest,
it held when controlling for dispositional tendencies to experience
other positive emotions, including love and compassion— emotions that have well-documented and robust influences on prosocial responding (Eisenberg & Miller, 1987; Kogan et al., 2010).
Moreover, these findings emerged in a demographically diverse
sample of participants, who ranged considerably in geography,
age, and ethnicity, indicating that the association between awe and
prosociality may be generalizable. However, the correlational nature of the current results constrains their interpretability. Thus, in
Studies 2 through 5 we turn our focus to experimental inductions
of awe so as to test their causal effects on prosocial behavior.

Study 2: Awe Increases Ethicality via Feelings of a
Small Self
In Study 2, we experimentally induced awe and control states
(pride, neutral affect) by having participants recall a prototypical
experience of a target emotion—a well-validated technique for
inducing specific emotions (e.g., Griskevicius et al., 2010; Piff,
Martinez, & Keltner, 2012). Contrasting the effects of awe, which
is itself a positive emotion, with those of a different positive
emotion, pride, allowed us to test the specific effects of awe above
and beyond general positivity. We chose pride as a comparison for
several reasons. Although both emotions are positive and arousing,
awe differs from pride in terms of its elicitors and self-related
appraisals: whereas awe is externally elicited (e.g., triggered by
natural vistas, novel art) and diminishes the self, pride is internally
focused on personal accomplishment or abilities and may lead to
self-enhancement (e.g., Tracy & Robins, 2004). Thus, awe and
pride implicate the self-concept in contrasting ways, which may
lead to downstream differences in prosociality. Moreover, to the
extent that pride enhances prosociality, as some evidence suggests,
it does so by triggering achievement motivations (e.g., Cheng,
Tracy, & Henrich, 2010; Tracy & Robins, 2004), suggesting a
unique pathway that is distinct from the small self mechanism we
propose and test as a mediator of the effects of awe on prosociality.

In light of these considerations, and given that pride is commonly
used as a positive emotion with which to contrast the effects of
awe (Shiota et al., 2007; Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012), we
selected pride as our comparison positive emotion.
We also extended our prior findings by testing the influence of
awe on a different facet of prosociality: ethical-decision making.
Specifically, we assessed participants’ willingness to behave in
ways that prioritize self-interest over collective norms of conduct
and the interests of others (Detert, Treviño, & Sweitzer, 2008; Piff,
Stancato, Côté, Mendoza-Denton, & Keltner, 2012). Finally, we
examined why awe might underlie ethicality by assessing our
hypothesized mediator: the small self.

Method
Participants. Seventy-five adults completed an online experiment via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Demographics were collected in a second wave two days after the initial experiment. Of
the participants who reported their demographics, 54.3% were
male and 45.7% were female (age 18 –51, M ⫽ 31.01, SD ⫽ 9.37).
Seventy-eight percent of participants were European American,
7% were Asian American, and the remaining 15% were African
American, Latino/a, Native American, or other ethnicity.
Materials and procedure. After giving consent, participants were randomly assigned to one of three narrative recall
conditions that induced specific emotions by having participants recall and write about a time when they were in a situation
that is a prototypical elicitor of the target emotion. We contrasted an awe induction with both a neutral induction and a
pride induction. The specific instructions that participants received in each emotion condition are below (adapted from
Griskevicius et al., 2010).
Awe: Please take a few minutes to think about a particular time, fairly
recently, when you encountered a natural scene that caused you to feel
awe. This might have been a sunset, a view from a high place, or any
other time you were in a natural setting that you felt was beautiful.
Pride: Please take a few minutes to think about a particular time, fairly
recently, when you felt pride. This might have been being accepted to
a university, winning an event or competition, or any other time that
you achieved a personal accomplishment.

 Note. All responses were made using single items and 7-point scales, with higher values indicating greater emotion intensity. For Study 2: a These means are significantly different from those in the
awe induction condition (p ⬍ .05); b These means are significantly different from those in the pride induction condition (p ⬍ .05); c These means are significantly different from those in the control
condition (p ⬍ .05). For Study 3: a These means are significantly different from those in the awe induction condition (p ⬍ .05); b These means are significantly different from those in the amusement
induction condition (p ⬍ .05); c These means are significantly different from those in the control condition (p ⬍ .05). For Study 4: a These means are significantly different from those in the negative
awe condition (p ⬍ .05); b These means are significantly different from those in the non nature-based awe condition (p ⬍ .05); c These means are significantly different from those in the control condition
(p ⬍ .05). For Study 5: Asterisks indicate significant differences from the control condition (p ⬍ .05).

4.25 (1.85)
1.38 (0.58)
—
2.42 (1.41)
1.21 (0.51)
1.26 (0.54)
—
—
1.83 (0.92)
3.88 (1.54)
4.44 (1.64)
1.00 (0.00)ⴱ
—
5.40 (1.35)ⴱ
1.28 (0.74)
1.32 (0.69)
—
—
1.52 (1.16)
5.12 (1.42)ⴱ
—
1.13 (0.52)
1.20 (0.78)a
1.93 (1.82)a,b
1.00 (0.00)
1.47 (1.55)a
1.13 (0.52)a
—
1.00 (0.00)a
3.20 (2.08)b
—
1.38 (1.03)
1.63 (1.46)a
5.38 (1.86)c
1.50 (1.41)
1.44 (1.21)a
1.38 (1.03)a
—
1.75 (1.65)
5.19 (1.42)a,c
—
1.79 (1.63)
3.21 (2.29)b,c
5.64 (1.60)c
1.79 (1.63)
3.43 (2.17)b,c
3.21 (2.12)b,c
—
2.71 (1.90)c
2.29 (1.68)b
5.67 (1.40)a,c
1.27 (0.59)
—
2.93 (1.53)a
1.40 (1.06)
1.60 (1.35)
—
—
1.27 (0.59)
5.00 (1.81)c
Amusement
Anger
Anxiety
Awe
Disgust
Fear
Nervousness
Pride
Sadness
Happiness

—
1.29 (0.96)
—
6.24 (1.09)b,c
1.35 (1.22)
1.29 (0.96)
—
3.88 (1.80)b
1.13 (0.34)c
5.76 (1.56)c

—
1.44 (1.50)
—
3.75 (2.11)a
1.00 (0.00)
1.06 (0.25)
—
6.19 (1.22)a,c
1.31 (0.70)
6.50 (0.73)c

—
1.92 (1.32)
—
2.77 (1.83)a
1.62 (1.19)
1.38 (0.77)
—
4.00 (2.04)b
2.15 (1.91)a
3.69 (2.10)a,b

3.43 (2.07)b
1.50 (1.09)
—
5.14 (2.03)b,c
1.29 (0.83)
1.57 (1.16)
—
—
1.71 (1.27)
5.00 (1.57)c

3.00 (1.97)b
1.06 (0.25)a
—
2.56 (2.00)a
1.06 (0.25)
1.00 (0.00)
—
—
1.06 (0.25)
2.94 (2.02)a,b

Trees
(N ⫽ 25)
Control
(N ⫽ 15)
Nonnature
(N ⫽ 16)
Negative
(N ⫽ 14)
Control
(N ⫽ 16)
Amusement
(N ⫽ 15)
Awe
(N ⫽ 14)
Control
(N ⫽ 13)
Pride
(N ⫽ 16)
Awe
(N ⫽ 17)

Study 5 (in-vivo)
conditions
Study 4 (videos) conditions
Study 3 (videos) conditions

All participants were then asked to write at least five sentences
describing the experience, their accompanying emotions, and what
they were thinking about during the experience, providing as much
detail as they can. In a poststudy review of the written narratives,
we ensured that all participants followed the instructions.
To verify that the emotion manipulations elicited the intended
emotional states, we pretested the three manipulations with a
separate sample of 46 participants. Each participant underwent one
of the three writing tasks described above. After describing the
experience, participants reported the extent to which they experienced several different states using single items (1 ⫽ not at all,
7 ⫽ extremely): Anger, Awe, Disgust, Fear, Pride, Sadness, and
Happiness (to index general positivity). These results are presented
in the leftmost columns of Table 3. The awe condition produced
greater levels of awe than the pride and neutral conditions, whereas
the pride condition produced higher levels of pride than the awe
and neutral conditions. There were no differences in anger, disgust,
or fear across conditions. Of interest to the authors, the awe
condition produced lower levels of sadness than the neutral condition but not compared with the pride condition; however, an
inspection of the means shows that these differences were driven
by slightly elevated sadness in the neutral condition, and that
sadness was nevertheless low in all conditions. Finally, general
positivity (i.e., happiness) varied by condition, such that our awe
and pride conditions produced significantly higher levels of happiness than our neutral control condition, but they did not differ
from one another. These analyses suggest that the awe and pride
conditions induced our target emotions but not other emotions, and
they did not differ from one another in terms of general positivity.
Following the writing task, participants rated their agreement
with a statement concerning the extent to which they felt “the
presence of something greater than myself” (1 ⫽ not at all true,
7 ⫽ very true; M ⫽ 3.80, SD ⫽ 1.59). This item captures the
general construct of the small self by assessing perceptions of
something more vast and powerful than the individual (Shiota
et al., 2007).
To minimize potential demand characteristics, participants were
then informed that they would complete an unrelated study of their
beliefs about themselves and the world, consisting of several filler
tasks, followed by our measure of ethical decision-making (Detert
et al., 2008). Participants were presented with eight hypothetical
scenarios each describing a different self-interested act that violates accepted moral norms or standards of behavior. One of the
scenarios reads, “You’ve waited in line for 10 min to buy a coffee
and muffin at Starbucks. When you’re a couple of blocks away,
you realize that the clerk gave you change for $20 rather than for
the $10 you gave him. You savor your coffee, muffin, and free
$10.” For each of these scenarios, participants were asked to rate
how likely it would be that she or he would engage in the behavior
described on a 7-point Likert scale (1 ⫽ not at all likely, 7 ⫽
highly likely). Thus, this measure assesses participants’ willingness
to prioritize self-interest over collective norms and others’ interests. Responses to the eight scenarios were reverse scored,
summed, and averaged to index ethical decision-making (M ⫽
3.89, SD ⫽ 1.16, ␣ ⫽ .74). This measure of ethical decision-

Table 3
Mean Scores for Self-Reported Emotional States in Pilot Studies for Studies 2, 3, 4, and 5 (SDs in Parentheses)

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Neutral: Please take a few minutes to think about something you did
fairly recently. This might have been riding a bike, studying for a test,
or any other thing that happened during your day.

Building
(N ⫽ 24)

PIFF, DIETZE, FEINBERG, STANCATO, AND KELTNER

Study 2 (narrative recall) conditions

888

 AWE, THE SMALL SELF, AND PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

making has been validated extensively in past research. For instance, Detert et al. (2008) found that individuals with higher
scores on the measure were more likely to keep $8 that they were
mailed, ostensibly by mistake, for completing a survey that they
had not completed, relative to those with lower scores. After
completing the assessment of ethical decision-making, participants
were thanked and debriefed.

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Results and Discussion
Does awe influence the small self? We first examined the
influence of emotion condition on the small self. A one-way
analysis of variance (ANOVA) yielded a significant pattern of
differences across conditions, F(2, 68) ⫽ 6.21, p ⫽ .003. We next
conducted planned comparisons to test whether small self ratings
were significantly higher in the awe condition (M ⫽ 5.27, SD ⫽
1.95), relative to the pride (M ⫽ 3.27, SD ⫽ 2.14) and neutral
conditions (M ⫽ 4.11, SD ⫽ 2.08). Two orthogonal contrasts were
used (paralleling Horberg, Kraus, & Keltner, 2013). The first
contrast (“awe contrast”) compares the awe condition to the neutral and pride conditions (coded as awe ⫽ 2, neutral ⫽ ⫺1,
pride ⫽ ⫺1) and tests whether awe heightens perceptions of a
small self. The second contrast (“control contrast”) tested the
residual difference between the neutral and pride conditions
(coded as awe ⫽ 0, neutral ⫽ 1, pride ⫽ ⫺1). As expected, the
awe contrast was significant, F(1, 68) ⫽ 10.30, p ⫽ .002, but the
control contrast was not, F(1, 68) ⫽ 1.69, p ⫽ .20. The awe
induction increased small self ratings compared with the pride and
neutral inductions.
Do awe and pride influence ethical decision-making in different ways? We next tested whether emotion condition influenced ethicality. A one-way ANOVA showed marginally significant differences in ethical decision-making across emotion
conditions, F(2, 68) ⫽ 2.73, p ⫽ .073. Turning to our central
analysis, we used the orthogonal contrasts described above to test
whether ethical decision-making was higher in the awe condition
(M ⫽ 4.24, SD ⫽ 1.02) than in the pride (M ⫽ 3.60, SD ⫽ 1.01)
or neutral conditions (M ⫽ 3.60, SD ⫽ 1.43). As expected, the awe
contrast was significant, F(1, 68) ⫽ 5.44, p ⫽ .023, but the control
contrast was not F(1, 68) ⫽ 0.00, p ⫽ .99. The awe condition
increased ethicality relative to the pride and neutral control conditions.
Mediation analysis. As reported above, the awe condition led
to significant increases in small self ratings and ethical decisionmaking. Moreover, the small self was positively associated with
ethicality, r ⫽ .27, p ⫽ .017. Thus, we performed a mediation
analysis to test whether the awe induction increased ethicality via
the small self. Figure 1 illustrates the mediation model and provides path coefficients. As shown, the positive association between
the awe induction (in contrast to the pride and neutral inductions)
and ethical decision-making dropped to nonsignificant when feelings of a small self were included in the model. We tested the
proposed mediating effect using a bootstrapping procedure for
mediator models recommended by Preacher and Hayes (2004,
2008). We conducted this analysis with the PROCESS macro for
SPSS (Hayes, 2013) using 10,000 bootstrap samples. This technique yielded a 95% bias-corrected confidence interval that did not
include zero (.01 to .19), suggesting that the small self mediated
the effect of the awe induction on ethical decision-making.

b = .53**

Awe
(vs. Pride/Neutral)

889
Small
Self

b = .21* (.14, ns)

b = .14*

Ethical Decisionmaking

Figure 1. Mediation model for Study 2. Note: The predictor variable
contrasts the awe condition against the pride and neutral conditions (awe ⫽
2, pride ⫽ ⫺1, neutral ⫽ ⫺1). Analyses control for the orthogonal control
contrast (awe ⫽ 0, pride ⫽ ⫺1, neutral ⫽ 1). Unstandardized coefficients
are displayed. ⴱ p ⬍ .05, ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01, ⴱⴱⴱ p ⬍ .001.

Study 2 provides experimental evidence that awe is specifically
related to prosociality. Reminding participants of a time when they
experienced awe, relative to pride or a neutral condition, increased
their tendencies to endorse ethical decisions across a variety of
scenarios. The awe induction also triggered a sense of something
greater than oneself, which indicates a relative diminishment of the
concepts and concerns attached to the individual self, paralleling
prior research (Campos et al., 2013; Shiota et al., 2007). Moreover,
the sense of a small self accounted for the effects of awe on
ethicality.
Study 2 is limited in certain ways. First, participants wrote about
a time when they had experienced a target emotion such as awe,
and it is possible that participants’ memories of the events, and not
the experience of awe itself, influenced their ethical tendencies.
Moreover, we assessed our mediator with a single item that,
though implying a sense of a small self by assessing feelings of
something greater than oneself, does not specifically reference
feeling diminished. We designed Study 3 to address these issues.

Study 3: Awe Increases Generosity via the Small Self
In Study 3 we induced awe in situ by exposing participants to
awe-inspiring stimuli. Participants watched a video of nature imagery that induced awe, a video of nature imagery that elicited
amusement, or a neutral control video. Participants also completed
a revised measure of the small self to test whether it mediates the
effects of awe on prosociality. Finally, participants completed a
behavioral measure of generosity.
We chose amusement as a comparison positive emotion for
several reasons. Amusement is a commonly employed method for
inducing general positivity, can be reliably elicited with video clips
(e.g., Algoe & Haidt, 2009; Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006), and has
been used in prior research as a positive emotion with which to
contrast the effects of awe (e.g., Valdesolo & Graham, 2014; Van
Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012). Moreover, like awe, amusement is
elicited by an incongruity between one’s expectations (or default
schema) and experience (Morreall, 1989). Finally, both the amusement and awe conditions depicted images of nature (e.g., natural
landscapes, plants, and nonhuman animals), which enabled us to
ascertain the specific effects of awe— beyond exposure to nature
more generally— on prosocial behavior.

Method
Participants. There were 264 students (180 female, 80 male,
and 4 unreported) from a large public university who received

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890

PIFF, DIETZE, FEINBERG, STANCATO, AND KELTNER

partial course credit for their participation. Ten participants were
excluded because of substantial missing data or experimental error
(stimuli failing to load); their data were not analyzed. This left 254
participants in the final sample (age 18 – 41, M ⫽ 20.95, SD ⫽
3.29). Twenty-four percent of participants were European American, 46% were Asian American, and 30% were African American,
Latino/a, Native American, or other ethnicity (one unreported).
Materials and procedure. Participants were seated at computers in private cubicles and gave consent and completed demographics. Participants then put on headphones and were randomly
assigned to watch one of three videos: a 5-min neutral clip, in
which a man describes construction of a kitchen countertop; a
5-min clip that elicited amusement, consisting of a montage of
nature clips from the BBC’s comedic series, Walk on the Wild
Side, composed of animals in their natural habitats acting in ways
that are funny; or a 5-min clip inducing awe, consisting of nature
clips from the BBC’s Planet Earth series composed of grand,
sweeping shots of scenic vistas, mountains, plains, forests, and
canyons. The awe and amusement clips have been validated by
prior research (Valdesolo & Graham, 2014).
We conducted a separate pilot study to ensure that the three
conditions induced the desired emotions. Forty-five participants
viewed the awe, amusement, or neutral video and indicated the
extent to which they experienced Amusement, Anger, Awe, Disgust, Fear, Sadness, and Happiness using single items (1 ⫽ not at
all, 7 ⫽ extremely). These results are presented in the middle-left
columns of Table 3. As expected, the awe condition produced
greater levels of awe compared with the amusement and neutral
conditions, and the amusement condition produced higher levels of
amusement than the awe or neutral conditions. Anger, disgust,
fear, or sadness did not vary across conditions. Finally, general
positivity (happiness) varied by condition, such that the awe condition and the amusement condition produced higher levels of
happiness than did the neutral control condition, but they did not
differ from one another. These results suggest that the awe and
amusement conditions successfully elicited our target emotions but
not other emotions, and they did not differ from one another in
terms of positivity.
After the video, participants rated their agreement with four
statements (1 ⫽ not at all true, 7 ⫽ very true): “I feel small or
insignificant,” “I feel the presence of something greater than
myself,” “I feel part of some greater entity,” and “I feel like I am
in the presence of something grand” (Huta & Ryan, 2010; Shiota
et al., 2007). These items tapped perceptions of vastness vis-à-vis
the self and the accompanying sense of smallness, and they formed
a reliable measure of the small self (␣ ⫽ .82, M ⫽ 3.80, SD ⫽
1.59).
Participants then completed a version of the dictator game in
which they were told they had been randomly paired with a
participant taking part in a different session. Participants were
given a 10-point endowment and ask to decide how many of their
10 points (if any) they would like to give to their anonymous
partner, who had not received any points to start with. Participants
were told that upon completion of the study, a raffle for a $100 gift
certificate toward an online retailer would be conducted, and that
each point they had remaining at the end of the exercise would be
counted as one entry of their name into the raffle. In the current
sample, 24 participants (9.4%) gave 0 points and 23 participants
(9.1%) gave all 10 points away, and the modal number of points

given was 5 (114 participants; 44.9%). Average generosity in this
study was M ⫽ 4.67 (SD ⫽ 2.58). After completing the task,
participants were debriefed and thanked.

Results and Discussion
Does awe create the sense of a small self? We examined the
influence of emotion induction condition on the small self. A
one-way ANOVA showed significant condition differences in the
small self, F(2, 246) ⫽ 32.95, p ⬍ .001. We conducted planned
comparisons to test whether the awe induction led to enhanced
feelings of a small self (M ⫽ 4.72, SD ⫽ 1.40), relative to the
amusement (M ⫽ 3.65, SD ⫽ 1.39) and neutral conditions (M ⫽
3.01, SD ⫽ 1.46). Our “awe contrast” compared the awe condition
to the neutral and amusement conditions (coded as awe ⫽ 2,
neutral ⫽ ⫺1, amusement ⫽ ⫺1), whereas the “control contrast”
tested the residual difference between the neutral and amusement
conditions (coded as awe ⫽ 0, neutral ⫽ 1, amusement ⫽ ⫺1).
The awe contrast was significant, F(1, 246) ⫽ 57.67, p ⬍ .001,
such that small self ratings were higher in the awe condition
compared with the amusement and neutral conditions. The control
contrast was also significant, F(1, 246) ⫽ 8.38, p ⫽ .004, indicating that small self ratings were higher in the amusement condition
than in the neutral condition. However, an independent samples t
test verified that feelings of a small self were higher in the awe
condition than the amusement condition, t(163) ⫽ 5.28, p ⬍ .001,
d ⫽ 0.83. The awe condition led to greater small self ratings than
did the amusement or neutral conditions.
Does awe influence generosity? We next tested the influence
of emotion-induction condition on generosity in the dictator game.
A one-way ANOVA showed significant condition differences in
generosity across conditions, F(2, 250) ⫽ 4.08, p ⫽ .018. We
tested whether participants who viewed the awe-eliciting video
engaged in more generosity (M ⫽ 5.21, SD ⫽ 2.71) compared with
participants in the amusement (M ⫽ 4.50, SD ⫽ 2.39) and neutral
conditions (M ⫽ 4.31, SD ⫽ 2.57), using the orthogonal contrast
codes described above. The awe contrast was significant, F(1,
250) ⫽ 7.90, p ⫽ .005, whereas the control contrast was not F(1,
250) ⫽ 0.28, p ⫽ .60. Thus, the awe induction increased generosity relative to the amusement and neutral conditions.
Does the small self mediate the effects of awe upon
generosity? As reported above, the awe induction led to increased small self ratings and generosity. In addition, the small self
was positively correlated with generosity in the dictator task, r ⫽
.20, p ⫽ .002. We performed a mediation analysis to test whether
the awe induction increased generosity via the small self. Figure 2
illustrates the mediation model and provides path coefficients. As
shown, the positive association between the awe induction (in
contrast to the amusement and neutral inductions) and generosity
became nonsignificant when feelings of a small self were included
in the model. The bootstrapping procedure for mediator models
(Preacher & Hayes, 2004, 2008) with 10,000 bootstrap iterations
yielded a 95% bias-corrected confidence interval that did not
include zero (.01 to .26). This analysis indicates that awe leads to
increased generosity via the small self.
The results of Study 3 are noteworthy in several ways. Eliciting
awe using awe-inspiring images of nature increased generosity in
contrast to another positive emotion—amusement—also elicited
by exposure to nature. This helps rule out the possibility that the

 AWE, THE SMALL SELF, AND PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

b = .49***

Awe
(vs. Amusement/Neutral)

Small
Self

b = .24*

Generosity
b = .32*** (.21, ns)

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Figure 2. Mediation model for Study 3. Note: The predictor variable
compares the awe condition with the amusement and neutral conditions
(awe ⫽ 2, amusement ⫽ ⫺1, neutral ⫽ ⫺1). Analyses control for the
orthogonal control contrast (awe ⫽ 0, amusement ⫽ ⫺1, neutral ⫽ 1).
Unstandardized coefficients are shown. ⴱ p ⬍ .05, ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01, ⴱⴱⴱ p ⬍ .001.

effects of awe on prosociality are reducible to mere nature exposure, which prior work has found can increase prosociality (e.g.,
Weinstein et al., 2009), or to positive emotion more generally.
Moreover, the awe condition also gave rise to feelings of smallness
of the self, which fully mediated the effects of awe on prosociality.
Still, important questions remain. Our manipulations of awe
thus far have focused on nature environments. However, there are
other significant elicitors of awe besides nature (Keltner & Haidt,
2003). This bias in our methodology leaves unexamined the question of whether awe experienced in nonnature environments can
also increase prosocial tendencies. In a similar vein, our manipulations of awe have primarily been more positively valenced,
which is true of the broader experimental literature on awe (e.g.,
Shiota et al., 2007; Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012). Again,
conceptual analyses of the varieties of awe elicitors point to others
that involve threat and uncertainty (e.g., Keltner & Haidt, 2003;
Valdesolo & Graham, 2014), which raises the question of whether
more “negative” experiences of awe also enhance prosociality. We
designed Study 4 to explore these issues, as well as to bolster our
mediational findings. Specifically, our measures of the small self
thus far have assessed feelings of something greater than oneself
(e.g., Study 2) alongside feelings of smallness (Study 3), which we
have conceptualized and found are complementary facets of the
small self construct (see also Shiota et al., 2007). However, these
two facets may differentially relate to prosociality, and we have yet
to ascertain their specific roles in driving our results—primarily
because of the limitations of the measures we have used (e.g.,
single items). Thus, in Study 4 we extend and expand upon our
prior mediational findings by using a more robust measure of the
small self that contains multiple items to index vastness vis-à-vis
the self and self-diminishment.

Study 4: Negative Awe and Nonnature Awe Increase
Prosociality via the Small Self
In Study 4 we ascertained the generalizability of our effects by
incorporating a nonnature-based induction of awe and a negative
induction of awe. The nonnature-based induction of awe was an
awe-inspiring video consisting entirely of nonnature imagery; it
did not depict scenes of the natural environment (e.g., mountains,
lakes, or forests) or living organisms (e.g., plants, nonhuman
animals; Bratman et al., 2012). The negative induction of awe was
an awe-inspiring video consisting of threatening nature stimuli.
These conditions allowed us to test whether the effects of awe on

891

prosociality extend beyond positive experiences of awe toward
nature. We also extended our prior results by using a new measure
of prosociality that indexes prosocial values (Van Lange, De
Bruin, Otten, & Joireman, 1997). Finally, we incorporated a measure of our mediator that assessed in a more rigorous fashion the
vastness vis-à-vis the self and the self-diminishment facets of the
small self construct.

Method
Participants. There were 130 participants (73 female, 57
male) who completed an online experiment via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Thirty participants were excluded for incorrectly
answering an attention check; their data were not analyzed. Of the
100 participants in the final sample (age 18 – 67, M ⫽ 35.19, SD ⫽
12.41), 74% were European American, 12% were African American, and the remaining 14% were Asian American, Latino/a,
Native American, or other ethnicity (one unreported).
Materials and procedure. Participants provided consent before being randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the
neutral condition, participants watched a 3-min version of the
neutral video used in Study 3 depicting the construction of a
wooden countertop. In the negative awe condition, participants
watched a 3-min video featuring a montage of threatening natural
phenomena (e.g., tornados, volcanoes; Keltner & Haidt, 2003). In
the nonnature-based awe condition, participants watched a 3-min
video taken in a laboratory setting of droplets of colored water
colliding with a bowl of milk. This footage was shot at 5,000
frames per second, 200 times slower than real-time (from the
Web-based series The Slow Mo Guys)—minute and intricate patterns in liquid are shown that are invisible to the naked eye under
normal circumstances. Critically, this video did not depict scenes
of the natural environment or living systems (Bratman et al.,
2012).
We conducted a separate pilot study to ensure that the three
conditions induced the target emotions. Forty-five participants
watched the negative awe, nonnature-based awe, or neutral video
before reporting how much Anger, Anxiety, Awe, Disgust, Fear,
Nervousness, Sadness, and Happiness they were feeling using
single items (1 ⫽ not at all, 7 ⫽ extremely). As Table 3 shows, the
negative and nonnature-based awe conditions produced high levels
of awe that were significantly greater than the control condition.
The negative awe condition also produced higher levels of anxiety,
fear, and nervousness than both the nonnature-based awe or
neutral conditions, and sadness was generally higher in the
negative awe condition than the other conditions. There were no
significant condition differences in anger or disgust. Finally, the
nonnature-based awe condition produced greater happiness than
both the negative awe and neutral conditions. These results suggest
that the two awe conditions, though varied in content, produced
similarly high levels of awe but divergent levels of negative
emotion and general positivity.
After watching the video, participants completed a measure of
the small self comprised of items tapping its two facets: a sense of
vastness vis-à-vis the self and a sense of self-diminishment. To
assess vastness vis-à-vis the self, participants indicated their agreement with three items from Study 3, “I feel the presence of
something greater than myself,” “I feel part of some greater
entity,” and “I feel like I am in the presence of something grand,”

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892

PIFF, DIETZE, FEINBERG, STANCATO, AND KELTNER

as well as with two additional items: “I feel like I am a part of a
greater whole” and “I feel the existence of things more powerful
than myself.” To assess self-diminishment, participants rated their
agreement with the item “I feel small or insignificant” from Study
3 and four additional items: “I feel like my own day-to-day
concerns are relatively trivial,” “In the grand scheme of things, my
own issues and concerns do not matter as much,” “I feel insignificant in the grand scheme of things,” and “I feel small relative to
something more powerful than myself.” These 10 items formed a
highly reliable index of the small self (␣ ⫽ .89) and were summed
and averaged (M ⫽ 4.29, SD ⫽ 1.36). Items were presented in
random order, and embedded among them was an attention check
asking participants to select the third response option from the
right.
Next we assessed participants’ prosocial tendencies using the
Triple-Dominance Measure of Social Values (Van Lange et al.,
1997), a gauge of general preferences for resource distributions
between oneself and a hypothetical other. This measure involves a
series of nine decomposed three-choice games in which participants must decide how to allocate points to themselves and an
unknown other. For instance, in one of these games, individuals
choose between Option A (480 points for self and 80 points for
other), Option B (540 points for self and 280 points for other), and
Option C (480 points for self and 480 points for other). In this
example, Option C represents the prosocial choice because it
provides an equal distribution of points and a larger joint outcome
for both the self and the other. Options A and B are considered
proself choices in that Option A maximixes the point differential
between the self and the other (relative advantage) and Option B
maximizes one’s own point allocation (absolute advantage). Although the points earned across the nine games do not translate
into any kind of payout, the instructions inform participants, “Every point has value: The more points you receive, the better for
you, and the more points ‘Other’ receives, the better for him/her.”
This measure has been well-validated and is predictive of prosocial
behavior, for instance the number of hours participants volunteered
to a worthy cause (McClintock & Allison, 1989). Paralleling prior
research (Piff et al., 2010; White, Kenrick, Neel, & Neuberg,
2013), the total number of trials that participants chose the prosocial (equal distribution) option served as our measure of prosociality, with higher scores indicating greater prosocial choices (␣ ⫽
.98, M ⫽ 5.43, SD ⫽ 4.15). After this task, participants were
debriefed and thanked before exiting the study.

the negative awe condition (M ⫽ 4.93, SD ⫽ 0.95) and the
nonnature-based awe condition (M ⫽ 4.57, SD ⫽ 1.30) compared
with the neutral condition (M ⫽ 3.24, SD ⫽ 1.21). The type of awe
contrast was not significant, F(1, 95) ⫽ 1.60, p ⫽ .21. These
findings indicate that the negative and nonnature-based awe conditions elicited similar increases in the small self that were significantly higher than the neutral condition.
Does awe influence prosociality? We examined whether
prosociality, as indexed by the number of prosocial allocations
made across the nine games, varied by condition. A one-way
ANOVA indicated significant differences across conditions, F(2,
97) ⫽ 3.42, p ⫽ .037. The awe contrast was significant, F(1, 97) ⫽
6.59, p ⫽ .012, such that prosociality was higher in the negative
awe condition (M ⫽ 6.33, SD ⫽ 4.05) and the nonnature-based
awe condition (M ⫽ 5.91, SD ⫽ 3.88) compared with the neutral
condition (M ⫽ 3.87, SD ⫽ 4.23). The type of awe contrast was
not significant, F(1, 97) ⫽ 0.19, p ⫽ .67, indicating that prosocial
tendencies were comparable across the awe conditions. The two
awe conditions increased prosocial tendencies compared with the
neutral condition.
Does the small self mediate the effects of awe upon
prosociality? Thus far we have seen that experiences of awe,
elicited in viewing more threatening nature scenes or a nonnature
scene, led to greater feelings of a small self and more prosocial
choices, relative to the neutral condition. Moreover, the small self
was significantly associated with prosociality, r ⫽ .30, p ⬍ .002.
Given these findings, we performed a mediation analysis to test
whether the awe conditions influenced prosociality via the small
self. As Figure 3 shows, the positive association between the awe
inductions (in contrast to the neutral condition) and prosociality
became nonsignificant when the small self was included in the
model. The bootstrapping procedure for mediator models
(Preacher & Hayes, 2004, 2008) with 10,000 bootstrap iterations
yielded a 95% bias-corrected confidence interval that did not
include zero (.04 to .77). This analysis indicates that awe leads to
prosocial tendencies via the small self.
What are the specific indirect effects of vastness vis-à-vis the
self and self-diminishment on prosociality? We also sought to
separately examine the roles of vastness vis-à-vis the self and
self-diminishment in driving our results. We conducted a factor
analysis of the vastness and self-diminishment items to explore
whether we would be justified in treating these facets separately. A
principal-axis factor analysis using Varimax rotation of the 10

Results and Discussion
Does awe influence the small self? We tested whether the
negative awe and nonnature-based awe conditions significantly
increased the small self compared with the neutral condition. A
one-way ANOVA showed significant condition differences in the
small self, F(2, 95) ⫽ 18.62, p ⬍ .001. We next conducted planned
comparisons using orthogonal contrast codes. Our “awe contrast”
compared the negative awe condition and the nonnature-based awe
condition to the neutral condition (coded as negative awe ⫽ 1,
nonnature-based awe ⫽ 1, neutral ⫽ ⫺2), whereas the “type of
awe contrast” tested the residual difference between the two awe
conditions (coded as negative awe ⫽ ⫺1, nonnature-based awe ⫽
1, neutral ⫽ 0). The awe contrast was significant, F(1, 95) ⫽
35.39, p ⬍ .001, suggesting that small self ratings were higher in

b = .51***
Negative Awe/Non
nature-Based Awe
(vs. Neutral)

Small
Self

b = .72*
Prosocial
Tendencies

b = .75* (.39, ns)

Figure 3. Mediation model for Study 4. Note: The predictor variable
contrasts the two awe conditions against the neutral condition (negative
awe ⫽ 1, nonnature-based awe ⫽ 1, neutral ⫽ ⫺2). Analyses control for
the orthogonal type of awe contrast (negative awe ⫽ ⫺1, nonnature-based
awe ⫽ 1, neutral ⫽ 0). Unstandardized coefficients are shown. ⴱ p ⬍ .05,
ⴱⴱ
p ⬍ .01, ⴱⴱⴱ p ⬍ .001.

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AWE, THE SMALL SELF, AND PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

items yielded two factors with eigenvalues above 1.0 (5.27 and
1.83) that accounted for 71% of the variance. The first rotated
factor consisted of the five perceived vastness items, and it accounted for 41.6% of the variance. The second rotated factor
consisted of the five small self items, and it accounted for 29.4%
of the variance. All factor loadings exceeded 0.67. The factors
were highly correlated, r ⫽ .47, p ⬍ .001, underscoring—as we
have proposed—that vastness vis-à-vis the self and selfdiminishment are overlapping. Nonetheless, the results of the
factor analysis indicate that the two facets are empirically distinguishable and justify investigating their specific roles in explaining
the effects of awe on prosociality.
We summed and averaged the five vastness vis-à-vis the self
items (␣ ⫽ .95, M ⫽ 4.71, SD ⫽ 1.67) and the five selfdiminishment items (␣ ⫽ .82, M ⫽ 3.83, SD ⫽ 1.51). We then
performed a multiple mediation analysis (Preacher & Hayes, 2004,
2008) with 10,000 bootstrap iterations to ascertain the specific
indirect effects of these two subscales on prosocial tendencies.
Figure 4 illustrates the mediation model and provides path coefficients. Together, self-diminishment and vastness vis-à-vis the
self mediated the effect of the awe inductions (in contrast to the
neutral induction) on prosociality (95% CI ⫽ .14, 1.01). More
important, when considering the specific indirect effect of either
mediator, the indirect effect of self-diminishment was significant
(95% CI ⫽ .11 to 1.04), whereas the indirect effect of vastness
vis-à-vis the self was nonsignificant (95% CI ⫽ ⫺.21, .23). Although the aggregate measure of small self was a significant
mediator, the self-diminishment facet of the small self may be a
particularly significant driver of the effects of awe on prosocial
tendencies.3 One reason for this may be that the self-diminishment
facet explicitly assesses the sense that one’s being and goals are
less important, which may more strongly predict a selfless orientation to others.
Taken together, the results from Study 4 advance an understanding of the relationship between awe and prosociality in several
ways. Eliciting awe using nonnature based or negative stimuli
similarly increased prosocial tendencies, suggesting that the effects
of awe on prosociality are not limited to experiences in nature or
purely positive experiences of awe. Moreover, these effects were
driven by the small self, and in particular self-diminishment,

Self-diminishment
b = .58***

b = .88*
b = .75* (.22, ns)

Negative Awe/Non
Nature-Based Awe
(vs. Neutral)

b = .41**

Vastness
Vis-à-vis the Self

Prosocial
Tendencies

b = .01, ns

Figure 4. Multiple mediation model for Study 4 showing the specific
indirect effects of the two facets of the small self—vastness vis-à-vis the
self and self-diminishment— on prosociality. Note: The predictor variable
contrasts the two awe conditions against the neutral condition (negative
awe ⫽ 1, nonnature-based awe ⫽ 1, neutral ⫽ ⫺2). Analyses control for
the orthogonal type of awe contrast (negative awe ⫽ ⫺1, nonnature-based
awe ⫽ 1, neutral ⫽ 0). Unstandardized regression coefficients are displayed. ⴱ p ⬍ .05, ⴱⴱ p ⬍ .01, ⴱⴱⴱ p ⬍ .001.

893

suggesting that awe may most strongly influence prosociality by
triggering a sense that one’s individual being and goals are relatively insignificant.4 Notable, too, is that the nonnature-based
induction of awe— consisting of a video of colored droplets colliding in slow motion—triggered the small self in much the same
way that a video depicting the devastating power of nature did.
These results converge with past work arguing that awe is not
reducible to mere perceptions of things that are large (e.g., Keltner
& Haidt, 2003), and indicate that the small self can be aroused by
entities both large and small (e.g., those vast in complexity).

Study 5: Awe and Prosocial Behavior Amid a Grove
of Towering Trees
Thus far we have found that the dispositional tendency to
experience awe is associated with increased generosity, and that
experimental inductions of awe in the lab lead to increased prosocial responding. In our final experiment, we experimentally elicited awe by actually situating participants in an awe-inspiring
nature setting.
Authors, artists, and naturalists have all observed that towering
trees can inspire awe. For instance, in his travelogue Travels with
Charley, John Steinbeck described the awe he felt at the redwoods
of the Pacific coast, writing, “. . . [They] leave a mark or create a
vision that stays with you always. . . . From them comes silence
and awe” (Steinbeck, 1962). We designed the current study in part
guided by these observations and given that awe is deeply connected to experiences in nature (e.g., Shiota et al., 2007). On the
campus where this study was conducted, there is a grove of
Tasmanian eucalyptus trees with heights exceeding 200 feet; it is
the tallest stand of hardwood trees in North America (http://
strawberrycreek.berkeley.edu/tour/08eucalyptus.html). We led
participants to stand in this towering eucalyptus grove and asked
3
Given that the two awe inductions (nonnature-based awe, negative
awe) consisted of very different awe-producing phenomena, we separately
tested whether the specific mediational effects of self-diminishment and
vastness vis-à-vis the self were different between these two conditions.
With respect to the nonnature awe condition (vs. control), the total indirect
effect of self-diminishment and vastness vis-à-vis the self was significant
(95% CI ⫽ .40, 3.16), but when considering the specific indirect effects of
either mediator, self-diminishment was significant (95% CI ⫽ .35, 3.22),
whereas vastness vis-à-vis the self was not (95% CI ⫽ ⫺.67, .87). These
findings indicate that the effects of the nonnature awe condition on prosociality were specifically driven by the self-diminishment facet of the small
self. With respect to the negative awe condition (vs. control), although the
total indirect effect of self-diminishment and vastness vis-à-vis the self was
marginally significant (90% CI ⫽ .03, 1.37), neither the indirect effect of
self-diminishment (90% CI ⫽ ⫺.10, 1.30) nor of vastness vis-à-vis the self
(90% CI ⫽ ⫺.09, .40) was significant. These results indicate that neither
of the two subscales of the small self specifically drove the effect of the
negative awe condition on prosocial values.
4
This raises the question of why the feeling of “something greater than
myself” mediated the effects of awe on ethicality in Study 2 but not of awe
on prosocial values in Study 4, when vastness vis-à-vis the self was pitted
against self-diminishment. Study 2’s findings may be attributable in part to
the strong theoretical and empirical overlap between vastness vis-à-vis the
self and self-diminishment, which we argue are complementary facets of
the small self and is evidenced by the very high correlation between them.
It is also possible that had vastness vis-à-vis the self been measured in
isolation in Study 4, as it was in Study 2, it would have served as a
significant mediator. Another intriguing possibility is that selfdiminishment and vastness vis-à-vis the self differentially relate to different forms of prosociality—a promising avenue for future research.

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PIFF, DIETZE, FEINBERG, STANCATO, AND KELTNER

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them to gaze up at the trees for 1 min or at a tall building (control)
for 1 min. Unbeknownst to participants, we then examined the
effects of this fleeting experience on their levels of prosocial
helping behavior.
We also collected self-reports of several other variables relevant
to the hypothesized relationship between awe and prosociality. We
assessed ethical decision-making, thus paralleling the central finding from Study 2. We also collected assessments of psychological
entitlement, which reflects a sense that one deserves more and is
entitled to more valued resources than others, and is inimical to
prosocial behavior (Campbell et al., 2004).

Method
Participants. Ninety undergraduates (40 female, 47 male, 3
unreported; age 18 –32, M ⫽ 20.95, SD ⫽ 3.29) from a large
public university participated in the study as partial fulfillment of
their course requirement. Twenty-eight percent of participants
were European American, 40% were Asian American, and 29%
were African American, Latino/a, Native American, or other ethnicity (three unreported).
Materials and procedure. Participants arrived to the lab and
provided consent before completing demographics. The experimenter then gave participants directions to meet a second experimenter at a designated site on campus. The second experimenter,
naïve to the hypotheses and purpose of the study, used a randomized condition sheet to assign participants to the awe or the control
condition. Sex of the experimenter was alternated, and participants
completed the study one at a time. After greeting participants and
informing them that the study was of visual perception, the second
experimenter escorted participants to the designated study site in
the eucalyptus grove. In the awe condition, participants were asked
to spend 1 min looking up at the trees. Participants in the control
condition stood in approximately (within a few yards of) this
location but faced a different direction; they spent 1 min looking
up at an adjacent tall building (see Figure 5). This manipulation
was premised on the notion that atypically tall trees would violate
people’s expectations and elicit awe in a way that a tall building,
not atypical from others on campus, would not. Participants were

informed that they would be asked to complete a questionnaire
when 1 min had elapsed. The experimenter then stepped away
from the participant and started a timer.
We followed this procedure in a separate sample of 49 participants to verify that the tall trees elicited more awe than the tall
building. Participants spent 1 min looking up at the trees or the
building before reporting how much Amusement, Anger, Awe,
Disgust, Fear, Sadness, and Happiness they were feeling using
single items (1 ⫽ not at all, 7 ⫽ extremely). As shown in Table 3,
participants in the awe (tall trees) condition reported greater awe
than participants in the control (tall building) condition. Amusement, Disgust, Fear, and Sadness did not vary by condition.
However, participants in the awe condition reported less anger
than control participants. As evident in the means, feelings of
anger were nonetheless extremely low across conditions. We also
found that the trees condition induced more general positivity (i.e.,
happiness) than the building condition. Controlling for awe, these
differences became nonsignificant, t(47) ⫽ .03, p ⫽ .98, whereas
the effect of condition on awe was unchanged when controlling for
happiness, t(47) ⫽ 6.33, p ⬍ .001. These analyses confirm that the
differences between conditions in general positivity were entirely
driven by condition differences in awe. Therefore, we conclude
that the tree gazing task is a valid and reliable induction of awe.
Our main dependent variable was the degree to which participants helped the experimenter in the context of a carefully
practiced staged accident (adapted from Vohs, Mead, & Goode,
2006). After participants spent 60 s looking up at the trees or the
building, the experimenter approached participants holding a
questionnaire and a box of 11 pens, and spilled the pens in front
of them— ostensibly by accident. The number of pens participants picked up was the measure of helpfulness (M ⫽ 7.34,
SD ⫽ 1.55).
Participants then completed the questionnaire containing measures pertinent to our hypothesis. Participants completed a version
of the measure of ethicality used in Study 2 (Detert et al., 2008).
We preselected two face-valid scenarios from the eight in the
original measure that would be relevant to university students. The
first described the participant keeping money given to them acci-

Figure 5. View of the eucalyptus trees used to induce awe (left panel) and the adjacent building used for the
control condition (right panel) in Study 5. See the online article for the color version of this figure.

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AWE, THE SMALL SELF, AND PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

dentally. The second described the participant failing to inform the
professor about an error that resulted in them receiving a higher
grade. Participants indicated how likely they would be to behave as
described (1 ⫽ very unlikely, 7 ⫽ very likely). Responses to these
two scenarios were highly correlated, r ⫽ .38, p ⬍ .001 and were
reversed, summed, and averaged (M ⫽ 4.53, SD ⫽ 1.65).
Participants also completed three measures of psychological
entitlement. First, participants completed the Me versus Other
Scale (Campbell et al., 2004; Piff, 2014). This measure contains
seven sets of four circles, each with three circles labeled other
and one circle labeled “me.” The size of the me circle increases
across the seven sets, but the size of the other circles does not
vary. Participants select a set of circles to represent how they
see themselves in relation to others (M ⫽ 3.94, SD ⫽ 1.09).
Participants also completed the Psychological Entitlement Scale
(PES; Campbell et al., 2004), a 9-item measure of individuals’
sense of deservingness vis-à-vis others. Participants indicated
their agreement (1 ⫽ strongly disagree, 7 ⫽ strongly agree)
with statements such as, “I honestly feel I’m just more deserving than others” (␣ ⫽ .86; M ⫽ 3.18, SD ⫽ 1.06). Finally, we
assessed monetary deservingness by asking participants to
imagine they would be paid for their participation and to
indicate an amount between $1 and $10 that represented how
much they felt they should receive (adapted from Campbell et
al., 2004; M ⫽ $4.27, SD ⫽ $2.75). Finally, participants were
thanked and debriefed.

Results and Discussion
Does in vivo awe increase helping behavior? We first tested
whether participants in the awe condition offered more help to the
experimenter than participants in the control condition. In keeping
with our central hypothesis, participants in the awe condition
gathered more pens (M ⫽ 7.70, SD ⫽ 0.71) than did participants
in the control condition (M ⫽ 7.02, SD ⫽ 1.98), t(88) ⫽ 2.12, p ⫽
.037, d ⫽ .45.
Does in vivo awe influence ethical decision-making? We
next tested whether ethicality varied across the awe and control
conditions. Participants in the awe condition exhibited marginally
greater ethical tendencies (M ⫽ 3.78, SD ⫽ 1.75) than did control
participants (M ⫽ 3.17, SD ⫽ 1.52), t(88) ⫽ 1.79, p ⫽ .078, d ⫽
0.38.
Does in vivo awe reduce entitlement? Finally, we examined
the influence of condition on entitlement. Participants in the awe
condition chose smaller circles to represent themselves in relation
to others (M ⫽ 3.63, SD ⫽ 1.07) compared with the control
condition (M ⫽ 4.23, SD ⫽ 1.03), t(88) ⫽ 2.74, p ⫽ .007, d ⫽
0.58. Participants in the awe condition also scored lower on the
PES (M ⫽ 2.74, SD ⫽ 1.05) than control participants (M ⫽ 3.59,
SD ⫽ 0.89), t(87) ⫽ 4.10, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 0.88. Further, participants
in the awe condition felt they deserved to be paid with significantly
fewer dollars (M ⫽ $3.57, SD ⫽ 2.14) than did control participants
(M ⫽ $5.74, SD ⫽ 2.85), t(87) ⫽ 4.03, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 0.86. We
also standardized and averaged these measures to compute an
entitlement composite (␣ ⫽ .65; M ⫽ 0.00, SD ⫽ 0.77). The awe
(M ⫽ ⫺0.37, SD ⫽ 0.66) and control conditions (M ⫽ 0.34, SD ⫽
0.71) yielded robust differences in this composite measure, t(86) ⫽
4.83, p ⬍ .001, d ⫽ 1.04.

895

In Study 5 we immersed participants in an awe-inspiring
environment: a grove of towering trees. Participants who gazed
up at the trees offered more help to an experimenter than did
participants who gazed up at a building, and they reported
increased ethicality and reduced feelings of entitlement. That
these effects emerged after a brief treatment condition (1 min
looking at trees) indicates that even fleeting experiences of awe
can have a meaningful impact on various types of prosocial
judgments and behavior. It is also notable that prosociality (and
awe) diverged across two conditions that both involved physically large stimuli, highlighting again that neither awe nor its
effects on prosociality is reducible to perceptions of entities
simply large in size.

General Discussion
Humans have evolved a number of mechanisms that facilitate
life within social collectives—mechanisms that reduce the emphasis on the self and its interests, and encourage prosociality
(e.g., reputation, social norms; for a review see Keltner et al.,
2014). In the current investigation, we examined for the first
time whether the experience of awe can serve this vital social
function—a function widely speculated about in the theoretical
literature (e.g., Durkheim, 1887/1972; Keltner & Haidt, 1999,
2003). Given that awe can trigger a relative diminishment of the
individual self and its interests vis-à-vis something perceived to
be more vast than oneself (Campos et al., 2013; Shiota et al.,
2007), we reasoned that awe should promote more selfless,
other-oriented behaviors.
The results of the five studies reported here lend support to
this central hypothesis. Individuals higher in dispositional tendencies to experience awe exhibited more generosity in an
economic game (Study 1). Experimentally inducing awe caused
individuals to endorse more ethical decisions (Study 2), to be
more generous to a stranger (Study 3), and to report more
prosocial values (Study 4). A naturalistic induction of awe in
which participants looked up at a grove of towering trees led to
increased helpfulness, greater ethicality, and decreased entitlement (Study 5). These findings highlight that the experience of
awe can influence prosociality in a broad fashion, and contribute to the growing literature documenting the centrality of
emotions to human sociality (e.g., DeSteno, 2009; Keltner et
al., 2014).
Why does awe arouse altruism? Across our studies we found
that the effects of awe on prosociality are explained by selfreports of what we have generally referred to as the small self.
In Study 2, the influence of the awe induction on ethical
decision-making was accounted for by perceptions of something greater than the self, implying a relative diminishment of
the concepts and concerns attached to the individual self. In
Study 3, the effects of awe on generosity were explained by
feelings of smallness, insignificance, and something greater
than the self. In Study 4, the effects of awe on prosocial values
were mediated by perceptions of things greater than oneself and
feelings that one’s being, concerns, and interests are relatively
insignificant (e.g., seeing oneself as less important in the grand
scheme of things). It would seem, as hypothesized, that awe
leads to more prosocial tendencies by broadening the individ-

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896

PIFF, DIETZE, FEINBERG, STANCATO, AND KELTNER

ual’s perspective to include entities vaster and more powerful
than oneself and diminishing the salience of the individual self.
Finally, in several studies the effects upon prosociality were
specific to awe and not other positive emotions or exposure to
nature, both of which can be triggers of prosocial behavior (e.g.,
Lyubomirsky et al., 2005; Weinstein et al., 2009). In Study 1,
awe predicted prosocial behavior in an economic game when
controlling for various prosocial positive emotions, including
love and compassion, the latter also demonstrating unique influences upon sharing. In Study 2, awe but not pride increased
ethicality. In Study 3, awe elicited by nature, but not amusement elicited by nature, increased generosity. In Study 4, a
nonnature-based induction of awe as well as a negative induction of awe that also elicited moderate levels of fear and
uncertainty both enhanced prosocial tendencies. Awe exerts a
specific and likely unique effect on prosociality that is distinct
from the influences of other positive emotions, not confounded
by more general positive affect, and not reducible to experiences in nature.
Several features of our findings increase our confidence that
awe promotes altruism via the small self. We documented these
results in diverse populations: student, online, and nationally
representative adult samples. Our measures of prosociality
ranged across its many forms, and included: sharing a resource
(Study 1, 3, and 4), helping someone in need (Study 5), ethical
decision-making (Study 2, 5), and psychological entitlement
(Study 5). We observed these findings across multiple empirical
approaches to awe: dispositional self-reports, narrative recall,
video inductions, and looking up at 200-foot-tall trees. These
findings suggest that the association between awe and prosociality is not confined to particular instantiations of awe or
specific approaches to its study.

Implications and Future Directions
Past theory and research argues that awe is a discrete emotion.
Accounts of elicitors and self-reports of subjective experiences of
awe are distinguishable from those of other positive emotions,
including joy, love, amusement, and contentment (Campos et al.,
2013; Shiota et al., 2006). Awe is also linked to specific patterns
of vocalizations (Simon-Thomas, Keltner, Sauter, Sinicropi-Yao,
& Abramson, 2009) and facial muscle movements (Shiota et al.,
2003), and may be associated with a distinct physiological signature (Maruskin, Thrash, & Elliot, 2012; Shiota, Neufeld, Yeung,
Moser, & Perea, 2011). Research has also begun to document
unique effects of awe upon social cognition (e.g., Rudd et al.,
2012; Valdesolo & Graham, 2014). Most relevant to our research,
awe has been shown to trigger feelings of smallness of the self
vis-à-vis something more vast or powerful than the individual
(e.g., Shiota et al., 2007). Our findings show that beyond altering
the self-concept, awe also encourages other-oriented, prosocial
behavior.
Our findings should be extended and expanded upon in
several ways. Building on the current research, investigations
should further illuminate the sufficient features and necessary
conditions of experiences of awe. In this regard, examining the
interplay between vastness and accommodation will be particularly fruitful. How does the experience of awe unfold over
time, as current knowledge structures and schema are updated

to accommodate the vastness being perceived? The novelty of a
stimulus, and eventual habituation to it, are likely critical determinants of awe.
Additional work should further elucidate why awe is associated with prosociality. Whereas we focused on the mediating
role of the small self, other plausible mechanisms linked to awe
should be tested, including enhanced feelings of connection
with others and more universal self-definitions (e.g., Shiota et
al., 2007; Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012). It will also be
important to differentiate the small self from negative selffeelings, which refer to lower judgments of self-worth, selfrespect, and self-acceptance (e.g., Crocker & Wolfe, 2001). In
our studies, inductions of awe elicited levels of happiness
comparable with other positive emotions (e.g., amusement). In
other work, awe was positively associated with positive emotions, including pride (Shiota et al., 2006), which is central to
self-esteem (Scheff, Retzinger, & Ryan, 1989). These findings
suggest that awe is not injurious to one’s self-worth in the way
that other social threats and self-devaluation can be. One reason
for this may be that the object of awe is often nonsocial (i.e.,
awe is typically experienced toward nonhuman entities). As
such, awe may not involve the social comparison processes that
trigger threatening feelings of shame, inferiority, or unworthiness (e.g., Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995; Murray et
al., 2005). Another possibility is that a large self is not necessarily the best self. That is, a reduced sense of self may allow
people to transcend self-interest and behave in accordance with
their higher moral values, which may actually increase selfesteem (e.g., Canevello & Crocker, 2011; for a related discussion on the distinction between humility and self-worth, see
Tangney, 2009). These topics are promising avenues for future
research.
We examined the effects of awe on a broad array of prosocial
outcomes, from generosity and helping to psychological entitlement and abstinence from cheating. Future studies should
explore other facets of prosocial action, including donations to
public goods, proenvironmental behavior, and altruistic punishment—that is, punishing noncooperators at a cost to oneself
(Keltner et al., 2014). Such investigations will help illuminate
the breadth and boundaries of awe’s prosocial effects. In addition, although our interest has been in documenting prosociality
as an interesting and important consequence of awe, we do not
mean to suggest that it is the only consequence of awe. The
experience of awe is likely to impact other significant and as yet
unexplored outcomes. For example, insofar as awe challenges
one’s normal frame of reference and triggers the sense that
one’s default schema needs to be updated, it may also motivate
people to take in new information. It will be interesting to test
whether experiences of awe can specifically enhance curiosity—the recognition, pursuit, and regulation of novelty and
challenge—across both social and nonsocial contexts, for example by enhancing people’s openness to novel experiences
(Kashdan, Rose, & Fincham, 2004).
A final area fertile with interesting research questions and
novel hypotheses concerns the association between awe and
religiosity. A number of theorists have pointed to religion as
being a potent catalyst and occasion for awe (e.g., James,
1902/1985; Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Places of worship such as
temples, cathedrals, and mosques are in part designed to elicit

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AWE, THE SMALL SELF, AND PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR

awe (e.g., Francis, Williams, Annis, & Robbins, 2008). In
religious texts, God is often conceptualized as limitless, allpowerful, and incomprehensible (see Weber, 1920/1993)—appraisals that are also common to the experience of awe. In
essential ways, religions represent social institutions that elicit,
organize, and ritualize awe. Most relevant to the current investigation, recent work suggests that religion is associated with
increased prosocial behavior (e.g., Norenzayan & Shariff, 2008;
Saroglou, Pichon, Trompette, Verschueren, & Dernelle, 2005;
Shariff & Norenzayan, 2007; Wilson, 2002). What this conceptual analysis suggests is that the effects of religion on prosociality may be partly attributable to awe. Religious institutions
may promote prosociality insofar as they attune individuals to
forces more powerful than themselves and are effective conduits of awe—an intriguing hypothesis for future research.

Conclusion
Awe arises in evanescent experiences. Looking up at the
starry expanse of the night sky. Gazing out across the blue
vastness of the ocean. Feeling amazed at the birth and development of a child. Protesting at a political rally or watching a
favorite sports team live. Many of the experiences people
cherish most are triggers of the emotion we focused on here—
awe. Our investigation indicates that awe, although often fleeting and hard to describe, serves a vital social function. By
diminishing the emphasis on the individual self, awe may
encourage people to forego strict self-interest to improve the
welfare of others. Future research should build on these initial
findings to further uncover the ways in which awe shifts people
away from being the center of their own individual worlds,
toward a focus on the broader social context and their place
within it.

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Received April 24, 2014
Revision received February 11, 2015
Accepted March 3, 2015 䡲