Admiring and marveling at something that is incomparably greater than ourselves, we approach our essence. Researchers came to this conclusion by examining people’s feelings in situations that cause awe.
Social psychologists Tonglin Jiang of Peking University (PRC) and Constantin Sedikides of the University of Southampton (UK) are studying how we are affected by the feeling of awe, the sacred awe that we experience in the presence of something that expands our understanding of the world.
For this, Jiang and Sedikides, whose article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes, conducted 14 studies involving over 4400 volunteers.
Research has shown that, in general, a person’s tendency to experience awe, such as being amazed at natural phenomena, is related to how much they want to understand themselves and understand who they really are.
In addition, the feeling of reverence in itself makes a person think about his essence. This happened, for example, when, in one study, participants were shown photographs of the Northern Lights and also asked to recall situations when they saw something grandiose that made them go beyond their selves and feel like a grain of sand in the middle of the desert.
Moreover, such experiences, which help to get closer to your true essence and understand who you are, make a person become better in the human plane — he has more love, sympathy, gratitude for his neighbors, a desire to take care of those who need it, established by psychologists.