We may experience a sense of wonder after encountering something awe-inspiring.
"Awe" is often considered to be an emotionally neutral, but diminishing sort of experience or state—though not diminishing in the negative sense of the word. It's diminishing in the same sense that being decoupled from normal, everyday experience, and perhaps having one's sense of place and purpose recalibrated is diminishing.
When first exposed to something vast and unreal like the Grand Canyon, or witnessing a completely selfless act of humanity, we might experience this sensation which has at times led to what's called "unselfing" and which has resulted in test subjects drawing themselves smaller than before they were exposed to this sort of stimuli.
"Wonder" is the emotional response we might feel after or during a state of awe.
While awe can make us feel small, sometimes in a good way, and can even make us a little fearful or cautiously respectful or incapable of comprehending the expansiveness of whatever it is we're experiencing, wonder is the exposure to all of these things followed by a sense of joy or fulfilling curiosity or marvel.
We see the Grand Canyon or an act of significant and surprising humanity, and a smile creeps up our faces, tears come to our eyes, and warmth spreads throughout our bodies, with perhaps a hint of inspiration, motivation, and satisfaction thrown into the mix.
Research has shown that both awe and wonder can adjust our psychological states, and although the specific sorts of things that trigger awe and wonder vary somewhat from culture to culture and person to person, the consequences tend to be similar: a sense of personal smallness, goosebumps, tingling, shivers, higher levels of measurable generosity and other sorts of pro-social behavior, a vague sense of connectedness and profundity, a surge of creative energy, and an ineffable feeling of having been through something valuable and important, which can often result in existential thinking and heightened perception.
If these consequences sound a bit like what folks try to accomplish via calming and mind-expanding activities like meditation, that's because this state is similar to what’s accomplished (if more skillfully and consistently) by trained meditation practitioners.
Recent research has suggested that awe can reduce stress, and it seems to accomplish this by reducing activity in our brain's default mode network, which in turn reduces the type of mental chatter than can stress and distract us.
That said, these can be tricky states to study, because of the aforementioned variations in what different people will respond to in this way: my incredible Grand Canyon might be your uninteresting, big hole in the ground.
There has been a wave of interest in this subject in recent years, though, especially as we've gotten better at measuring and tracking brain states so we can pull these concepts from the world of the anecdotal and primarily faith-based into the world of describable and measurable scientific concept.
We can't yet say for sure what "dosage" of awe and wonder will lead to which consequences for a given person, but it does seem like a pretty good bet that periodic exposure to awe-inspiring things is good for us, and allowing ourselves to really soak up the resultant flood of feelings and emotions and sense of connection might provide us with longer-lasting benefits beyond those we glean in the moment.
Enjoying Brain Lenses? You might also enjoy my news analysis podcast, Let’s Know Things and my daily news summary, One Sentence News.
The Brain Lenses podcast is available at brainlenses.com or wherever you get your podcasts.