Assessing whether practical wisdom and awe of God are associated with life satisfaction.

Abstract

Although emotion figures prominently in religious life, there has been little research on one of the strongest religious emotions—awe of God. The purpose of this study was to embed this key religious emotion in a wider latent-variable model that contains the following core hypotheses: (a) more frequent church attendance is associated with greater practical wisdom; (b) people with more practical wisdom are more likely to experience awe of God; (c) individuals who experience awe of God are more likely to say they feel a deep sense of connectedness with others; and (d) those who feel more closely connected with others will be more satisfied with their lives. New measures were developed to assess awe of God and practical wisdom. Findings from a recent nationwide survey (N = 1,535) of middle-aged and older adults provided support for each of these relationships.

Awe or horror: differentiating two emotional responses to schema incongruence

“…[6]Prior to data collection, sample sizes were determined using Cohen (1992)'s rule of thumb for medium effect sizes for .05 alpha and doubling it to obviate inattentiveness of online participants. [7]Note that in Study 1, horror was defined as "vast" for participants, which is inconsistent with Study 2's results. When Study 1 was conducted, we assumed schema incongruence in both awe and horror was "vastness".…”

“…Awe and horror also have different cognitive effects. Awe can expand ontological schemata beyond the material world, leading to metaphysical inferences (Valdesolo & Graham, 2014), feelings of personal connection with higher powers (Piff et al, 2015) and ingroup members (Krause & Hayward, 2015) and a reduced sense of a personal self . In contrast, horrifying experiences disrupt schemata related to safety, trust, power, self-esteem and/or intimacy (Lisa McCann, Sakheim, & Abrahamson, 1988).…”

Influence of Positive and Threatened Awe on the Attitude Toward Norm Violations

“…Positive awe enhances a sense of connection to a particular person (e.g., a friend) or to people in general (Shiota et al, 2007;Van Cappellen and Saroglou, 2012;Krause and Hayward, 2015;Stellar et al, 2017;Nelson-Coffey et al, 2019). In an American sample, positive awe was found to decrease self-focused attention and strengthen the feeling of being included in a community .…”

The Potential of Virtual Reality for the Investigation of Awe

“…Participants in one study were more likely to endorse spiritual-type beliefs after feeling awe (Van Cappellen and Saroglou, 2012). Awe also influences well-being and physical health (Krause and Hayward, 2015; Stellar et al, 2015). Furthermore, as an epistemological emotion (Keltner and Shiota, 2003; Shiota et al, 2007), awe can change people’s general perspectives toward the world and themselves (Schneider, 2009).…”