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Having defined awe: For excellent stories of awe fitting for our digital age, see Jason Silva’s “Shots of Awe.” https://www.thisisjasonsilva.com/.
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understanding mystical awe: James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature: Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901–1902. New York; London: Longmans, Green, 1902.
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stories of awe: Bai, Yang, and Dacher Keltner. “Universals and Variations in Awe” (manuscript under review).
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concern about “WEIRD” samples: Studies involving only WEIRD samples do not generalize to non-WEIRD individuals, namely most people of the world. Henrich, Joseph, Steve Heine, and Ara Norenzayan. “The Weirdest People in the World?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33, no. 2–3 (2010): 61–83.
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a stirring theme: Edmundson, Mark. Self and Souclass="underline" A Defense of Ideals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.
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collective effervescence: Durkheim, Émile. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Translated by J. W. Swain. New York: Free Press, 1912.
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Many mentioned night skies: Marchant, Jo. Human Cosmos: Civilization and the Stars. New York: Dutton Press, 2020.
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our capacity to wonder: Drake, Nadia. “Our Nights Are Getting Brighter, and Earth Is Paying the Price.” National Geographic, April 3, 2019. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/04/nights-are-getting-brighter-earth-paying-the-price-light-pollution-dark-skies/.
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Common to experiences of natural awe: Pollan, Michael. “The Intelligent Plant: Scientists Debate a New Way of Understanding.” New Yorker, December 16, 2013.
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Music offered up: For an excellent summary of the kinds of chanting found in different cultures and religions, and their place in ritual and ceremony, see: Gass, Robert. Chanting: Discovering Spirit in Sound. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. Chanting worldwide was and is a way in which people communicate about their encounters with mystical forces. It is interesting to observe how many of the sounds by which we communicate emotions like compassion and awe weave their way into chanting. Through influences on breathing, and in particular exhalation, which usually accompanies the production of the sounds of speech and emotional communication, chanting can slow the heart rate, activate the vagus nerve, reduce blood pressure, and enable a physical state of openness and wonder.
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visual design of jewels: Huxley, Aldous. The Doors of Perception: And Heaven and Hell. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.
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No one mentioned their laptop: This really shouldn’t surprise us, for in general the time we spend on smartphones, Facebook, and other digital platforms tends to mildly depress our well-being. Tangmunkongvorakul, Arunrat, Patou M. Musumari, Kulvadee Thongpibul, Kriengkrai Srithanaviboonchai, Teeranee Techasrivichien, S. P. Suguimoto, Masako Ono-Kihara, and Masahiro Kihara. “Association of Excessive Smartphone Use with Psychological Well-Being among University Students in Chiang Mai, Thailand.” PloS ONE 14, no. 1 (2019): e0210294. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210294.
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a realm beyond the profane: Many scholars have differentiated what we might think of as what is sacred from the mundane and profane. For Mary Douglas, this distinction centers on what is clean and pure (the sacred), and what is unclean and dirty. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Routledge, 2004. Rudolf Otto differentiated between the phenomenal—our sensory experiences of the immediate physical world—and the numinous—what lies beyond the senses. Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. Translated by J. W. Harvey. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950. Philip Tetlock, Jennifer Lerner, and their colleagues have done fascinating work showing that people become morally outraged when offered money for things that they deem sacred in their lives. Tetlock, Philip E., Orie Kristel, Beth Elson, Melanie C. Green, and Jennifer S. Lerner. “The Psychology of the Unthinkable: Taboo Trade-Offs, Forbidden Base Rates and Heretical Counterfactuals.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, no. 5 (2000): 853–70.
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The study of emotional experience: For a summary of the origins of this narrow focus in the science of emotion, and the considerable statistical and inferential problems that arise from this narrow focus, see: Cowen, Alan, Disa Sauter, Jessica Tracy, and Dacher Keltner. “Mapping the Passions: Toward a High-Dimensional Taxonomy of Emotional Experience and Expression.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 20, no. 1 (2019): 69–90. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100619850176.
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widely used emotional experience questionnaire: Watson, David, Lee A. Clark, and Auke Tellegen. “Development and Validation of Brief Measures of Positive and Negative Affect: The PANAS Scales.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54, no. 6 (1988): 1063–70.
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emotionally rich GIFs: Cowen, Alan S., and Dacher Keltner. “Self-Report Captures 27 Distinct Categories of Emotion with Gradients between Them.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 114, no. 38 (2017): E7900-E7909.
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In subsequent mapping studies: Cowen, Alan, and Dacher Keltner. “Emotional Experience, Expression, and Brain Activity Are High-Dimensional, Categorical, and Blended.” Trends in Cognitive Science 25, no. 2 (2021): 124–36.
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everyday awe: Bai, Yang, Laura A. Maruskin, Serena Chen, Amie M. Gordon, Jennifer E. Stellar, Galen D. McNeil, Kaiping Peng, and Dacher Keltner. “Awe, the Diminished Self, and Collective Engagement: Universals and Cultural Variations in the Small Self.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113, no. 2 (2017): 185–209. Gordon, A. M., J. E. Stellar, C. L. Anderson, G. D. McNeil, D. Loew, and D. Keltner. “The Dark Side of the Sublime: Distinguishing a Threat-Based Variant of Awe.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113, no. 2 (2016): 310–28.
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self-transcendent states: Stellar, Jennifer E., Amie M. Gordon, Paul K. Piff, Craig L. Anderson, Daniel Cordaro, Yang Bai, Laura Maruskin, and Dacher Keltner. “Self-Transcendent Emotions and Their Social Functions: Compassion, Gratitude, and Awe Bind Us to Others through Prosociality.” Emotion Review 9, no. 3 (2017): 200–7.