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Highly social mammals: Hans IJzerman, James A. Coan, Fieke M. A. Wagemans, Marjolein A. Missler, Ilja van Beest, Siegwart Lindenberg, and Mattie Tops. “A Theory of Social Thermoregulation in Human Primates.” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015): 464. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00464.
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lean in and coordinate: Social mammals often respond to threat and peril by bonding with other mammals nearby. This thesis was first championed by Shelley E. Taylor and her colleagues and had a profound influence upon our understanding of our emotional lives. Taylor would argue that there is much more to our response to peril and threat than fight or flight, which was the predominant focus until her thinking. She would argue that when facing peril, humans, perhaps with greater frequency women, “tend and befriend”: we collaborate, care for, and bond with others to face peril. Taylor, Shelley E., Laura C. Klein, Brian P. Lewis, Tara L. Gruenewal, Regan A. R. Gurung, and John A. Updegraff. “Biobehavioral Responses to Stress in Females: Tend-and-Befriend, not Fight-or-Flight.” Psychological Review 107 (2000): 411–29.
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the release of oxytocin: For excellent reviews of the oxytocin literature, revealing how much oxytocin release depends on the context and varies according to the individual’s personality, see Bartz, Jennifer. A. “Oxytocin and the Pharmacological Dissection of Affiliation.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 25 (2016): 104–10. Bartz, Jennifer. A., Jamil Zaki, Nial Bolger, and Kevin N. Ochsner. “Social Effects of Oxytocin in Humans: Context and Person Matter.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 15 (2011): 301–9.
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activation of the vagus nerve: Gordon, Amie M., Jennifer. E. Stellar, Craig. L. Anderson, Galen D. McNeil, Daniel Loew, and Dacher 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. For evidence concerning the vagus nerve and compassion, see: Stellar, Jennifer E., Adam Cowen, Christopher Oveis, and Dacher Keltner. “Affective and Physiological Responses to the Suffering of Others: Compassion and Vagal Activity.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 108 (2015): 572–85.
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His trembling and shuddering: Sartre, Jean-Paul. Nausea. Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1949.
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“beautiful laws of physiology”: Wrobel, Arthur. “Whitman and the Phrenologists: The Divine Body and the Sensuous Soul.” PMLA 89, no. 1 (1974): 24.
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Rainbows stirred Newton and Descartes: Fisher, Philip. Wonder, the Rainbow, and the Aesthetics of Rare Experiences. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.
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double rainbow: Yosemitebear62. “Yosemitebear Mountain Double Rainbow 1-8-10.” YouTube video, 3:29, January 8, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI.
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we alert others to the wonders: Expressions of emotion in the face, voice, and body do more than just signal emotions to others; they are a language of social interaction. Emotional expressions provide important information about the individual’s feelings, intentions, and attitudes. They evoke responses in others; a cry, for example, will often stir others to sympathetic response. Emotion-related facial displays and vocalizations also provide information about whether the environment poses threats or is worthy of exploration. Keltner, Dacher, and Ann M. Kring. “Emotion, Social Function, and Psychopathology.” Review of General Psychology 2 (1998): 320–42.
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Darwin detailed the evolution: Darwin, Charles. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965.
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my Yale collaborator Daniel Cordaro: Cordaro, Daniel T., Rui Sun, Dacher Keltner, Shanmukh Kamble, Niranjan Huddar, and Galen McNeil. “Universals and Cultural Variations in 22 Emotional Expressions across Five Cultures.” Emotion 18, no. 1 (2018): 75–93.
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repertoires of vocal bursts: For a review of the parallels between human emotion and nonhuman expressive behavior, see: 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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When we played these sounds: Cordaro, Daniel T., Dacher Keltner, Sumjay Tshering, Dorji Wangchuk, and Lisa M. Flynn. “The Voice Conveys Emotion in Ten Globalized Cultures and One Remote Village in Bhutan.” Emotion 1 (2016): 117–28.
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an early hominid profile of awe: Stanley Kubrick’s “Dawn of Man” montage from 2001: A Space Odyssey is an artistic rendering of this idea. In the montage, inspired by Jane Goodall’s studies, our hominid predecessors on the African savannah encounter another group at a watering hole. They respond with a waterfall dance: they piloerect and, moving in unison, transform into a collective wave of threat expressed in fierce shrieks and roars. Later, waking from a sleep huddled in a cave, they are visited by a smooth gray obelisk—perhaps the idea of culture or religion—which they explore with touch, in a reverential way. In the next scene a member of this tribe discovers a bone, and its power to destroy, which he uses to kill a rival in the next encounter between the two tribes at the watering hole. That bone is thrown into the air and transforms into a space station. We transform moments of awe into culture, both beneficent and violent.
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the archaeological record reveals: Pagel, Mark. Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind. New York: W. W. Norton, 2012.
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awe-related bodily tendencies: Dutton, Dennis. The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. London: Bloomsbury, 2009.
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the legendary poet Bashō: Matsuo, Bashō, and Makoto Ueda. Bashō and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995, 102.
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this haiku about a neighbor: Matsuo, Bashō, and Makoto Ueda. Bashō and His Interpreters, 411. Like many, I count Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window among my top ten movies, in large part, I believe, for its portrayal of the awe we experience in wondering about the lives of others. Its main character, played by James Stewart, is housebound due to a foot injury and spends his days wondering about the various characters he can see through a rear window off a courtyard in his New York apartment complex. We can find a form of everyday awe in wondering about other people’s lives and minds.