Need to know
When asked what a child needs to thrive, we could each come up with a long list, across which there would likely be a lot of commonalities. A loving home life. Nutritional nourishment. Good schools. Playtime. Lots of books – fact and fiction. Physical activity. Quality sleep. Many of us might also include aspects of mental and emotional health, such as having safe places to express excitement, anger and sadness. A burgeoning line of developmental research suggests there is another form of emotional experience that belongs in this list: the experience of awe.
Awe experiences typically involve the perception of something incredibly vast or powerful, something that transcends or challenges one’s understanding of the world. These are often, but not always, encounters with nature – such as seeing the Grand Canyon, gazing over mountains from an airplane, or standing at the foot of an enormous sequoia tree. Awe-inspiring moments can move a person deeply, pushing them into a mental space beyond the usual worries and thoughts of everyday life.
Historically, awe has featured in psychological accounts of important experiences, such as the euphoric moments that the psychologist Abraham Maslow called ‘peak experiences’. William James spoke extensively about various spiritual and mystical moments that intensely moved him and shaped his perspective. He felt strongly that these experiences were crucial to the deeper development of a person’s inner world.
Contemporary researchers theorise that awe may have helped our ancestors survive throughout history, and continues to impart positive effects today. Among adults, for example, several studies have shown that awe can be instrumental to the formation of social groups and can motivate helpful social behaviours. Research also suggests that awe contributes to positive affect, or good feelings. And good feelings in general have positive biological effects on our bodies. While a majority of the research on awe over the past two decades has focused on the experiences of adults, research has started to elucidate the effects of awe on children as well.
In our work at the Human Nature and Potentials Lab, a developmental psychology research centre at the University of Chicago, we have found that perceptions of awe start much earlier in life than was previously understood. Our research has shown that four- to nine-year-old children perceive and respond to awe-inspiring experiences and differentiate them from everyday experiences. The results from our studies also suggest that awe can influence children’s motivation to learn, and their perceptions of themselves. Over the course of our studies, we watched countless children share their excitement over awe-inspiring imagery, with oohs, ahhs and wide-eyed expressions of wonder.
When children viewed beautiful footage of sweeping natural scenes or even images of destructive natural disasters, they perceived themselves as smaller – a phenomenon known as the ‘small self’ – in comparison with how they felt after watching footage of everyday nature imagery (eg, backyard gardens). Previous research has shown that awe-inspiring experiences elicit this sense of ‘small self’ among adults, too, and the intensity with which the sensation is felt is a determining factor for other benefits of awe, such as an increased sense of belonging within one’s community and increased generosity. Children in our research further reported feeling more motivated to explore things that interested them and to understand things in the world that they hadn’t learned much about yet. We found similar results when children looked at imagery of objects at an unusual spatial or temporal scale (eg, moving in slow motion). Children also indicated that vast nature imagery, more than scenes of large crowds, led them to feel like they could make their life better and to see themselves as unique.
Alongside these studies, recent research points to positive effects awe might have on children slightly older (eight- to 13-year-olds) than those we worked with. In these studies, some children watched awe-inspiring video clips from the animated film Song of the Sea (2014), in which a human character transforms into a seal and flies above a city as she changes it for the better. Other children watched videos that were instead meant to evoke joy, or ones that were more neutral. The results suggest the children were more likely to engage in helpful behaviour after watching the awe-inspiring videos.
If you are a parent or a caregiver, there may be plenty of opportunities to introduce awe and its benefits into a child’s day-to-day life. Oftentimes, potential moments of awe get overlooked or breezed by in our busy, modern lives. With the pressure to achieve seeping into childhood earlier and earlier, it’s easy to understand why you might be more focused on getting a child to the next activity, competition or tutor. However, as you become more attuned to sources of awe and more knowledgeable about its importance during development, you’ll likely see how children benefit when we give awe experiences greater priority.
