Abstract
Research in psychological science has predominantly focused on the importance of social interaction to health and well-being, neglecting how solitude relates to optimal functioning. Although solitude is sometimes perceived as an aversive state associated with loneliness and ostracism, solitude can also serve as a time for self-reflection and spiritual awakening. The aim of the current set of studies was to examine if the experience of awe might serve as an important state influencing people’s attitudes toward solitude. We propose that experiencing awe makes people feel alone but not lonely—dispelling the myth that solitude incurs loneliness—and, importantly, that awe leads to positive attitudes toward solitude. Here eight studies, using complementary designs (big data analytics, experiments, experience sampling and intervention), tested and supported these hypotheses. We found that these effects of awe were mediated by self-transcendence. Furthermore, we probed the downstream consequences of these effects, showing that a brief awe intervention enhanced spiritual well-being and peace of mind by augmenting positive attitudes toward solitude.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
Data, stimulus materials and preregistrations of studies 3, 4, 5 and 7 are available in Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/VU7QF/ (ref. 70). The databases (PsycArticles and PsycInfo) mentioned in the introduction of this article can be accessed via https://www.ebsco.com/.
Code availability
All statistical code files are available in OSF at https://osf.io/VU7QF/ (ref. 70).
References
Burger, J. M. Individual differences in preference for solitude. J. Res. Personal. 29, 85–108 (1995).
Tse, D. C. K., Lay, J. C. & Nakamura, J. Autonomy matters: experiential and individual differences in chosen and unchosen solitary activities from three experience sampling studies. Soc. Psychol. Personal. Sci. 13, 946–956 (2022).
Atalay, E. A twenty-first century of solitude? Time alone and together in the United States. 22–011. Federal Reserve Bank Philadelphia https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/frbp/assets/working-papers/2022/wp22-11.pdf (2022).
Census Bureau releases new estimates on America’s families and living arrangements. US Census Bureau https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/families-and-living-arrangements.html (2021).
Thomas, V. & Azmitia, M. Motivation matters: development and validation of the Motivation for Solitude Scale–Short Form (MSS-SF). J. Adolesc. 70, 33–42 (2019).
Long, C. R. & Averill, J. R. Solitude: an exploration of benefits of being alone. J. Theory Soc. Behav. 33, 21–44 (2003).
Nguyen, T. T., Weinstein, N. & Ryan, R. M. in The Handbook of Solitude: Psychological Perspectives on Social Isolation, Social Withdrawal, and Being Alone (eds Coplan, R. J., Bowker, J. C. & Nelson, L. J.) 224–239 (Wiley, 2021).
Keltner, D. & Haidt, J. Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cogn. Emot. 17, 297–314 (2003).
Jiang, T. & Sedikides, C. Awe motivates authentic-self pursuit via self-transcendence: implications for prosociality. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 123, 576–596 (2022).
Yaden, D. B., Haidt, J., Hood, R. W., Vago, D. R. & Newberg, A. B. The varieties of self-transcendent experience. Rev. Gen. Psychol. 21, 143–160 (2017).
Piff, P. K., Dietze, P., Feinberg, M., Stancato, D. M. & Keltner, D. Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 108, 883–899 (2015).
Yaden, D. B. et al. The development of the Awe Experience Scale (AWE-S): a multifactorial measure for a complex emotion. J. Posit. Psychol. 14, 474–488 (2019).
Danvers, A. F. & Shiota, M. N. Going off script: effects of awe on memory for script-typical and -irrelevant narrative detail. Emotion. 17, 938–952 (2017).
Jiang, L., Yin, J., Mei, D., Zhu, H. & Zhou, X. Awe weakens the desire for money. J. Pac. Rim Psychol. 12, e4 (2018).
Tornstam, L. & Törnqvist, M. Nursing staff’s interpretations of ‘Gerotranscendental behavior’ in the elderly. J. Aging Identity 5, 15–29 (2000).
Ring, K. Heading Toward Omega: In Search of the Meaning of the Near-Death Experience (William Morrow & Co, 1984).
Zhang, Y., Han, K., Worth, R. & Liu, Z. Connecting concepts in the brain by mapping cortical representations of semantic relations. Nat. Commun. 11, 1877 (2020).
Goldy, S. P., Jones, N. M. & Piff, P. K. The social effects of an awesome solar eclipse. Psychol. Sci. 33, 1452–1462 (2022).
Reimers, N. & Gurevych, I. Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks. Preprint at arXiv https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1908.10084 (2019).
Atari, M., Omrani, A. & Dehghani, M. Contextualized construct representation: leveraging psychometric scales to advance theory-driven text analysis. Preprint at PsyArXiv https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/m93pd (2023).
Grand, G., Blank, I. A., Pereira, F. & Fedorenko, E. Semantic projection recovers rich human knowledge of multiple object features from word embeddings. Nat. Hum. Behav. 6, 975–987 (2022).
Caliskan, A., Bryson, J. J. & Narayanan, A. Semantics derived automatically from language corpora contain human-like biases. Science 356, 183–186 (2017).
Charlesworth, T. E. S., Caliskan, A. & Banaji, M. R. Historical representations of social groups across 200 years of word embeddings from Google Books. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 119, e2121798119 (2022).
Kurdi, B., Mann, T. C., Charlesworth, T. E. S. & Banaji, M. R. The relationship between implicit intergroup attitudes and beliefs. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 116, 5862–5871 (2019).
Castelo, N., White, K. & Goode, M. R. Nature promotes self-transcendence and prosocial behavior. J. Environ. Psychol. 76, 101639 (2021).
Long, C. R., Seburn, M., Averill, J. R. & More, T. A. Solitude experiences: varieties, settings, and individual differences. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 29, 578–583 (2003).
Chaudhury, S. H., Garg, N. & Jiang, Z. The curious case of threat-awe: a theoretical and empirical reconceptualization. Emotion 22, 1653–1669 (2022).
Prokop, P. in Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science (eds Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T. K. & Weekes-Shackelford, V. A.) 1–5 (Springer, 2016).
Mikulincer, M., Florian, V. & Hirschberger, G. The existential function of close relationships: introducing death into the science of love. Personal. Soc. Psychol. Rev. 7, 20–40 (2003).
Hayes, A. Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: Third Edition: A Regression-Based Approach (Guilford Press, 2017).
Rosseel, Y. lavaan: an R package for structural equation modeling. J. Stat. Softw. 48, 1–36 (2012).
Pan, X. & Jiang, T. Awe fosters global self-continuity: the mediating effect of global processing and narrative. Emotion 23, 1618–1632 (2022).
Coplan, R. J., Bowker, J. C. & Nelson, L. J. in The Handbook of Solitude: Psychological Perspectives on Social Isolation, Social Withdrawal, and Being Alone (eds Coplan, R. J., Bowker, J. C. & Nelson, L. J.) 1–15 (Wiley, 2021).
Wilson, T. D. et al. Just think: the challenges of the disengaged mind. Science 345, 75–77 (2014).
Russell, D., Peplau, L. A. & Cutrona, C. E. The revised UCLA Loneliness Scale: concurrent and discriminant validity evidence. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 39, 472–480 (1980).
Yuan, W., Du, Y. & Jiang, T. How and when awe improves meaning in life: the role of authentic-self pursuit and trait authenticity. Emotion 24, 412–430 (2023).
Seo, M., Yang, S. & Laurent, S. M. No one is an island: awe encourages global citizenship identification. Emotion 23, 601–612 (2023).
Stamkou, E., Brummelman, E., Dunham, R., Nikolic, M. & Keltner, D. Awe sparks prosociality in children. Psychol. Sci. 34, 455–467 (2023).
Stancato, D. & Keltner, D. Awe, ideological conviction, and perceptions of ideological opponents. Emotion 21, 61–72 (2021).
Monroy, M. & Keltner, D. Awe as a pathway to mental and physical health. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 18, 309–320 (2023).
Rudd, M., Vohs, K. D. & Aaker, J. Awe expands people’s perception of time, alters decision making, and enhances well-being. Psychol. Sci. 23, 1130–1136 (2012).
Bai, Y. et al. Awe, daily stress, and elevated life satisfaction. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 120, 837–860 (2021).
Sturm, V. E. et al. Big smile, small self: awe walks promote prosocial positive emotions in older adults. Emotion 22, 1044–1058 (2022).
Bai, Y. et al. Awe, the diminished self, and collective engagement: universals and cultural variations in the small self. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 113, 185–209 (2017).
Keltner, D. Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life (Penguin, 2023).
Cong, Y., Keltner, D. & Sauter, D. Cultural variability in appraisal patterns for nine positive emotions. J. Cult. Cogn. Sci. 6, 51–75 (2022).
Nakayama, M., Nozaki, Y., Taylor, P., Keltner, D. & Uchida, Y. Individual and cultural differences in predispositions to feel positive and negative aspects of awe. J. Cross-Cult. Psychol. 51, 771–793 (2020).
Johnson, D. P. & Mullins, L. C. Growing old and lonely in different societies: toward a comparative perspective. J. Cross-Cult. Gerontol. 2, 257–275 (1987).
Tsai, J. L., Knutson, B. & Fung, H. H. Cultural variation in affect valuation. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 90, 288–307 (2006).
Cook, T. D. & Flay, B. R. in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (ed. Berkowitz, L.) vol. 11 1–57 (Academic Press, 1978).
Layous, K., Kurtz, J. L., Wildschut, T. & Sedikides, C. The effect of a multi-week nostalgia intervention on well-being: mechanisms and moderation. Emotion 22, 1952–1968 (2022).
Xu, M. Text2vec: text to vector toolkit. GitHub https://github.com/shibing624/text2vec/blob/master/README_EN.md#reference (2022).
Toney-Wails, A. & Caliskan, A. ValNorm quantifies semantics to reveal consistent valence biases across languages and over centuries. Preprint at arXiv https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.03950v5 (2020).
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G. & Buchner, A. G*Power 3: a flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behav. Res. Methods 39, 175–191 (2007).
Galanaki, E. P. & Vassilopoulou, H. D. Teachers and children’s loneliness: a review of the literature and educational implications. Eur. J. Psychol. Educ. 22, 455 (2007).
Jiang, T. & Yin, Y. Alone but not lonely, awe fosters positive attitudes toward solitude study 3 (#96862). AsPredicted https://aspredicted.org/wp9gx.pdf (2022).
Gierveld, J. D. J. & Tilburg, T. V. A 6-item scale for overall, emotional, and social loneliness: confirmatory tests on survey data. Res. Aging 28, 582–598 (2006).
Nichols, A. L. & Webster, G. D. The single-item need to belong scale. Personal. Individ. Differ. 55, 189–192 (2013).
Jiang, T. & Yin, Y. Alone but not lonely, awe fosters positive attitudes toward solitude study 4 (#123876). AsPredicted https://aspredicted.org/uz9y6.pdf (2023).
Jiang, T. & Yin, Y. Alone but not lonely, awe fosters positive attitudes toward solitude study 5 (#149307). AsPredicted https://aspredicted.org/4th98.pdf (2023).
Jiang, T. & Yin, Y. Alone but not lonely, awe fosters positive attitudes toward solitude study 7 (#101613). AsPredicted https://aspredicted.org/jj5n8.pdf (2022).
Forbes, R. C. & Stellar, J. E. When the ones we love misbehave: exploring moral processes within intimate bonds. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 122, 16–33 (2022).
Han, W., Feng, X., Zhang, M., Peng, K. & Zhang, D. Mood states and everyday creativity: employing an experience sampling method and a day reconstruction method. Front. Psychol. 10, 1698 (2019).
Stavrova, O., Ren, D. & Pronk, T. Low self-control: a hidden cause of loneliness? Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 48, 347–362 (2022).
Visserman, M. L. et al. Lightening the load: perceived partner responsiveness fosters more positive appraisals of relational sacrifices. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 123, 788–810 (2022).
Bolier, L. et al. Positive psychology interventions: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled studies. BMC Public Health 13, 119 (2013).
Sin, N. L. & Lyubomirsky, S. Enhancing well-being and alleviating depressive symptoms with positive psychology interventions: a practice-friendly meta-analysis. J. Clin. Psychol. 65, 467–487 (2009).
Gomez, R. & Fisher, J. W. Domains of spiritual well-being and development and validation of the Spiritual Well-Being Questionnaire. Personal. Individ. Differ. 35, 1975–1991 (2003).
Lee, Y.-C., Lin, Y.-C., Huang, C.-L. & Fredrickson, B. L. The construct and measurement of peace of mind. J. Happiness Stud. 14, 571–590 (2013).
Alone but not lonely: awe fosters positive attitudes toward solitude. Open Science Framework https://osf.io/VU7QF/ (2024).
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a Major Project Grant awarded to T.J. by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 32271127).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Y.Y., Y.D. and T.J designed research and collected data; W.Y., C.H. and Z.X. contributed new analytic tools; Y.Y. wrote the paper; W.Y., C.H., Y.D., J.A.H. and T.J. provided critical revisions; and T.J. supervised research.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interest.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Mental Health thanks Thuy-Vy Nguyen and the other, anonymous, reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Figs. 1 and 2, Tables 1–11 and Sections I–VII.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Yin, Y., Yuan, W., Hao, C. et al. Awe fosters positive attitudes toward solitude. Nat. Mental Health (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-024-00244-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44220-024-00244-y
- Springer Nature America, Inc.