What Awe Is and Why It's Psychologically Significant
Awe is one of the most recently studied emotions in positive psychology — and one of the most transformative. Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt (2003) define awe as the response to encountering something so vast — whether physically, conceptually, or morally — that your existing frameworks are temporarily inadequate to process it. Standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, hearing a symphony you can't fully comprehend, witnessing an act of exceptional courage, understanding a scientific concept that reveals the scale of the cosmos — these are canonical awe experiences because they each present something your current mental structure can't simply accommodate without expansion. Awe is not the same as appreciation, admiration, or wonder (though it contains elements of all three) — it's specifically the momentary overwhelming of your processing capacity by something genuinely larger than your current framework.
Big Five Traits and Awe Susceptibility
Three Big Five dimensions predict awe frequency and intensity:
- Openness to Experience — the strongest predictor. Shiota, Keltner, and Mossman (2007) found Openness to be the most reliable personality predictor of awe experience frequency. High-Openness individuals have broad aesthetic sensitivity, tolerance for ambiguity and incomprehension, and genuine curiosity about vastness and complexity — all of which create receptivity to awe triggers. They don't need to immediately understand or categorize what they experience; not-knowing is interesting rather than threatening.
- Neuroticism — negative predictor. High-Neuroticism individuals are threat-oriented; vastness and challenge to existing frameworks can trigger anxiety rather than awe. The same stimuli that produce awe in a low-Neuroticism, high-Openness person can produce discomfort or overwhelm in a high-Neuroticism person.
- Agreeableness — minor positive predictor through moral awe. Van Cappellen and Saroglou (2012) found Agreeableness predicts moral awe — being moved by exceptional human goodness, sacrifice, or moral excellence.
Take the Big Five assessment to understand your Openness and Neuroticism scores — the two dimensions most directly linked to your awe accessibility.
The Self-Diminishment Effect: Why Awe Is Good for You
Piff, Dietze, Feinberg, Stancato, and Keltner (2015) demonstrated that awe reliably produces what they call the "small self" experience — a temporary reduction in the felt importance of personal concerns, identity, and the constant self-referential narrative that dominates normal consciousness. Their research showed that participants who had been induced to feel awe were more prosocial, less entitled, more likely to help others, and more likely to report their personal concerns as less important than they had before the experience. Neuroimaging studies found reduced activity in the default mode network (the brain's self-referential processing system) during awe states. This makes awe one of the few evidence-based interventions for excessive self-focus — including the narcissistic self-absorption and anxious self-monitoring that are features of some personality configurations.
MBTI Types and Awe Experiences
| MBTI Type | Primary Awe Triggers | Awe Style |
|---|---|---|
| INFJ / INFP | Profound art, music, moral excellence, spiritual experience | Deeply personal; integrates into identity and worldview |
| INTJ / INTP | Scientific vastness, mathematical elegance, systems complexity | Intellectual awe; triggered by understanding depth rather than beauty |
| ENFP / ENTP | Human potential, ideational connections, visionary possibilities | Expansive, enthusiasm-driven; awe as fuel for new ideas |
| ISFP / ESFP | Natural beauty, sensory richness, artistic excellence | Present-moment, embodied; strong aesthetic awe |
| ISTJ / ESTJ | Expert mastery, evidence of sustained effort, historical depth | Respect-based; awe triggered by excellence and scale of human achievement |
| ENTJ / ESTJ | Scale of possibility, visionary leadership, civilizational achievement | Aspirational; awe as motivational energy for ambitious goals |
Awe and Wellbeing: The Research Evidence
The benefits of awe experiences are well-documented across multiple research paradigms:
- Reduced inflammatory cytokines — Stellar et al. (2015) found that awe (along with other positive emotions) was associated with lower levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines, suggesting a direct physiological pathway between awe experience and immune function
- Increased time perception — Rudd, Vohs, and Aaker (2012) found that awe experiences made people feel they had more time — not that time passed more quickly, but that the present moment felt expanded. This is particularly valuable for high-Conscientiousness individuals chronically experiencing time scarcity
- Decreased narcissism — Shiota et al. (2007) found awe uniquely predicts decreased narcissistic tendencies compared to other positive emotions
- Increased meaning — Van Cappellen and Saroglou (2012) found awe increases sense of life meaning beyond what other positive emotions produce
Building Awe Into Your Life by Personality Type
For high-Openness types, the primary challenge is not accessing awe but sustaining its impact — their rapid ideational processing means they can move through awe experiences quickly without fully integrating them. Deliberate practices like journaling about awe experiences, sharing them with others, or allowing unscheduled reflection time extend the psychological benefit beyond the immediate moment.
For low-Openness types who find awe less accessible, the most reliable triggers are universal rather than individual-specific:
- Vast natural environments — the night sky, oceans, mountains — work across personality types
- Physical scale demonstrations (deep time evidence: geological formations, ancient buildings, cosmological scale)
- Expert mastery at its peak — watching a supreme performer in any domain
- Moral excellence — acts of extraordinary kindness, sacrifice, or courage
For high-Conscientiousness types who may resist non-productive time for awe experiences: research makes the case directly. Awe improves time perception, creativity, prosocial behavior, and reduces the anxious self-monitoring that erodes performance quality. It's an investment in cognitive and emotional capital, not leisure.
Conclusion: Awe Is Accessible to Everyone, But Comes Differently
Awe is not the exclusive property of artists, mystics, and high-Openness personalities — it's a universal human emotion with physiological and psychological benefits that work across personality types. But the triggers that most reliably produce it, and the depth with which it's experienced, are substantially shaped by your personality. Taking the Big Five assessment to understand your Openness score tells you whether awe is something you need to protect and sustain (high Openness) or deliberately seek out through universal triggers (lower Openness). Either way, the evidence for its benefits is robust enough to make it worth pursuing deliberately rather than leaving to chance.