Jiang's team of researchers published an article in Emotion to reveal the impact of awe on self-continuity

When you gaze at the majesty of the mountains, witness the magnificence of the sunset, or marvel at the vastness of the starry sky, you may feel that the vastness of the things in front of you exceeds your understanding of the world, and thus have a feeling of being shocked, you may get goosebumps, and even feel the urge to shed tears, this emotion is called awe (Awe).

Awe allows people to shift their attention from themselves to the outside world, quiet their noisy selves, and see the world in a humble way, leading to becoming more open and inclusive
.
Awe can make people kinder and more compassionate, and even reduce the body's inflammatory response and enhance physical health
.
While previous studies have broadly pointed to the close relationship between awe and self-concept, there is currently no research in the field to explore the relationship between awe and an important component of self-concept—self-continuity
.

Global Self-Continuity refers to an individual's subjective feelings about the self over different periods of time, that is, despite knowing that there are various psychological or physical changes, the core of the self remains similar, and we are the same person
in the past, present, and future.
As an important organizational part of stable self-concept, self-continuity can provide an experiential reference for the individual's actions in the past self on the one hand, and an expected guidance for the individual's future self on the other, which has an important impact
on mental and physical health.
Therefore, the self-continuum is an important indicator of
psychological maturity.
Increased self-continuity will promote self-control, a sense of meaning in life, and more effective judgment, decision-making, and action
.

Researcher Tonglin Jiang and collaborators explored the impact
of awe on self-continuity through six different studies.
It is found that under natural conditions, awe is closely related to self-continuity, and experimentally induced awe can effectively improve self-continuity
.
The study also found that awe enhances self-continuity through a series of mediating roles of global processing and narrative, that is, awe enables people to view their lives from a macroscopic perspective, thereby obtaining a narrative strategy that can connect various changes in life, and finally enable people to find clues from changes and perceive the continuity of the self in different time periods
.
The effect of awe on self-continuity goes beyond general positive emotions, and awe based on threatening events can also promote higher self-continuity in individuals
.

This study enriches the literature understanding of the relationship between awe and self-concept, reveals the influence mechanism of awe on self-continuity, and provides a new perspective
for understanding the positive psychological effects of awe.

Prof.
Tonglin Jiang and Ph.
D.
student in the Department of Psychology of the University of Hong Kong and research assistant Pan Xinyu in the research group of Tonglin Jiang are co-first authors
.
Researcher Tonglin Jiang is the corresponding author
of the article.

The research work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China Youth Fund (32000767
).

Pan, X.
, & Jiang, T.
(2022).
Awe fosters global self-continuity: The mediating effect of global processing and narrative.
Emotion.
Advance online publication.
https://doi.
org/10.
1037/emo0001187

2022-11-15