Psychosocial Effects And Mechanisms Of Awe

Awe is a complex emotion induced by vast stimuli which needs accommodation.Awe includes not only admiration and wonder,but also fear.In recent years,awe has received extensive attention from researchers.However,there are still some problems unsolved in existing research,including overlooking its character of enhancing the sense of connection,ignoring the negative valence of awe,and insufficient exploration of the psychosocial effects and mechanisms of awe.The purpose of the present dissertation was to use empirical psychological research methods to verify the existence of negative valence awe experience in Chinese participants.On this basis,the effects of different valence awe on mental health,intergroup attitudes and proenvironmental behaviors were investigated,and the possible mechanism effects of connection to nature and connection to all humanity were explored.In this dissertation,four research topics are conducted as follows:The first research aimed to verify the existence of negative awe in Chinese participants.The participants were free to recall a period of awe experience in daily life,and reported the accompanying different emotions and the psychological and physiological characteristics.The second research investigated the effects of different valence of awe on mental health and possible mediating effect of connection to nature through Study2.1 and Study2.2.In both studies,participants were randomly assigned to watch one video that elicited either negative awe,positive awe,or elicited no strong emotion(control).Study 2.1 focused on daily stressful events,and the effects and mechanisms of different valence of awe.Study 2.2 put powerlessness as another mediating variable based on Study 2.1,and focused on more comprehensive indexes of happiness(life satisfaction and eudaimonic happiness).The third research investigated the effects of different valence of awe on the intergroup attitudes and the possible mediating effect of the connection to all humanity through Study 3.1 and Study 3.2.Study 3.1 used natural elements to induce different valence of awe,and randomly asked participants to recall a memory of positive awe experience in nature,negative awe experience in nature or a memory they going to the shop(control)to induce different emotions;in addition,Study 3.1 took participants' cognition of equality between different groups as dependent variable.Study 3.2 used video about mystery universe as the awe-inducing methods,and took participants' prejudice against two typical out-groups as dependent variables;besides,Study3.2 considered the potential influence of dispositional connection to all humanity,took this variable as the control variable,and used well established scale to measure connection to all humanity.The forth research explored how dispositional and state awe affected one's proenvironmental behavior and the possible mediating effects of connection to nature.Study 4.1 explored the relationship among dispositional positive awe,dispositional connection to nature and daily proenvironmental behaviors using questionnaires.Studies 4.2 and Study 4.3 both adopted experimental methods.Study 4.2 adopted the way of online method and took consumption intention on ecological travel as an indicator of proenvironmental behaviors.Study 4.3 used videos to induce different valence of awe or elicited no strong emotion(control),and took one's intention of proenvironmental behaviors in future as dependent variable.According to the results,the main conclusions are as follows:First,Chinese participants do have awe experience with negative valence in their daily lives.The negative valence of awe has its own characteristics different from positive awe.Second,both positive awe and negative awe can significantly improve the feelings of one's connection to nature and the connection to all humanity.However,whether negative awe has the same effect on the sense of connection to a specific object as positive awe(i.e.there is no significant difference between the two groups)may be related to the type of elicitor of awe.The avoidance motivations brought by negative awe may reduce the feeling of connection with the elicitor to a certain extent,resulting to the difference with positive awe in the sense of connection to a specific object(i.e.which is significantly lower than that of positive awe).This explanation needs to be confirmed by further studies.Third,the main mechanism that positive awe brings benefits to one's mental health is the enhancement of connection to nature;while negative awe has no significant effect on one's mental health,which is caused by the suppressing effect of positive indirect effect of connection to nature and negative indirect effect of powerlessness.These results comprehensively verified that the sense of connection to nature is one of the specific mechanisms that awe affecting one's mental health.Fourth,awe have a significant indirect effect on one's intergroup attitudes through the promotion of the connection to all humanity:it has a positive indirect effect on the group equality cognition and a negative indirect effect on outgroup prejudice,which verifies that the sense of connection to all humanity is one of the specific mechanisms that awe affecting the intergroup attitude.Fifth,dispositional positive awe,state positive awe,and state negative awe all have a positive indirect effect on proenvironmental behaviors through the promotion of dispositional or state connection to nature.These results verify that the sense of connection to nature is one of the specific mechanisms that awe affecting proenvironmental behaviors.Based on the above conclusions,it can be concluded that one of the possible mechanisms of the effects of awe on mental health,intergroup attitudes and proenvironmental behaviors is realized by enhancing the level of one's sense of connection.