AT1 Lab Report: HPS121
AT1 Lab Report: HPS121
Armaan Ghai (223009176)
Your Unit Chair: Dr Kate Barford
Date : 5th April, 2023
Word Count : 1144
Introduction
The adaptive reactions to environmental hazards and opportunities that are essential for existence and reproduction are prioritised by emotions. For humans, many of these issues and opportunities if not most of them, relate to social interactions, such as rearing children, obtaining and sharing food, and planning for defence (Stellar et al., 2017).
A category of positive emotions, such as compassion, awe, gratitude, appreciation, inspiration, admiration, elevation, and love, which serve to bind people together in social relationships by fostering cooperation and group stability has attracted new interest as a result of this social functional approach (Stellar et al., 2017).
The ability of these emotions to inspire people to look beyond their own fleeting needs and desires and put their attention on those of others is why we refer to this group of emotions as self-transcendent emotions. Even while these emotions play crucial social roles, they have only just started to garner more empirical attention, and effective scientists are still divided on whether or not they even represent emotions (Zhao et al., 2019). For instance, "a widespread inclination to identify and respond with thankful emotion to the roles of other people's benevolence in the beneficial experiences and outcomes that one enjoys" is what is meant by dispositional gratitude.
When someone feels as though they are in the presence of something enormous that they cannot fully comprehend, they are said to be in awe. It contains associated emotions like appreciation, inspiration, and elevation and is often compared to experiencing wonder. Although fear is present in about one-fifth of awe experiences, the bulk of them mirrors the good feelings we have been thinking about thus far. Around half of all awe experiences result from other-focused appraisals (others' deeds that display virtuosity, magnanimity, and stature, whether they be physical or psychological); nature is the second most common group of elicitors (Barrett et al., 2016).
In order to break free of one's pre-existing knowledge abilities and adapt to new circumstances, awe, a complicated feeling brought on by things bigger than oneself on a physical or social scale (perceived vastness), goes hand in hand. People might be moved to awe by the splendour of nature, artistic creations, or the presence of a strong figure. The majority of research views awe as a pleasant feeling, despite the possibility that certain awe experiences may also involve terror (Liu et al., 2023).
The literature-based analysis of awe indicates it to be mixed emotions but most of the time it is usually positivity with experiences that will result in wellness. We proposed that awe both positive and threatening improves the sense of connection to nature, which has a favourable indirect impact on well-being. Second, this study addressed the processes by which dangerous awe affects well-being and supported the findings of earlier studies that show that different types of amazement have distinct effects on well-being (Morgan et al., 2017).
We postulated that positive awe enhances well-being through a connection to nature, whereas threatening awe does not, and that dangerous awe has had at least two conflicting impacts on well-being across two mediating factors: a connection to nature and powerlessness.
Happier than individuals with low dispositional awe levels are those with strong dispositional positive awe. Inducing a sense of positive awe can also raise one's level of happiness in life. minimising the negative effects of lost possessions decrease the effects of daily stress and its symptoms. Therefore, the present report aims to establish the relationship between awe and well-being.
Methods
Both trials used volunteers who gave informed consent and were chosen from universities. Before the end of the semester, we intended to enrol around 300 individuals for each study (i.e., 100 for each group). The desired sample size was sufficient to measure the social psychological average effect size. The selected participants were male and female and their age was between 25-30 years.
Procedure
On the most fundamental level, we look at two types of well-being: good well-being, which includes signs of psychological adjustment, and negative well-being, which includes signs of psychological maladjustment. Definitions and evaluations of the well-being variables we considered in our categorization are provided in our online supplemental resources(Chen and Mongrain, 2021).
The participants sense of purpose in life was evaluated using the 10-item Purpose in Life Questionnaire. There are two types of meaning in life: those that are already present (for example, when I have found a meaningful purpose in life) and those that are sought for (for example, when I am constantly trying to figure out what my purpose in life is). Higher scores indicated a greater level of significance in life.
The primary goal of Research 2 was to investigate powerlessness as well as nature connectivity as potential mediators for the connection between awe and well-being. It should be noted, however, that (a) sentiments of powerlessness and small self may be related to one another (Nakayama et al., 2020) & (b) another mechanism might be feeling small within (Bai et al., 2017).
Women might be more appreciative than men. Men are supposed "less likely to experience and show thankfulness, made more critical appraisals of gratitude, and derived fewer benefits," according to this study. However, a meta-analysis indicates that for the majority of personality characteristics, there are hardly detectable variations between men and women. While gender is included as an exploratory moderator, we have no assumptions about how it will affect the association between a grateful mindset and well-being. All the participants provided consent before participating in the studies.
References
Bai, Y., Maruskin, L. A., Chen, S., Gordon, A. M., Stellar, J. E., McNeil, G. D., ... & Keltner, D. (2017). Awe, the diminished self, and collective engagement: Universals and cultural variations in the small self.Journal of Personality and social psychology,113(2), 185. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000087Barrett-Cheetham, E., Williams, L. A., & Bednall, T. C. (2016). A differentiated approach to the link between positive emotion, motivation, and eudaimonic well-being.The journal of positive psychology,11(6), 595-608. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2016.1152502Chen, S. K., & Mongrain, M. (2021). Awe and the interconnected self.The Journal of Positive Psychology,16(6), 770-778. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2020.1818808Liu, J., Huo, Y., Wang, J., Bai, Y., Zhao, M., & Di, M. (2023). Awe of nature and well-being: Roles of nature connectedness and powerlessness.Personality and Individual Differences,201, 111946. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.111946Morgan, B., Gulliford, L., & Kristjnsson, K. (2017). A new approach to measuring moral virtues: The Multi-Component Gratitude Measure.Personality and Individual Differences,107, 179-189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.11.044Stellar, J. E., Gordon, A. M., Piff, P. K., Cordaro, D., Anderson, C. L., Bai, Y., ... & Keltner, D. (2017). Self-transcendent emotions and their social functions: Compassion, gratitude, and awe bind us to others through prosociality.Emotion Review,9(3), 200-207. https://doi.org/10.1177/175407391668455Zhao, H., Zhang, H., Xu, Y., He, W., & Lu, J. (2019). Why are people high in dispositional awe happier? The roles of meaning in life and materialism.Frontiers in Psychology,10, 1208. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01208
