The Experience of Awe in Nature
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Cambridge
Department Name: Social and Dev Psychology
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Organisations
Publications
Huntsinger J. R.
(2013)
The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Psychology
Meier BP
(2012)
Embodiment in social psychology.
in Topics in cognitive science
Pavarini G
(2014)
Advances in Experimental Moral Psychology
Schnall S
(2014)
The power of metaphor: Examining its influence on social life.
Schnall S
(2011)
Elevation Puts Moral Values Into Action
in Social Psychological and Personality Science
Schnall S.
(2011)
Social and emotional aspects of learning
Zarkadi T
(2013)
"Black and White" thinking: Visual contrast polarizes moral judgment
in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
| Description | The grant period was productive and resulted in a great number of interesting findings. A full list of publications appears further below. The following findings are highlighted: I. Elevation puts moral values into action (Schnall & Roper, 2012, SPPS). Moral elevation has been shown to increase helping behavior. However, this might be due to a threatened moral self-image because people engage in a social comparison with a moral exemplar and conclude that their own moral integrity is inferior. Alternatively, feelings of elevation might provide a motivational impetus to act on one's moral values. We provided participants with an opportunity to engage in self-affirmation, which was followed by an induction of moral elevation or a neutral control mood. Compared to the neutral mood, participants experiencing moral elevation showed higher levels of helping behavior following self-affirmation. This effect was especially pronounced in participants experiencing moral elevation who reminded themselves of previous prosocial behavior; they showed more helping than participants experiencing moral elevation who had not engaged in self-affirmation. Thus, rather than posing a threat to moral self-worth, feelings of elevation can provide the motivational trigger to act on affirmed moral values. 2."Black and White" thinking: Visual contrast polarizes moral judgment (Zarkadi & Schnall, 2013, JESP). The present research tested whether incidental visual cues without any affective connotation can shape moral judgment by priming a certain mindset. In two experiments we showed that exposure to an incidental black and white visual contrast leads people to think in a "black and white" manner, as indicated by more extreme moral judgments. Participants who were primed with a black and white checkered background while considering a moral dilemma (Experiment 1) or a series of social issues (Experiment 2) gave ratings thatwere significantly further from the response scale's mid-point, relative to participants in control conditions without such priming. These findings suggest that in addition to affective cues and gut feelings, non-affective cues relating to processing style can influence moral judgments. 3. Gaze aversion and cognitive abstraction distinguish moral elevation from admiration for skill (Pavarini, Yang, Schnall & Immordino-Yang, in progress). Witnessing others' exemplary actions triggers strong positive feelings, but the cognitive and behavioural mechanisms underlying such positive, prosocial emotions remain largely undifferentiated. Participants reacted naturally in a private, videotaped interview to a series of true, documentary-style narratives depicting highly virtuous or skilled protagonists. When reacting to virtue, participants reported feeling elevated and inspired, were more likely to declare their own values and beliefs, and engaged in fewer concrete social comparisons between themselves and story protagonists. They were also more likely to avert their gaze, and individuals who looked away more described their reactions to virtue in more abstract, morally relevant terms. These findings suggest that positive prosocial emotions may be distinguished by concrete versus abstract cognition and associated visual attention mechanisms. They also help explain why morally relevant prosocial emotions recruit the posterior cingulate cortex, a neural system also involved in accessing personal memory and controlling attention and eye saccades. |
| Exploitation Route | Findings are relevant to researchers studying implications of moral behaviour, in particular in legal contexts. |
| Sectors | Education,Financial Services, and Management Consultancy,Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections |