Strengthened social ties in disasters: Threat-awe encourages interdependent worldviews via powerlessness

Abstract

Threat-awe, a negatively valenced variant of awe, is thought to strengthen social ties among community members. However, few empirical studies have examined the social functions of threat-awe. This study investigated whether threat-awe is linked to interdependent worldviews through feelings of powerlessness in comparison with positive awe. After remembering and describing their experiences of positive-or threat-awe, 486 Japanese participants reported on items regarding a small self, a sense of powerlessness, and interdependent worldviews. The results demonstrated that threat-awe encouraged interdependent worldviews via an increased sense of powerlessness, rather than the small self, compared to the positive awe condition. From textual perspectives, the semantic networks between awe-related and other words differed from the descriptions of threat-awe and positive awe experiences. These results provide a more nuanced understanding of the emotions of awe as well as new insights into human cooperation in the context of disasters.

Development of a Japanese version of the Awe Experience Scale (AWE-S): A structural topic modeling approach

“…Previous studies suggested that feelings of awe that are triggered by threatening stimuli such as natural disasters could be tinged with the perception of threat ( Takano & Nomura, 2022b ). Given that even the recollection of awe experiences based on examples that do not include negative elements (e.g., seeing aurora) evokes the feelings of ifu , negative awe in Japanese ( Takano & Nomura, 2023a ), Japanese people might be more likely to feel threatened during awe experiences due to Japan’s geographic and historical background.…”

Relationships Between Meaning in Life and Positive and Negative Spirituality in a Field Setting in Japan

“…Interestingly, the relationship between ikei and ifu, both of which are awe in Japanese, was more evident in the Koyasan condition than the Nachi condition. While ikei ("畏敬") involves respect or a positive evaluation as indicated by its second character "敬," ifu ("畏怖") conveys more negative feelings since the second character "怖" means being afraid (Takano & Nomura, 2023). Previous studies showed that ifu is used more frequently when describing awe experiences that involve threat (Takano & Nomura, 2023).…”

“…While ikei ("畏敬") involves respect or a positive evaluation as indicated by its second character "敬," ifu ("畏怖") conveys more negative feelings since the second character "怖" means being afraid (Takano & Nomura, 2023). Previous studies showed that ifu is used more frequently when describing awe experiences that involve threat (Takano & Nomura, 2023). Thus, the feelings of awe during negative spiritual experiences might be associated with threat components more strongly.…”

A closer look at the time course of bodily responses to awe experiences

“…In each model, we used temperature, humidity, and contrast-coding for the two emotion conditions (awe-contrast: awe = 2/3, amusement = − 1/3, neutral = − 1/3; amusement-contrast: awe = − 1/3, amusement = 2/3, neutral = − 1/3) as fixed effects with one random intercept for participants 9 . Regarding the physiological measurements, we examined whether there were effects of other emotions, habituation, or demographic heterogeneity because some previous studies have suggested that these factors may moderate the effects of awe 38 – 41 . We considered three models in addition to the simple models: control models, which controlled for the main effects of emotions other than awe that were elicited from the video (i.e., amusement and fear as general positive and negative emotions, respectively); order models, which included the interaction effects between the contrasts and the order in which the videos were presented within each emotion condition (first = − 1/2, second = 1/2); and demographic models with the interaction effects between awe-contrast and age and gender (the values of age were centered).…”