Transcendence and Sublime Experience in Nature: Awe and Inspiring Energy

Abstract

The wilderness is one of the most widely recognized sources of transcendent emotion. Various recent studies have demonstrated nature’s power to induce intense emotions. The study at hand will generate conceptual and operational definitions of sublime emotion toward nature. Taking into consideration the recent research on feelings of awe, an instrument is devised to measure sublime emotion toward nature. The proposed scale’s reliability and validity is tested in a sample of 280 participants from the general population of Madrid. Results show that sublime emotion was defined by two conceptual components: awe, and inspiring energy, both obtained using the computer program FACTOR. After reliability and validity analysis, the Sublime Emotion toward Nature (SEN) scale included 18 items, distributed into awe (6 items, α = 0.881) and inspiring energy (12 items, α = 0.933). Awe was defined by feelings of fear, threat, vulnerability, fragility, and respect for nature, which is perceived as vast, powerful, and mysterious. Inspiring energy was defined by feelings of vitality, joy, energy, oneness, freedom, eternity, and harmony with the universe. The SEN is an adequate instrument to measure transcendent emotions provoked by direct wilderness exposure or memory thereof.

Let Nature Be Thy Medicine: A Socioecological Exploration of Green Prescribing in the UK

“…This latter claim is supported by a recent mouse study, 2 of 24 in which exposure to trace levels of biodiverse soil dust was significantly associated with reduced anxiety like behaviours [13]. Natural environments can also provide important places for reflection and introspection, for cultivating feelings of awe, inspiration and freedom, and for facilitating group-based convivial activities, which could help to improve social cohesion and enhance mental health [14][15][16][17].…”

Influence of Awe on Green Consumption: The Mediating Effect of Psychological Ownership

“…As a positive social-functional emotion, awe broadens the self-concept, emphasize the sense of connection between the self and others and nature, and enhance one’s view of oneself as part of a larger entity (Fredrickson, 2001; Shiota et al, 2007; Bonner and Friedman, 2011; Jiang et al, 2018). Bethelmy and Corraliza (2019) stated that awe brings transcendental changes to individuals psychologically. The generation of psychological ownership based on nature stems from the psychological connection and integration between nature and the self, which makes people feel that nature belongs to them or to the collective as a whole (Pierce et al, 2003; Van Dyne and Pierce, 2004).…”

“…Compared with negative emotions, positive emotions result from the satisfaction of individual autonomy and contribute to pro-social behavior (Bagozzi et al, 1999; Kouchaki et al, 2018). Awe, a positive emotion of self-transcendence, is considerably helpful in stimulating the intrinsic motivation of environmental protection (Bethelmy and Corraliza, 2019) and improving the possibility of green consumption. Compared with macro-government intervention and moral constraints, awe offers a way to enhance environmental protection that is effective, considerably low in cost, and easy to manipulate and realize.…”

“…First, although we strictly manipulated the experimental research, all research was conducted in the laboratory, which, to some extent, limited their externality. Given that individuals visiting tourist resorts or other magnificent natural landscapes are more likely to experience awe (Keltner and Haidt, 2003; Piff et al, 2015; Bethelmy and Corraliza, 2019), in future studies field experiments in tourist resorts can be considered to further enhance the externality and robustness of the research. Second, green consumption in this study was mostly measured via survey questionnaires.…”

Rethinking wellbeing: Toward a more ethical science of wellbeing that considers current and future generations

“…Prior research had indicated that spending time in nature over a two-week period boosts hedonic as well as eudaimonic wellbeing (Howell, 2014), and that effect sizes are larger (ds from .37 to .63) than those reported for other positive psychology interventions (ds from .20 to .34) (Bolier et al, 2013). Exposure to nature can lead to transcendent emotions (Bethelmy & Corraliza, 2019), peak experience (Maslow, 1964) and psychological flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). Interestingly, transcendent emotions -including compassion, gratitude and awefoster healthy social relationships (Stellar et al, 2017) and such relationships are facilitated by spending time in nature (Mayer, Frantz, Bruehlman-Senecal, & Dolliver, 2008;Richardson, Cormack, McRobert, & Underhill, 2016), further highlighting the inter-connectedness between individual, community and environmental domains.…”