The New Science of Awe || Dacher Keltner

Today we welcome Dr. Dacher Keltner, one of the world’s foremost emotion scientists. He is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Greater Good Science Center. Fun fact: he was the scientific advisor behind the beloved Pixar movie, Inside Out! He has over 200 scientific publications and six books, including Born to Be Good, The Compassionate Instinct, and The Power Paradox. His latest book is called Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.
In this episode, I talk to Dacher Keltner about the new science of awe. Emotions like fear and disgust have been extensively researched because of their roles in human survival. But Dr. Keltner argues that awe is also essential for well-being and community. Music, art, and nature are some of the antecedents that can induce a sense of wonder, inspiring us to be better by recognizing that we’re parts of a greater whole. We also touch on the topics of transcendence, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and creativity.
Website: dacherkeltner.com
Twitter: @GreaterGoodSC
Topics
02:19 The science of awe
09:59 What triggers awe?
12:31 The neuroscience and physiology of awe
17:06 The essential features of awe
19:26 A prosocial approach to evolutionary psychology
25:16 Dr. Keltner’s personal search for awe
32:24 Nature and connectivity
36:16 Are we depriving children of awe?
38:20 Awe is a life detector
40:54 Awe and creativity
42:44 The dark side of awe
45:09 Cultivating the awe mindset
53:41 The unifying purpose of awe
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[@Thomas7Panter]

finding deep meaning in trauma is how i survive bipolar type 1

[@dr.georgeleemoore7198]

Love this podcast! Having just completed a book (after thirty years composing it) called Noticing and Awe (George Lee Moore, Amazon), from the perspective of philosophy, I think a seemingly odd source, Kant's Critique of Judgment, could help us contrast awe with the sublime, and the beautiful. I wrote:(please forgive the relative length) "... we may also initially separate awe from the sublime. Kant defines the sublime in The Critique of Judgment as an idea of a totality of something "absolutely great" in magnitude, be it a (dynamic) process like water avalanching over the Niagara or Victoria Falls or the (mathematical) distance in miles, say, to the sun, which must be superseded, or exceeded, by the experience itself. It's fine to read the number of tons of water abstractly written on a (dry) page, quite another to sense the 'absolutely great' rush in person. We can read about the size, power and fury of the sun and abstractly imagine its magnitude but if one could approach the sun itself in a spaceship, the spectacle would be absolutely great (Kant’s phrase, not mine).
Kant is careful not to confuse this experience with fear to one’s person. The tension between the idea of something great and the experience itself, let's call it the burst, Kant calls sublime. Now awe is related but it involves no idea (to briefly echo Kant's method of formulation) and though fear should also be separated from awe, as Kant does so with the sublime, awe is not really an exceptional moment because one is exposed to a different experience.
Awe is the seeming ordinary in its own light, stripped down to its ("tathata") suchness. It need not be inspired by an exterior, new experience, which evokes a subjective reaction, but a seemingly ancient, yet novel moment. The wedge of time-projection into the future and the past returns, presences, since we are the origin of time-consciousness. It is uncanny without being distorted or surreal, as that which creates time-perception intuits itself, plumbs the unconscious to resurface, quite simply, quietly. Again awe is not having an idea then an experience then enjoying the contrast. There is no idea preceding awe and awe is not in contrast with any one idea, but it does contrast with the vagueness of distracted perception, with abstract ideas, with needless cruelty, with distraction, with ignore-ance, as we seek here the origin of perception, as it, or we, gently rise, to reappear." This also could help, I hope, another great researcher on the psychology of awe (comrade-in-awe?) at the U. of Toronto, Dr. Jennifer Stellar.

[@rahulvyasplo]

I love Dr. Keltner's enthusiasm in this and how Scott is responding to it! Great podcast!

[@avicenna1977]

I've experienced "awe" a few memorable times and have become fascinated as to from where that opening of awareness bubbles. For most of these, the phenomenon was coincident with a loss (or pause with) "identity-focusedness" (as in my mind being in chatter about all this going on with me) - and being transcendent to it. The most transformative and full-body tingle was accompanied with a profound feeling of gratefulness. The more experiential example that may be universal - as in when we behold something sublime - is when I had travelled for the first time to India and my partner and I went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. He had been before, but he made me close my eyes as we made our way to the entrance (note - I've had the opportunity to travel quite a bit throughout my life and had been to see the Pyramids in Egypt and Machu Piccu in Peru, so was expecting to be moved to the same extent as these other human creations), but when I came to the entrance and beheld the Taj Mahal, I can say it was in Awe. As in, my belief in (and love of) humanity and what it can do was restored. It would be a great place to do a study on Awe!

[@BebbaDubbs]

I'm so excited for this conversation!