The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion
Abstract
In this paper we present a prototype approach to awe. We suggest that two appraisals are central and are present in all clear cases of awe: perceived vastness, and a need for accommodation, defined as an inability to assimilate an experience into current mental structures. Five additional appraisals account for variation in the hedonic tone of awe experiences: threat, beauty, exceptional ability, virtue, and the supernatural. We derive this perspective from a review of what has been written about awe in religion, philosophy, sociology, and psychology, and then we apply this perspective to an analysis of awe and related states such as admiration, elevation, and the epiphanic experience.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
What Makes Online Content Viral?
Berger, J., & Milkman, K. L. (2012) · Journal of Marketing Research · doi:10.1509/jmr.10.0353 · Cited by 3,178
Huta, V., & Ryan, R. M. (2010) · Journal of Happiness Studies · doi:10.1007/s10902-009-9171-4 · Cited by 1,291
Nature Contact and Human Health: A Research Agenda
Frumkin, H., Bratman, G. N., Breslow, S. J., Cochran, B., Kahn Jr, P. H., Lawler, J. J., Levin, P. S., Tandon, P. S., Varanasi, U., Wolf, K. L., et al. (2017) · Environmental Health Perspectives · doi:10.1289/ehp1663 · Cited by 1,237
“What is the role of awe—the sense of wonder, amazement, and smallness that may occur in response to perceptually vast stimuli (Keltner and Haidt 2003; Piff et al. 2015; Rudd et al. 2012; Shiota et al. 2007)?”
BackgroundAwe, the small self, and prosocial behavior
Piff, P. K., Dietze, P., Feinberg, M., Stancato, D. M., & Keltner, D. (2015) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/pspi0000018 · Cited by 1,214
Self-citationThe nature of awe: elicitors, appraisals, and effects on self-concept
Shiota, M. N., Keltner, D., & Mossman, A. (2007) · Cognition and Emotion · doi:10.1080/02699930600923668 · Cited by 1,025
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Keltner, D., & Haidt, J.
- Venue
- Cognition and Emotion
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2003-01
- Volume
- 17
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 297-314
- ISSN
- 0269-9931 (ISSN-L)
- 1464-0600
- OpenAlex
- W2029504801
- Cited by
- 2,042
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 4.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1080/02699930302297
- The paper
- Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cognition and Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930302297
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.