Awe is one of the eight positive emotions proposed by Vaillant (2008a, 2008b). McDougall (1910) first described the concept of awe, which includes admiration imbued with senses of power and wonder as well as the meaning of a peak experience. Ekman (1992) and Valdesolo and Graham (2014) suggested that awe is a special, complex, and unique emotion. Stellar et al. (2017) suggested that awe is a self-transcendent emotion that involves admiration, inspiration, and elevation. By contrast, Keltner and Haidt (2003) considered awe’s core dimensions to be senses of vastness and accommodation. Vastness refers to stimuli that strain one’s perception in terms of personal frames of reference such as physical size (i.e., volume, area, quantity), social scale (i.e., fame), and symbolic markers of vast size (i.e., a lavish office). The congeniality indicates that such a vastness triggers a cognitive discordance that might induce an imbalance between one’s perception and behavior. Therefore, one must accommodate the present situation and balance cognitive reference frames, experiencing one’s smallness, powerlessness, and confusion. Once such an accommodation takes effect, feelings pertaining to enlightenment and rebirth may arise. If not, fear and a feeling of being threatened may ensue. Therefore, feelings of awe may be identified when a powerful situation accompanied by an inclination to submit occurs, or when a difficult-to-explain situation accompanied by a feeling of amazement, surprise, or confusion occurs. Such feelings of awe can be categorized as positive affect or emotions that promote happiness (Shiota et al., 2007).

Regarding causation, a given object or event is necessary to elicit a feeling of awe. This cause usually lies in a rich, attractive source, such as art, technology, or landscapes. Awe cannot be elicited without a cause (Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Shiota et al., 2007), but it can be induced by objects such as landscapes (Shiota et al., 2007), outer space (Bonner & Friedman, 2011), human achievement (Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Thomson & Siegel, 2017), artworks, music, powerful leaders (Keltner & Haidt, 2003), natural disaster, and epidemic disease (Piff et al., 2015).

Furthermore, the mechanism underlying awe is different among cultures (Nakayama et al., 2020). Awe is considered a positive emotion in Western culture but is considered a complex mixture of positive and negative emotions in Eastern culture. In East Asia, people usually view the negative aspect of awe in a positive light, and vice versa. This represents an example of dialectical thinking (Peng & Nisbett, 1999).

Theory and research have supported the notion that awe can strengthen not only the positive behavior, well-being, and psychological capital but also student learning outcomes and self-effectiveness (McCullough et al., 2002; Saroglou et al., 2008; Van Cappellen & Saroglou, 2012; Weinstein et al., 2009). Therefore, awe can be considered a self-transcendent emotion (Stellar et al., 2017) that helps enhance perceptions of well-being. However, to date, few studies have explored the mechanisms underlying the emotion of awe. To fill this literature gap, this study focused on the development of measurement properties for the General Awe Scale (GAS). 

On the basis of a literature review, we developed the first draft of the GAS, which comprises 50 items pertaining to the following 5 dimensions: (1) curiosity and exploration, (2) a feeling of wonderment regarding nature, (3) appreciation of artwork, (4) a feeling of smallness, and (5) social connection. The development of the GAS was divided into the following two stages. In the first stage, 384 college students were recruited for the pilot study, and the collected data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and internal consistency analysis to develop the final 27-item scale. In the second stage, 720 college students were recruited and surveyed; the statistical analysis methods used were confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), alpha reliability, and criterion-related validity. 

In this study, data were collected using an online survey that was distributed on relevant social media platforms used at several Taiwanese universities. The research data including demographic variables as well as travel frequency, religious activity participation, meditation frequency, stress levels, and learning satisfaction were collected using the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (Fang, 2012), Prosocial Scale, Taiwan Subjective Well-Being Scale (Short-Form; Yu et al., 2017), Gratitude Scale (Lin, 2012), and Spirituality Well-Being Scale (Chung et al., 2013).

The results are summarized as follows:

1. The CFA results supported the notion that the GAS was composed of five latent factors, namely (1) curiosity and exploration, (2) a feeling of wonderment regarding nature, (3) appreciation of artwork, (4) a feeling of smallness, and (5) social connection.

2. The results revealed that the GAS satisfied the validity and reliability criteria.

3. In this study, we adopted the notions of subjective well-being, prosocial behavior, spiritual-well-being, and gratitude as external criteria for validity confirmation. The results demonstrated that the GAS had significant positive relationships with these external criteria. The criterion-related validity of the GAS was thus verified.

4. The majority of the survey respondents were ranked on the middle-to-high level of the GAS. Specifically, our data revealed that the students who had gone abroad in the past year had higher learning satisfaction and lower stress levels, reporting significantly higher GAS scores. In this study, we developed the structure of the GAS comprising 27 items that pertained to the aforementioned five dimensions. Similar to the findings of most Western studies, this study indicated that specific factors such as nature and artwork (Fingerhut & Prinz, 2018; Keltner & Haidt, 2003) can elicit the emotion of awe. Keltner and Haidt (2003) contended that awe consists of three types, namely awe regarding nature, god, and cognitive knowledge. These are consistent with the feeling of wonderment regarding nature and appreciation of artwork categories developed in this study.

We discovered that awe can not only can enhance curiosity and desire for exploration but also make one feel small and powerless when connecting with society. These concepts are associated with the remaining three factors of the GAS, namely curiosity and exploration, a feeling of smallness, and social connection. Although some cultures believe that awe involves a complex fusion of positive and negative emotions. The results of this study suggested that awe was principally a positive emotion rather than a negative one; this viewpoint is more consistent with the conclusions of previous studies on the mechanism of the awe emotion.

Moreover, awe was significantly correlated with the frequency of going abroad; hence, students who had been abroad recently registered higher GAS scores than those who had not, especially in the curiosity and exploration and social connection categories. These findings are consistent with those of a Chinese study (Tian et al., 2015) that suggested a significant positive association between travel experience and awe. A tourism-related study also demonstrated that personal involvement and experience was the most effective means of evoking awe (Bloemer & de Ruyter, 1999). For example, travelers can feel awe when becoming immersed in experiences of the world´s greatest buildings or historical temples (Keltner & Haidt, 2003), passing through grassland wilderness (Hall & Cole, 2012), or participating in music performances (Cotter et al., 2018).

Compared with students who were under greater pressure, students with low stress levels recorded higher GAS scores. This result is also consistent with previous study findings indicating that when under pressure, people are less likely to behave and think positively (Darley & Batson, 1973).

In addition, awe had a significant positive correlation with learning satisfaction, which suggests that students who felt they had good learning outcomes also had greater senses of awe. Gottlieb et al. (2018) also reported consistent results indicating that awe may be correlated with scientific learning, and Anderson et al. (2019) suggested that those with greater senses of awe can more easily evoke learning curiosity and improve learning outcomes.

In summary, this study demonstrated that awe enhances prosocial behavior, gratitude, subjective well-being, and spiritual well-being in Taiwanese individuals. Future studies should continue to study the impact, determinants, and causal processes underlying the emotion of awe to not only expand its application and understanding in positive human behaviors but also promote the development of a harmonious and peaceful society.