Faculty Sponsor, if applicable
Dr. Kimberly Ann Quinn
Project Abstract
"This study is a replication and extension of research reported by Piff, Dietze, Feinberg, Stancato, and Keltner (2015). Awe is an overwhelming feeling of admiration mixed with fear and wonder, and their research studied the link between awe and prosociality. Specifically, they found that awe positively influenced prosocial behaviors (i.e. entitlement, generosity, and prosocial decision-making); these outcomes were mediated by subjects’ sense of small self. The extension of the current study determined if and how sharing the awe experience with others further enhances feelings of awe and its subsequent outcomes. Preliminary results show that emotion manipulations were successful between the three conditions (i.e. no awe, individual awe, shared awe). However, Piff et al. (2015) was not successfully replicated and the extension could not determine the positive effects of shared awe. Exploratory eye-tracking analyses will further determine if certain components of visual attention correlate with these variables between groups."
Type of Research
Department Honors
Preview
Presentation Year
May 2019