Awe was largely absent from psychological research until recently, filed under general positive emotion. It is now studied separately, because it behaves differently from anything else in that category.
The definition rests on two components
Researchers characterise awe as arising from something perceived as vast, in a physical, temporal or conceptual sense, that does not fit existing understanding.
The second part is what distinguishes it, since the experience requires some adjustment of how the observer makes sense of things.
That combination explains why the triggers are so varied: landscapes, scale in nature, music, extraordinary skill, and moral acts of unusual generosity all fit.
It is not a form of pleasure
Awe frequently includes apprehension, and the states people describe range from wonder to something closer to fear.
Traditions describing encounters with the sacred consistently include both, using terms combining fascination and dread rather than treating them as opposites.
Categorising awe as a pleasant emotion therefore misdescribes it, and much of its effect appears to depend on the unsettling component being present.
The self becomes less prominent
A reliable finding is that people report feeling smaller and less individually significant during awe, and their concerns temporarily occupy less space.
This is unusual, since most positive emotions do not reduce self-focus, and some increase it.
The effect is what links awe to religious language across traditions, where the reduction of self-importance is often the explicit aim of the practice.
It changes behaviour towards other people
People who have just experienced awe tend to behave more generously and to describe themselves in terms of group membership rather than individual attributes.
The proposed explanation is that reduced self-focus shifts attention outward, making collective concerns more salient relative to personal ones.
This is why awe is often described as a socially binding emotion, and why so many traditions build their gatherings around architecture, music and scale designed to produce it.
It is difficult to manufacture reliably
Awe depends on the vastness being genuinely encountered rather than anticipated, which is why a familiar view produces less of it than the first sighting.
Attempts to induce it deliberately tend to work best when the experience is unmediated and prolonged rather than photographed or narrated.
Religious and contemplative settings have long addressed this through repetition combined with elements that resist familiarity, such as scale, darkness and sound that cannot be taken in at once.