Cultivating Awe & Emotional Connection in Daily Life | Dr. Dacher Keltner

Awe: An Emotional State of Vastness, Mystery, and Perceptual Shift

Dacher Keltner defines awe as a state evoked when encountering something vast and mysterious that cannot be immediately understood, prompting a shift in perception. Experiences such as standing by a T-Rex skeleton, gazing up at giant eucalyptus trees, or witnessing the breathtaking expanses of Yosemite create a feeling of being small yet woven into something much larger—whether it’s evolution, nature, music, culture, or collective human history. Awe transforms the mind, imparting a sense of lift and psychological openness distinct from other emotional states.

Physical Markers of Awe: Vocalizations, Expressions, Goosebumps, and Brain Changes

Awe manifests in recognizable physical markers: spontaneous vocalizations like “whoa,” widened eyes, changes in facial muscle activity, and the appearance of goosebumps. Keltner describes studies of humans responding with expansion and collective behavior when exposed to awe-inspiring stimuli. There’s also evidence from Jane Goodall’s observations of chimpanzees—who respond to waterfalls with behaviors like quietly sitting, gazing, touching, and rocking—that awe is not unique to humans. Physiologically, awe activates the brain by quieting the default mode network, increases vagal tone (linked to relaxation and social connection), changes breathing patterns, and can even activate the immune system. These responses are measurable and consistent, dispelling the notion that awe is ineffable or unmeasurable.

Awe Creates Lift and Openness, Unlike Other Emotional States

Andrew Huberman highlights the unique sensation of “lift,” excitement, and expansiveness that awe elicits, comparing it to the contrast between experiencing a confined, tunnel-like focus and then suddenly emerging into a panoramic view or an open horizon. This perceptual transition, mirrored in nature or music, triggers physiological shifts away from sympathetic “fight or flight” response to more relaxed, parasympathetic states, marking awe as transformative both emotionally and physically.

Awe Can Be Measured Through Facial Muscles, Gaze, Breathing, Vagal Tone, Immune Activation, and Voice, Rather Than Being Ineffable or Unmeasurable

Keltner clarifies that awe can be scientifically studied using diverse measurement tools: coded facial muscle movements, gaze direction, skin coloration, breath patterns, vagal tone, immune and gut activation, voice analysis, and direct brain recordings. For instance, awe’s signature changes in voice, such as the drawn-out and amazed “whoa,” can be tracked and correlated with other physiological data.

Facial Expressions and Motor Patterns Reveal 20 Emotions, With Awe As a Universal Expression

Research extends Darwin and Ekman's foundational work on six basic emotions with universal facial expressions, expanding the taxonomy to about twenty, including laughter, love, compassion, awe, embarrassment, shame, and pain. Keltner describes how these findings expand scientific understanding of emotional expression across cultures.

Analysis of 2M Videos Across 144 Cultures Shows 75% Overlap In Expressing Awe, Concentrating, and Laughing

A large-scale study by Keltner’s team, using AI to analyze two million videos from 144 cultures, identified sixteen major facial expressions. Results show a substantial 75% overlap across cultures in the expression of awe—such as at fireworks displays—along with concentration and laughter, reinforcing awe's universality.

Emotional Facial Expressions: 50-60% Hardwired, the Rest Culturally Varied

According to Keltner, 50–60% of facial emotional expressions are hardwired and evolutionarily conserved, while the remainder varies with culture. This balance explains both the universality of many emotional expressions and their variation depending on cultural norms—such as East Asian societies valuing calm and discouraging overt disruption or protest.

Motor Patterns of Emotions: Coordinated Facial, Skeletal, and Physiological Responses

Alongside facial expressions, emotions are expressed through coordinated motor patterns, involving facial musculature as well as skeletal muscles and postures. Keltner describes how emotions like soothing a child or reacting to rotten food involve distinct and universal motor patterns—such as bringing a child close or recoiling. However, the correlation between physical expression, language, and self-reported feeling is modest, demonstrating the co ...

Dacher Keltner and Andrew Huberman explore how emotions such as embarrassment and playful teasing, along with shared collective experiences, foster social connectivity and create bonds within groups. These mechanisms are deeply rooted in human psychology and physiology and help define group membership, reinforce social norms, and even generate experiences of awe.

Embarrassment Shows Commitment to Norms and Morality

Embarrassment is a subtle but powerful signal of social awareness and morality. Keltner notes that when people become embarrassed, they typically exhibit decreased eye contact, avert their face, and blush—a suite of behaviors that signal to others that they understand and care about the group’s rules and standards. This behavior, as described by Darwin and sociologist Irving Goffman, acts as a display of moral robustness, showing a healthy commitment to collective values.

This phenomenon makes embarrassed individuals more likable and trustworthy. Studies, such as Keltner’s fraternity research, show that individuals who become embarrassed and show that they care about group criticism are better liked, more trusted, and receive more support and resources from peers. Embarrassment thus serves as a visible sign of good group membership and social empathy.

Conversely, damage to the orbital frontal cortex, a brain region involved in ethical consideration, can eliminate appropriate embarrassment. People with such injuries may not show embarrassment in situations where it is expected, and are often perceived as unsettling or rule-breaking, reinforcing the idea that displaying embarrassment is critical for showing empathy and fitting into the group.

Playful Teasing Reinforces Norms and Bonds

Playful teasing is another vital mechanism for reinforcing group norms and social bonds. Within groups, effective teasing targets minor breaches of group behavior face-to-face, gently highlighting what matters most to the collective. It relies on humor and benevolence, focusing on making light of human faults without causing humiliation or exclusion.

Research, including fraternity studies, finds that popular teasers are those who can maintain playfulness, ensuring everyone is aware of boundaries and expectations while simultaneously strengthening group solidarity. Teasing stories and rituals—such as siblings inventing nicknames or friends joking about embarrassing moments—serve as subtle repair work, signaling, "I’m teasing you, but I’m also supporting you."

In male friendships, as described by Huberman and illustrated by Jocko Willink’s principle, teasing is direct and in-person, accompanied by steadfast loyalty when the person is not present. Friends build bonds through mutual ribbing but rally behind each other in the face of external criticism. This practice is not only a marker of inclusion but is also a sign of deep trust.

Collective Effervescence: Shared Emotion and Behavior Deepen Bonds

Collective effervescence refers to the powerful sense of unity felt during shared emotional experiences, often involving music, sports, or communal rituals. Keltner describes how music, such as at Taylor Swift concerts or punk rock shows, can synchronize and bond an audience within milliseconds, instantly establishing a sense of belonging and collective identity.

Sporting events also create opportunities for profound communal experience. Whether at a Super Bowl or in a local stadium, fans experience unity not just with their team, but w ...

Awe Enhances Health By Reducing Inflammation and Boosting Immunity

Dacher Keltner highlights recent findings that experiencing awe, even for a minute a day, can reduce inflammation and enhance immunity. Awe activates the vagus nerve, calming the nervous system and warming the heart chakra, which contributes to both physical and emotional well-being. For individuals with long COVID, just a daily minute of awe led to a reduction in symptoms.

Keltner further explains that awe has significant effects on reducing physical pain, particularly in older adults. An eight-week study showed that "awe walks" reduced pain among adults aged 75 and older, an effect likely mediated by reducing inflammation in the body and boosting immune function.

Awe Extends Life Expectancy Like Extreme Sports Benefits

Discussing the impact of community experiences that evoke awe, Keltner points to the resurgence of farmers markets as gathering places that offer profound communal awe. A meta-analysis of 350,000 participants shows that community involvement, which often creates shared awe, is linked with an increase in life expectancy by 10 years. This benefit surpasses the five to eight years gained from high-intensity sports such as pole vaulting and sprinting, which require frequent high heart rates and fast-twitch muscle activity. Health benefits of awe immersion in community settings include reduced inflammation, elevated vagal tone, improved immune function, and increased [restricted term] production.

Doctors Recognize Awe As a Valuable Therapeutic Intervention

With growing scientific evidence, the medical field increasingly recognizes awe as a clinical tool. Physicians are now starting to prescribe awe-inducing experiences—such as time in nature or exposure to music—for managing chronic health conditions. This shift demonstrates how scientific proof of awe’s health effects is changing the medical approa ...

Dacher Keltner and Andrew Huberman discuss how changes driven by social media and digital technology profoundly erode traditional forms of awe, collective gathering, and authentic connection.

Social Media Disrupts Traditional Shared Experiences

Keltner observes a major decline in traditional shared experiences, citing a 40% drop in movie attendance as streaming replaces the communal ritual of going to the cinema. He notes online life disrupts music sharing: generations once gathered to listen to new albums together, an experience now largely lost. Collective activities like picnics have halved, church attendance has dropped, and an estimated 30% of U.S. meals are eaten alone. Keltner extends this to everyday life—walks are often solitary, and communal traditions are evaporating, eroding opportunities to experience awe and meaning through group activities.

Social Media Prioritizes Hate, Divisiveness, and Self-Focus Over Cooperation, Beauty, and Transcendence

Both Huberman and Keltner highlight how today’s social media is algorithmically structured to amplify conflict and suppress content which fosters kindness, beauty, and interconnection. Keltner, who previously advised Facebook, describes how platforms privilege “hate,” rage-baiting, and divisiveness, creating hostile silos and shifting attention away from collective or uplifting experiences. This is not reflective of human nature, Keltner stresses, but rather a “degradation” prompted by the platforms’ design. These technologies incentivize self-focus and antagonism, eroding the cooperative and transcendent capacities needed for awe.

Digital Technology's Inherent Traits Hinder Awe and Human Connection

Keltner and Huberman delve into how digital communication itself impedes genuine bonding. Text-based messaging is asynchronous—texts might not be answered for 18 hours, eye contact is absent, and cues for emotional connection are lost. Video conferencing (like Zoom) forces users to look at a camera or screen, degrading eye contact further. The outcome is a diminished visual connection, making authentic presence exceedingly difficult.

Huberman compares continuous smartphone use to a persistent fracture of attention, which stands in stark contrast to the openness and vast perception necessary for awe. He likens endless social media scrolling to the fragmented, non-memorable experiences associated with substance abuse: a flood of sensory input leaves no lasting impact or genuine memory, a direct antithesis of awe-inspiring moments like a first concert or first love, which are never forgotten.

Keltner adds that the design of smartphones and digital platforms—their emphasis on speed, fragmentation, and “micro things”—is fundamentally at odds with awe, which requires slowing down, integrating experience, and perceiving vast, interconnected systems. Social media draws attention into a narrow “aperture,” compressing space and time and depriving users of the expansive, integrating perspective that awe commands.

Isolation and Self-Focused Consumption on Digital ...

Awe Walk: Cultivating Awe Through Attention To Transition From Small to Vast Perception

Dacher Keltner describes the Awe Walk as a practice where individuals intentionally shift their perception from the minuscule to the immense—moving focus from leaves to the overarching patterns of forests or from individual clouds to the whole horizon. Practitioners slow down, synchronize their breath with their steps, and become mindfully aware of their surroundings. This expanded awareness, which transitions from detail to vastness, reliably induces a state of awe.

Keltner references an eight-week study with Virginia Sturm at UC San Francisco, where elderly participants over age 75 took weekly Awe Walks. These individuals, instructed to observe "small to vast" in nature, not only reported a rise in awe but also increased kindness, decreased physical pain, and shared photos that reflected heightened environmental awareness. Remarkably, follow-up studies six years later revealed improved brain health and sustained benefits in this population.

Designing Urban Spaces to Inspire Awe: Integrate Nature, Art, Music, and Gathering Spaces

Keltner highlights how urban design can foster awe. Collaborating with Gale Architecture on the Cities of Awe initiative, he notes that as 70% of people now live in cities—areas with high carbon emissions—reimagining urban space is vital. Design elements that integrate nature (parks and wild areas), public art, and music make cities more inspiring.

Gathering spaces foster connection: yoga classes in public squares, meditation spaces, places for reflection and life’s big questions, and community events like shared walks can bring stillness and awe. Parks that combine greenery, art, music, and opportunities for communal or solitary meditation embody these principles. Keltner enjoys gyms that feature monthly local art exhibits and live music, providing both physical activity and aesthetic experience as an integrated whole. These design choices infuse urban life with routine opportunities for awe.

Collective Experiences Like Concerts, Sports, Religious Events, and Festivals Create Shared Awe Unmatched by Individual Experiences

Collective experiences induce a unique, transcendent awe. Andrew Huberman recalls a pivotal concert in the early 1990s, where the energy and uncertainty of a live punk show united the crowd in a shared emotional journey—an adrenaline-fueled, slightly dangerous but benevolent sense of belonging. Keltner adds that mosh pits, while physically intense and seemingly chaotic, actually follow unspoken rules of care and trust, facilitating a sense of group transcendence.

These collective transcendences—at concerts, sports events, religious gatherings, and festivals—merge individual and group consciousness, creating meaning and euphoria that solitary streaming or solo activities cannot replicate. Fandom, rituals, symbols, and stories within teams and bands often echo the spiritual intensity and community-building of religious traditions, fostering a deep sense of belonging.

Campfires: Ancient Tech For Gathering, Storytelling, and Bonding Still Relevant Today

Keltner shares emerging research on the science of campfires, which have been central to human societies for hundreds of thousands of years. In small-scale societies, people gather at night to tell stories around fires, reinforcing interconnection, collaboration, safety, and identity—a practice at the heart of our humanity. The communal power of the campfire endures in modern times; Huberman recounts how Joe Strummer of The Clash regularly hosted open campfires in Manhattan, inviting friends and strangers alike to share music, stories, and genuine connection.

Campfires foster vulnerability and conversation, helping to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, reduce stress, and benefit mitochondrial function through red and infrared light. The enduring appeal lies in their ability to promote authenticity, collective memory, and physiological well-being.

Intentional, Guided, and Integrated Psychedelic Use Offers Profound Awe Experiences With Potential Therapeutic Benefits

Keltner emphasizes that classic psychedelics often catalyze awe by dissolving the self, altering time perception, and connecting users to broad ecosystems and shared humanity. Groundbreaking research at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere shows that, under guided therapy, psychedelics can effectively treat intractable psychiatric conditions like end-of-life anxiety, depression, addiction, trauma, panic, PTSD, and OCD. These sessions rely on proper mindset and supportive environments rather than just dosage.

Such awe-inspiring psychedelic experiences are most beneficial when integrated with guidance and cultural context, allowing for safe inquiry into meaning and mortality and supporting deep healing.

Psychedelics Have Significant Risks and Require Safeguards

Despite their therapeutic potential, Keltner and Huberman stress the dangers of unguided or culturally unmoored psychedelic use. While millions experiment with microdosing, evidence shows little benefit for depression compared to the robu ...