Abstract |  "The Science of Awe: Evolution, Culture, and Self-Transcendence"

In this talk I will chart the new science of awe.  I will consider its deep mammalian origins and how it manifests in cultural processes like music, visual design, and spirituality and conceptions of the divine.  Grounded in this understanding, I will consider what has been learned in terms of awe's influences upon self-representation, cognition, and physiology. Bringing these lines of evidence together, I will argue that awe is a self-transcendent emotion, which emerged in human evolution to enable individuals to fold into social collectives and to see the systems they are part of.