Inspired by awe: Awe promotes inspiration via self-transcendence

ABSTRACTWhether and how awe impacts inspiration lacks sufficient empirical research. We conducted five studies (N = 941) to examine the awe – inspiration link and the mediating effect of self-transcendence. We found that awe promoted inspiration, which was indexed by an actual behavior indicator, others' ratings (Study 1), and multiple self-reported scales (Studies 2–4). Self-transcendence mediated this effect (Studies 3–4). The effect of awe on inspiration and the mediating effect of self-transcendence were established when comparing awe with a general positive emotion (i.e., amusement in Study 2a and happiness in Study 2b) and nature (Study 4), having emotions controlled for (Studies 2–4), and inducing awe with a threatening experience (Study 4). Taken together, awe exerted a unique effect on inspiration, and self-transcendence mediated this effect.KEYWORDS: Aweinspirationself-transcendencebeing inspired bybeing inspired to Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data availability statementData and materials can be found on the Open Science Framework (OSF; https://osf.io/x85je/?view_only=5506aec59a774915a6614f56bfc6dac5). We preregistered Study 2b (https://aspredicted.org/7ji6b.pdf) and Study 4 (https://aspredicted.org/wh2fv.pdf).Open scholarship This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data, Open Materials and Preregistered. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/x85je/?view_only=5506aec59a774915a6614f56bfc6dac5 , https://aspredicted.org/7ji6b.pdf and https://aspredicted.org/wh2fv.pdfAdditional informationFundingThis research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation awarded to Tonglin Jiang by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.: 32271127) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Peking University. The authors have no known conflict of interest to disclose. All studies reported in this work have been conducted according to APA ethical standards for the treatment of human subjects.