the disappearance of awe (and what it does to our brain)
the neuroscience of awe
“One of the most alarming trends in the lives of children today is the disappearance of awe. We are not giving them enough opportunities to discover and experience the wonders of life.”
Dacher Keltner, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life
After intently absorbing Awe by Dacher Keltner in less than two weeks (record time for me, a slow reader), this passage has stayed with me.
Many of you have shared similar feelings in the comments - how modernity itself feels like it’s stripping life of its color, its strangeness, its spark. And Keltner’s words add another layer: it’s not only the rise of technology, industrial pace, or digital saturation. It’s also how we structure our days - and especially, how we structure the lives of the young:
In school systems today, every minute is scheduled.
The free-form magic of recess and lunchtime is being carved away, replaced by drills and exercises aimed at boosting test scores (scores that, ironically, don’t even predict real academic success all that well).
Art and music programs are being slashed from budgets. Classrooms are shifting away from open-ended discovery and toward test prep and measurable outcomes.
And beyond the classroom walls, the natural world - that endless source of awe that shaped us as a species - is shrinking under the pressures of extinction, pollution, and urbanization.
Though Keltner speaks about children, it’s not hard to feel the echo in adult life.
Many of us have become awe-deprived too.
Our days are increasingly scheduled.
Our free time gets siphoned into algorithmically curated feeds.
Our cities flatten the textures of experience into smooth, gray corridors.
And our relationship with the natural world has, for many, become a memory rather than a living bond.
If the disappearance of awe is harming children, then it is almost certainly starving something vital within us too.
(If you’re new to my writing - all links in this piece lead to peer-reviewed studies, academic papers, or thoughtful pieces for deeper exploration. If you’re curious, you’ll find a full list of references at the end.)
Awe Is a Biological Necessity (The Neuroscience of Awe)
We tend to think of awe as a luxury emotion - something extra, nice if you have the time for it. Neuroscience suggests otherwise. Awe is not ornamental. It is essential to our biological, emotional, and social well-being.
When we experience awe, remarkable things happen across multiple systems of the body and brain:
The default mode network (the brain system involved in self-referential thinking and internal narration) temporarily quiets, softening the tight boundaries of the self and opening us to something larger. Attention shifts outward: instead of focusing narrowly on ourselves or our worries, awe expands our awareness to the world around us - a phenomenon known as global processing.
Neuroplasticity increases, as is to be expected when encountering the novel, the vast, and the complex. And this matters, because enhanced neuroplasticity allows us to meet new challenges, shift old patterns, and stay open to change across a lifetime.
Simultaneously, the vagus nerve (a critical part of the parasympathetic nervous system) activates, quieting the body’s stress response, steadying the heart (a marker of stress resilience), and opening us to feelings of safety, connection, and calm. And new research (including work by Keltner himself!) shows that inflammatory markers decrease during awe, particularly interleukin-6, a cytokine linked to chronic inflammation, depression, and heart disease.
On the flip side, when awe is missing from our lives, predictable consequences emerge:
Increased self-focus and rumination, both of which are risk factors for anxiety and depression.
Reduced emotional resilience and greater physiological stress, due to underactivation of the parasympathetic system.
Narrowing of cognitive frameworks, leading to rigidity, cynicism, and diminished creativity.
And weakened social bonds, as awe experiences are deeply tied to feelings of belonging and compassion toward others.
In short: awe doesn’t just feel good. It helps us grow. It helps us heal. It helps us belong - to each other, to the earth, to something vast and unfinished. And without novelty and wonder, the brain defaults to narrower, more rigid pathways, which literally dull our experience of the world.
Practical Ways to Bring Awe Back Into Your Life
In the words of Dacher Keltner, my hope is to offer both myself and others more opportunities to discover and experience the wonders of life.
Spend time in nature - even a little bit counts. Research shows that even two hours a week in green spaces dramatically boosts mental health. Look for places where nature feels bigger than you: forests, oceans, open skies.
Seek the small and strange. Awe doesn’t only live in mountaintops. It lives in the fractal swirl of a snail shell, the slow dance of shadows on the wall. Cultivate microwonder - like this video I just found of a slug surprised by a water droplet.
Let art surprise you. Go to a museum without an agenda. Listen to music you’ve never heard before. Stand before something you don’t “understand” and just feel it. I’ve been enjoying discovering new music through NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts.
Invite randomness. Take a different route home. Read a book from a section you never visit. Talk to a stranger. Awe often sneaks in through the side door. This website might be a throwback.
Practice open-ended questioning. Instead of asking, “What’s the right answer?” ask, “What else could be true?” Childlike curiosity cracks open the door for awe to slip in.
Pause and remember the strangeness of being alive. Sometimes, all it takes is stopping and marveling at the fact that we are all here, taking in sensory information from the world, having a conscious experience. And we still don’t fully understand how any of this works! And somehow, here we are. For me, that alone is enough to open the door to awe.
Remembering to Wonder (A Radical Act)
It is a sobering thing to acknowledge that children are not given enough opportunities to discover and experience the wonders of life. An antidote, from my perspective, is this: we must also give these opportunities to ourselves - with the same care and urgency we would offer to the children in our lives, and to the generations still to come.
If I took anything away from Keltner’s work, it is that experiences of wonder and vastness played a critical role in our evolution - and they remain just as vital now.
We know this because of what happens inside of us: the benefits we receive when we experience awe - emotional resilience, cognitive flexibility, social bonding, immune health - and the consequences we suffer when we do not.
Awe is not a luxury to be squeezed into weekends or stolen in the gaps between obligations. It is not a side effect of privilege or free time - though, of course, it is easier to find awe when we have the time and mental space to notice it. Awe is a biological necessity - inseparable from our evolution, our physiology, our very being.
And no matter how modern life becomes - no matter how much the pace accelerates or how deeply we are pushed toward productivity over presence - this truth does not change. It is radical to know this. It is radical to live by it. Corporations, systems, and economies thrive when we forget how to wonder. After all, cogs in a machine do not marvel at the mystery of being alive.
If you feel moved, I would love to hear how these ideas land with you - whether you try out any of these practices, or simply notice moments of wonder a little more closely. Your reflections, comments, thoughts, and experiences are deeply welcome here.
References
Keltner, D., & Haidt, J. (2003). Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Psychological Bulletin, 129(5), 807–828. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.807
how awe evolved to promote social cohesion, moral growth, and adaptive responses to vastness.
Piff, P. K., Dietze, P., Feinberg, M., Stancato, D. M., & Keltner, D. (2015). Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(6), 883–899. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000018
how awe increases generosity, cooperation, and compassionate social behavior.
Shiota, M. N., Keltner, D., & Mossman, A. (2007). The nature of awe: Elicitors, appraisals, and effects on self-concept. Cognition and Emotion, 21(5), 944–963. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699930600923668
how awe reduces self-focus and broadens attention (shifting perception outward).
Stellar, J. E., John-Henderson, N., Anderson, C. L., Gordon, A. M., McNeil, G. D., & Keltner, D. (2015). Positive affect and markers of inflammation: Discrete positive emotions predict lower levels of inflammatory cytokines. Emotion, 15(2), 129–133. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000033
how awe lowers inflammation (specifically interleukin-6) and supports immune health.
I’m shocked this article doesn’t have more likes or comments!
I feel I’ve recognized this in myself, a lack of awe, more often lately. I find the moments that I do experience awe are the moments when I fully allow myself to be genuine - not thinking any judgemental thoughts about myself or thinking about what others think. Allow yourself to bask in the sun beam in the parking lot and marvel at its warmth, drive a little slower down a neighborhood that’s lined with trees turning red and purple and orange in the fall, stop in the middle of your walk to watch a bird hop around for a solid three minutes - it’s the tiny moments of noticing the wondrousness of the everything around us that lets me experience that feeling of awe.
And also everything else you listed! Great article!
I've worked in schools across the US and am a parent. The single most concerning thing to me is the loss and lack of nurturing of awe in preschoolers. Preschoolers!! The very age when they are curious about everything and ask the most fascinating questions about science. It's not happening, especially in public education, and something needs to change.