42 Days of Summer: A diary study of awe

Awe has long been associated with religious experience, but it may also offer nonreligious individuals a route to meaning, connection, and transcendence. Most research has, however, relied on laboratory inductions and has treated awe as a single experience. We conducted a pre-registered six-week diary study with 200 nonreligious British adults over the summer holidays, distinguishing three types of awe: transformative awe (being in the presence of something vast and mysterious that transcends one's understanding of the world), amazement awe, and reverential awe. Over the summer, 78.8% of participants reported at least one amazement awe experience, 51.5% at least one reverential awe experience, and 20.6% at least one transformative awe experience. The types differed in their contexts and phenomenology. Nature was the most common context for all three, but transformative awe was more often related to space and religious, spiritual, or mystical experiences, and reverential awe to moral beauty and experiences with close ones. Transformative awe was the most intense, followed by amazement and reverential awe. Most experiences were rated as not at all religious (90.0%), but over half were rated as at least somewhat spiritual (52.5%). The frequency and extent of awe did not predict changes in meaning in life, wellbeing, spiritual yearning, or spirituality from before to after the summer. In exploratory analyses, the amazement rating of participants’ most awe-inspiring experience predicted higher post-summer meaning in life and wellbeing. These findings suggest that awe is not a single experience, and that nonreligious individuals frequently experience awe as spiritual but not religious.