A new study finds that people who feel awe appreciate their time alone as an experience that gives them a broader perspective on life.
By Jill Suttie
Freelance journalist and a staff writer
In the United States, the percentage of people living alone has increased substantially, with 4% more women living alone in 2022 than in 1970, and the percentage of men living alone more than doubling over that same period. Many of us work remotely, away from colleagues, and spend much of our free time alone, too. Considering the importance of positive social connection for our health and well-being, this has caused concern among experts like Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general, about a potential loneliness epidemic.
However, being alone doesn’t necessarily lead to loneliness. Many of us appreciate solitude as a time for personal reflection, creativity, and spiritual enrichment, even as we enjoy our social ties, too. Yet, if we equate solitude with loneliness, or don’t have a positive view of it, we may avoid it and lose its potential benefits.
Now, a new study suggests that feeling awe may help us appreciate solitude more and choose it more often.
In the study, researchers performed a series of experiments looking at how American or Chinese people feeling awe (as opposed to other emotions) viewed solitude. In one case, American participants saw awe-inspiring photos (e.g., of the Milky Way) or emotionally neutral photos (e.g., of an empty street). In other cases, Chinese participants imagined times they’d felt awe or happiness in the past; or they watched short nature videos designed to induce awe (e.g., of spectacular scenery) or amusement (e.g., of animals doing funny things).
Afterward, participants reported on how alone and lonely they felt. They also expressed their views about solitude: how they felt about being alone, how much they’d be willing to do things alone (like eating or watching a movie), and how much they’d rather be alone than spend time with others.
In all these different situations, people who experienced awe tended to report feeling alone but not lonely (in comparison to people feeling other emotions or no particular emotion). And they expressed a more positive view of solitude—even when compared to people feeling happy or amused—including being more drawn to it than to being around others.
This suggests that awe may play a special role in making solitude more enticing to us. But why? In one experiment, people feeling awe expressed higher levels of self-transcendence—moving beyond their personal concerns and embracing a larger perspective—and in turn higher levels of self-transcendence seemed to predict more positive reactions to solitude.
However, since laboratory tests and analyses don’t always reflect what happens in the real world, the researchers did another experiment. A group of Chinese participants were “pinged” five times a day for a week and asked to report on various things, including feelings of self-transcendence, aloneness, and loneliness, and how they felt about solitude. Again, people who experienced more self-transcendence didn’t tend to feel lonely (even if alone) and appreciated solitude more.
“By helping people connect with themselves and the grandness of existence, awe can help people view solitude more positively,” says study coauthor Yige Yin of Peking University. “In this way, it may also help prevent loneliness by encouraging people to enjoy their time alone.”
These results are encouraging to Yin, especially given that people often think being alone is a bad thing and something to be avoided. Many people find solitude boring, she says—in fact, one study found people would rather give themselves electric shocks than be alone with their thoughts, preferring distraction to contemplation.
But, she says, solitude can be a good environment for people to focus inward and consider more profound questions. So, cultivating awe to transcend the self could be a useful tool to help us be more comfortable with solitude—whether chosen freely or imposed from outside, like during COVID-19 lockdowns.
“The general public may use awe to change their attitude towards solitude—to appreciate its value, especially in hard times,” she says.
Could Daily awe be a good Thing?
So far, we’ve seen that people feeling awe momentarily feel differently about solitude. Yin and her team ran another experiment to see if daily doses of awe could change people’s views of solitude in general.
Participants were randomly assigned to watch either a brief awe-inspiring video or a neutral video daily for a week. Each day after the video, they expressed how lonely and alone they felt, how much they experienced self-transcendence, and how they viewed solitude. In addition, before, immediately after, and a week after the week-long experiment, participants reported on their peace of mind, spiritual well-being, and attitudes toward solitude.
After analyzing results, Yin and the team found that people in the awe group experienced greater peace of mind and spiritual well-being afterward (and a week later). This suggests short doses of daily awe can support people’s well-being.
But, while watching the videos made people feel better in the moment and their immediate views of solitude were positive, their overall feelings about solitude didn’t change over the course of the week. Yin isn’t sure why, but she speculates that the experiment was, perhaps, too short to lead to significant changes in attitude. In the future, she hopes to test longer programs.
In the meantime, her overall findings point to the potential benefits of daily awe. By trying to find ways to feel awe—whether through an awe walk or watching awe-inspiring nature videos, for example—we may enjoy our solitude more and get more out of it.
“Solitude can be interesting and valuable,” she says. “When you can just enjoy a peaceful time alone to speak to yourself and connect yourself to the greater world, it can be as important as time spent with others. It might be worth embracing rather than avoiding.”
Originally published by Greater Good Magazine, 09.03.2024, under a Creative Commons license.
