Photo: Stefan Stefancik | Pexels
A new study suggests that feeling awe may help us appreciate solitude more and choose it more often. Researchers performed experiments looking at how American or Chinese people feeling awe (as opposed to other emotions) saw solitude. Those who experienced awe tended to report feeling alone but not lonely and expressed a more positive view of solitude. A group of Chinese participants “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, didn’t feel lonely if they experienced more self-transcendence. “By helping people connect with themselves and the grandness of existence, awe can help people view solitude more positively,” says coauthor Yige Yin of Peking University. Cultivating awe to transcend the self could help us be more comfortable with solitude—whether chosen freely or imposed from outside, like during COVID-19 lockdowns.
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