Changing Our View

Eclipsing our differences (WSJ image)

For time immemorial our species has stood in awe of nature. And that emotion, psychologists aver, affects behavior toward others:

A new paper in the journal Psychological Science, by Sean Goldy, Nickolas Jones and Paul Piff at the University of California, Irvine, suggests there is at least one psychological way that celestial events can indeed influence us. When people gaze up at an awesome sight like an eclipse, the researchers conclude, they become more humble and caring when they look down at their Twitter feed.

The researchers took off from earlier studies that Dr. Piff did with Dacher Keltner and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. In one study, people were shown videos of earthbound awe-inspiring sights like a towering tree, a sublime landscape or an erupting volcano. Afterwards they felt less significant themselves and more caring toward others.

In another study, researchers placed students in front of either the majestic Berkeley Eucalyptus Grove or a tall but boring campus building. A confederate then came by and dropped a bunch of pens on the ground, apparently by accident. The awe-struck students in the grove put more effort into helpfully collecting the dropped pens than did the students by the mundane building.

December, 1972: Apollo 17's "Blue Marble"

Additional support for the Awe => Humility => Caring connection came from a comparison of millions of tweets from those who were in the path of an eclipse and those who were not.

they also used more words expressing social connection, like “care” “love” and “thanks,” and they expressed more humility and tentativeness, saying “maybe” or “perhaps.”

The second age of space travel does not seem to be as marred with criticism as space travel was during the Sixties. As mankind slips the surly bonds of earth and explores the wondrous, dangerous, and awe-ful universe, perhaps human beings will be prompted to set aside their differences and be more aware of how much they have in common with each other.