Amazement: the emotion that protects mind and body

Wonder is the ability to marvel at the beauty of the world, kind actions or unexpected positive experiences. It is an emotion strongly linked to the feeling of being alive. In fact, several studies find that awe protects us from poor health at all levels if we experience it frequently.

Dr. Dacher Keltner, author of a study titled Approaching amazement, a moral, spiritual and aesthetic emotionstated that awe is inspired by something greater than the individual self, protecting our mind.

On the other hand, Jennifer Stellar published the study Positive affect and markers of inflammation: discrete positive emotions predict lower levels of inflammatory cytokines. In it he reflects that amazement promotes the presence of healthy cytokines in our body, protecting the organism.

All of this suggests that the things you do to experience this emotion, such as a walk in nature or getting lost in music, have a direct influence on health and life expectancy.

Amazement has psychological benefits

In the 1970s, anthropologist Paul Ekman proposed that people experience six basic emotions: anger, fear, surprise, disgust, joy, and sadness. Since then, scientists have questioned the exact number of human emotions.

Some researchers maintain that there are only four emotions, while others identify up to 27. Scientists also debate whether they are universal or the role that experience plays in their assimilation. Even the definition of emotion is a matter of controversy. However, beyond any debate, it seems undeniable that Emotions arise from activity in different regions of the brain.

Three brain structures appear to be most closely related to emotions: the amygdala, the insula or insular cortex, and a structure in the midbrain called the periaqueductal gray matter.

Jennifer Stellar, an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga, is a specialist in the study of “prosocial” emotions. Some of them would be compassion, gratitude and wonder. Her research suggests that these feelings contribute to one’s well-being.

Stellar claims that compassion, along with gratitude and awe, have psychological benefits. because they allow us to look beyond personal needs to focus on someone or something else.

Amazement and its relationship with cytokines

The role of positive emotions in physical health is just taking its first steps in contemporary research. At the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory, Jennifer Stellar and her colleagues discovered that Positive emotions are related to lower levels of proinflammatory cytokines.

Elevated levels of proinflammatory cytokines have been implicated in the onset and progression of numerous chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and depression. This was reflected in a study published in the magazine Emotion.

This Berkeley team found that “Awe, measured in two different ways, was the strongest predictor of lower levels of proinflammatory cytokines.”

An experiment on the effect of positive emotions

Across two different experiments, 200 people reported on their emotions throughout the day, along with an assessment of how they felt. Their cheeks were also swabbed to obtain an assessment of cytokines, more specifically interleukin 6, which is a marker of inflammation.

The results, published in the magazine Emotion, showed that experiencing positive emotions means having low levels of the inflammation marker (Stellar et al., 2015). What is surprising is the strong association with low levels of cytokines.

In depression, for example, pro-inflammatory cytokines are thought to be very important, as they tend to block key hormones and neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and serotonin, which affect memory, sleep, appetite and mood. .

People who are depressed have higher levels of some inflammatory cytokines. However, the study still can’t tell us what causes what. It’s possible that having fewer cytokines circulating in the body causes people to feel more positive emotions, or that the relationship is bidirectional.

However, this is one of the first studies to link a positive emotion such as awe or the feeling of beauty with a greater boost in the body’s defenses against mental and physical illnesses.

Amazement and the perception of time

Melanie Rudd, an assistant professor at the University of Houston, read about experiences that awe makes time longer. She decided to investigate it and confirmed it in a study. Experiencing awe, compared to other states, decreased impatience and caused people to perceive that they had more time available.

The author establishes a causal relationship between the lack of time to experience awe and unwanted effects such as sleeping problems or stress. Rudd’s team also found that awe increased willingness to volunteer time and raised life satisfaction.

Wonder and social relationships

Psychology professors Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt outlined the key qualities of awe in an article. They suggested that awe typically includes feelings of vastness and accommodation. That is to say, awe is inspired by something larger than a person’s self or experience, and that encounter helps expand your understanding of the world.

This emotion too has been linked to improved social interaction. Keltner explains that “being in the presence of great things provokes a more modest, less narcissistic self, allowing for greater kindness toward others”.

Multiple options to be amazed

Wonder-inducing experiences can occur in many ways in our daily lives.whether through a walk in nature, listening to a life story, getting lost in music, or observing a baby’s behavior.

According to research, people have an average of three moments of awe per week. If we increase our personal GPA, we may not only improve our health, time perception, and social skills, but we may also be happier.

By fostering meaning in our lives, we can respond positively to Dacher Keltner’s challenge: “Cultivating wonder is part of unlocking the true meaning of life’s purpose.”.

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