Dispositional Awe

Dispositional awe designates the stable, trait-level tendency of an individual to experience awe across diverse eliciting contexts — a construct that stands in deliberate contrast to momentary or experimentally induced awe. Within the depth-psychology corpus, this construct enters primarily through the empirical tradition inaugurated by Shiota, Keltner, and their collaborators, who developed the Dispositional Positive Emotions Scale (DPES) as a vehicle for measuring it at the person level. The central theoretical claim is that dispositional awe occupies a privileged relationship with the personality domain of Openness — a relationship more specific and robust than awe’s associations with any other Big Five factor. Williams and colleagues extend this finding by identifying aesthetic engagement and proneness to aesthetic chill as facets of Openness most tightly coupled with dispositional awe, positioning aesthetic sensibility as the proximal dispositional substrate of awe-proneness. Piff and Keltner press the construct into the arena of social ethics, demonstrating that dispositional awe predicts prosocial generosity in economic games independent of other positive emotional traits such as compassion and love. The key theoretical tension in the corpus concerns whether dispositional awe is best understood as a personality trait embedded in the Openness hierarchy, as a distinct positive-emotion disposition with its own prosocial signature, or as an aesthetic-perceptual sensitivity that cuts across standard taxonomies. What unites these treatments is agreement that dispositional awe is not reducible to general positive affect, and that its measurement at the trait level reveals consequential behavioral and psychological effects invisible to state-based induction methods alone.

In the library 14 passages

Studies of momentary and dispositional awe suggest that this emotional experience may be uniquely related to openness — a supposition with initial empirical support. Shiota and colleagues (2006) found that dispositional awe proneness correlated more highly with openness than with the other four personality factors

This passage establishes the canonical empirical claim that dispositional awe is uniquely and most strongly associated with the personality domain of Openness, distinguishing it from other positive emotion dispositions.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022thesis

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In a representative national sample (Study 1), dispositional tendencies to experience awe predicted greater generosity in an economic game above and beyond other prosocial emotions (e.g., compassion).

Piff et al. demonstrate that dispositional awe has a unique predictive relationship with prosocial generosity, separable from other positive emotional dispositions, establishing its behavioral relevance at the trait level.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015thesis

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Bivariate correlations of dispositional awe proneness with NEO factors revealed significant positive associations with Openness and Extraversion; however, the association with Openness was significantly greater than that for Extraversion.

Williams et al. replicate and refine the Openness–dispositional awe linkage, demonstrating that while Extraversion also correlates with dispositional awe, Openness remains the dominant and specific personality correlate.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022thesis

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In Study 1 we tested whether awe is associated with increased prosocial behavior in a nationally representative sample. Participants reported their dispositional tendencies to experience several distinct positive emotions, including awe.

This passage details the methodological architecture by which dispositional awe was isolated and measured against other positive emotion dispositions to establish its unique prosocial contribution.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015thesis

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The current study replicates prior findings that, of the broad personality factors, openness is the most consistent and specific correlate of awe. Importantly, however, current findings highlight the key role of individual differences in aesthetic engagement and proneness to aesthetic chill.

Williams et al. argue that aesthetic engagement and chill-proneness are the key within-Openness facets that specifically drive dispositional awe, refining the trait taxonomy beyond the broad factor level.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022thesis

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awe was a significant predictor. It is important to note that other emotions were also independently associated with generosity (such as compassion and contentment), suggesting unique pathways from these emotions to prosocial behavior.

Quantitative data from the Dictator Game confirm that dispositional awe independently predicts generosity, while acknowledging that other positive dispositions carry their own distinct prosocial pathways.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015supporting

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it held when controlling for dispositional tendencies to experience other positive emotions, including love and compassion — emotions that have well-documented and robust influences on prosocial responding.

Piff et al. confirm the discriminant validity of dispositional awe as a prosocial predictor by demonstrating its robustness after statistical control for other prosocial positive emotion dispositions.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015supporting

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There is growing evidence that appreciation for and engagement with art, nature, and beauty are associated with positive mental and physical health outcomes, yet the emotional and physiological correlates of these individual differences have not been fully characterized.

Williams et al. frame their investigation of dispositional awe within a broader program linking aesthetic individual differences to health outcomes, motivating the need to characterize awe’s role in this network.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022supporting

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Only the aesthetic clip resulted in significantly increased ratings of awe from baseline.

Experimental data confirm that among multiple emotion-inducing stimuli, aesthetic content uniquely elevates state awe, supporting the theoretical linkage between aesthetic engagement as a disposition and awe as its experiential expression.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022supporting

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Both Openness (B = .02, b = .20, p = .002) and Agreeableness (B = .06, b = .19, p = .001) retained significant associations with change in awe from baseline.

Follow-up regression analyses distinguish Openness and Agreeableness as independent personality predictors of awe induction, with implications for understanding the trait structure underpinning dispositional awe.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022supporting

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Measuring dispositional tendencies to experience positive emotions other than awe, such as love and compassion, allowed us to ascertain the unique contribution of awe to prosocial behavior.

This passage articulates the comparative logic that makes dispositional measurement strategically important: only by assessing multiple positive emotion dispositions simultaneously can the unique variance attributed to awe be identified.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015supporting

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Awe exerts a specific and likely unique effect on prosociality that is distinct from the influences of other positive emotions, not confounded by more general positive affect, and not reducible to experiences in nature.

Piff et al. conclude that the prosocial effects initially predicted from dispositional awe data are confirmed experimentally, establishing a convergent validity argument across trait and state measurement approaches.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015supporting

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dispositional tendency of aesthetic engagement, along with aesthetic chill proneness, assessed with the PACE items (a) would evidence the strongest associations with awe, chill, and goosebump response to the aesthetic clip compared to other personality factors

This passage outlines the study hypothesis that aesthetic engagement as a disposition is the primary personality predictor of awe response, operationalizing this through the PACE measure.

Williams, Paula G., Individual Differences in Aesthetic Engagement and Proneness to Aesthetic Chill: Associations With Awe, 2022aside

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self-transcendence values, which emphasize diminished self-importance and increased attention to others and nature, are positively related to prosocial tendencies and empathy

This passage provides theoretical context for understanding why dispositional awe, by fostering self-diminishment and vastness perception, might channel the self-transcendence values associated with prosocial orientation.

Piff, Paul K., Awe, the Small Self, and Prosocial Behavior, 2015aside

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