@Wendi Yan
August 23, 2019
Awe may result from the perception of, and need to accommodate, vastness (Keltner & Haidt, 2003, in Yaden et al., 2017).
Vastness can refer to perceptual vastness, as in viewing an enormous mountain or a towering building – or it can refer to conceptual vastness, as in hearing an idea with enormous implications or meditating on the meaning of eternity (Yaden et al., 2018).
When individuals encounter something that cannot be reduced to preexisting elements in a given schema, they must “accommodate,” expanding that framework to take new information into account. (Markus, 1977, in Yaden et al., 2016)L