Awe, Group Cohesion, and Religious Self-Sacrifice

ABSTRACT

Awe is an emotion frequently experienced in religious contexts. Research has documented the effects of awe on feelings of small self, spirituality, and sense of interconnectedness. We extend this literature by investigating the relationship between awe and religious group cohesion, which can ultimately lead to sacrifice for one’s religious group. Study 1 found that U.S. adult participants (N = 782) who experience greater dispositional awe-proneness are more willing to self-sacrifice for their group. This relationship was explained (mediated) by greater reports of a sense of vastness and greater cohesion with one’s religious group. In Study 2, U.S. community participants (N = 187) were randomly assigned to an awe induction condition or a neutral condition. While the manipulation successfully elicited feelings of awe and small self (both vastness and self-diminishment), it did not directly affect our other measures. We still found partial evidence for an indirect pathway from awe to vastness, group cohesion, and sacrifice for one’s religious group. This research highlights an emotional component of religious group cohesion, with implications for the role of awe in self-sacrificial forms of devotion.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Charles Lafitte Foundation Program for Research in Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, the Interdisciplinary Behavioral Research Center, at Duke University, and the Undergraduate Research Support Office at Duke University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available at https://osf.io/uybdv/.

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data, Open Materials and Preregistered. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/uybdv/.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.