Awe Experience

The idea is that you experience awe in situations where it's important to be acquiring information that you can use later. It makes sense: if something is awe-inspiring because it doesn't fit with your understanding of the world, that's probably something that you should know more about if you wanna survive. The feeling of awe directs your attention away from yourself and toward your environment, so you can acquire more information about this new, possibly life-changing thing whether it's positive or negative. So Awe might have given us a social advantage or an intellectual advantage, or maybe some combination of both. But no matter why the emotion evolved, we know that it's incredibly powerful to the point that it can, like, totally hack your brain and body. For one thing, it can improve your physical health. It's been linked to lower levels of inflammation, which plays a role in all sorts of illnesses. Awe can also change your perception of what's causing events to unfold. Studies have found that it makes people more likely to interpret a series of events as the consequence of something intentional, as opposed to random chance. It's all part of the search for an explanation for something your brain is struggling to comprehend, which could help us explain why religion is a thing.