Can feeling small enlarge the way we care?

Sometimes. Awe can loosen our usual sense that the self is the centre of everything. Research links that shift with generosity and a wider circle of concern, but the effect is neither automatic nor proof of any religious claim.

Think of a night sky, a towering tree or the first sight of Earth from space. Experiences like these can make a person feel part of something much larger. Psychologists often call that response awe: an encounter with vastness that does not fit easily inside our existing picture of the world.

In five studies involving 2,078 participants, Paul Piff and colleagues examined whether awe could shift attention away from personal concerns. Their experiments linked awe with outcomes such as generosity, ethical choices and helping behaviour. In one field experiment, people who spent time looking up at tall trees were more helpful and reported less entitlement than people in a control setting. These studies identify a pattern under particular conditions; they do not show that every powerful experience makes every person kinder.

Later research asked whether awe might widen the range of beings and places people believe deserve moral concern. Across five studies with 990 participants, Ji Young Song and colleagues found associations and experimental pathways connecting awe, a sense of being part of something larger and broader concern for people, animals and the environment. Some results were indirect, and the strongest experimental result came from an immersive virtual-reality condition. That makes the work suggestive, not a universal law of human nature.

There is still disagreement about how this works. A review by Joshua Perlin and Leon Li argues that the idea of a ‘small self’ may be too simple. Awe might change attention, identity and our relationship to other people in different ways. It can feel humbling, connecting or even threatening. The same label should not hide those differences.

Awe also carries many meanings. Someone may meet it in worship, in music, in a forest or while learning how old the universe is. Psychology can study reported experience and observable behaviour. It cannot decide whether a sacred interpretation is true, or whether a non-religious interpretation is the only reasonable one.

The practical question comes after the feeling: what becomes visible when the self is no longer at the centre? Awe is not a moral achievement by itself. Its value appears in what follows—more attention, a wider concern and a willingness to act with care toward lives beyond our own.