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Awe Expands People's Perception of Time, Alters Decision Making, and Enhances Well-Being
Melanie Rudd, Kathleen D. Vohs and Jennifer Aaker
Psychological Science published online 10 August 2012
DOI: 10.1177/0956797612438731
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Psychological Science OnlineFirst, published on August 10, 2012 as doi:10.1177/0956797612438731

Research Article

Awe Expands People’s Perception ofTime, Alters Decision Making, andEnhances Well-Being

Psychological Science
XX(X) 1­–7
© The Author(s) 2012
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/0956797612438731
http://pss.sagepub.com

Melanie Rudd1, Kathleen D.Vohs2, and Jennifer Aaker1

1
Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, and 2Carlson School of Management,
University of Minnesota

Abstract
When do people feel as if they are rich in time? Not often, research and daily experience suggest. However, three experiments
showed that participants who felt awe, relative to other emotions, felt they had more time available (Experiments 1 and 3) andwere less impatient (Experiment 2). Participants who experienced awe also were more willing to volunteer their time to help
other people (Experiment 2), more strongly preferred experiences over material products (Experiment 3), and experienced
greater life satisfaction (Experiment 3). Mediation analyses revealed that these changes in decision making and well-being were
due to awe’s ability to alter the subjective experience of time. Experiences of awe bring people into the present moment, andbeing in the present moment underlies awe’s capacity to adjust time perception, influence decisions, and make life feel moresatisfying than it would otherwise.
Keywords
time perception, emotions, well-being, decision making, preferences
Received 5/6/11; Revision accepted 1/18/12

Time might be the scarcest commodity for many people inmodern life. A recent poll of more than 1,000 Americans foundthat nearly half (47%) felt they lacked enough time in daily life
(Carroll, 2008). This feeling of having too much to do and notenough time to do it—or “time famine” (Perlow, 1999)—has
been linked to undesirable side effects, including trouble
sleeping, stress, difficulty delaying gratification, and postponing seeing a doctor when ill (Lehto, 1998; Vuckovic, 1999;
C.-B. Zhong & DeVoe, 2010). In light of these findings, we
asked, what can be done to shift people’s perception of how
much time is available?
In three experiments, we examined whether awe, defined as
the emotion that arises when one encounters something so
strikingly vast that it provokes a need to update one’s mental
schemas (Keltner & Haidt, 2003), can expand perceptions oftime availability. Additionally, we investigated whether feeling awe, through engendering the sense that more time isavailable than perceived otherwise, can alter prosocial decisions concerning time, consumption preferences, and wellbeing assessments. We predicted that people induced to feelawe, relative to those induced to feel other states, would be
more willing to volunteer their time, would prefer experiential
goods over material ones, and would experience a boost in life
satisfaction.

Can the Experience of Awe Increase
Perceived Time Availability?
The burgeoning research on awe depicts it as a distinct (Ekman,
1992; Shiota, Campos, & Keltner, 2003) and powerful emotion
with two defining features (Keltner & Haidt, 2003; Shiota,
Keltner, & Mossman, 2007). First, awe involves perceptual
vastness, which is the sense that one has encountered something
immense in size, number, scope, complexity, ability, or social
bearing (e.g., fame, authority). Second, awe stimulates a needfor accommodation; that is, it alters one’s understanding of theworld (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). These features of awe areintertwined, so that events that expand one’s usual frame ofreference—such as natural events (e.g., thunderstorms), personal transitions (e.g., childbirth), or unfathomable structures(e.g., the Grand Canyon)—stimulate new mental models.
But does awe have the potential to increase perceived time
availability? Prior research suggests that it does. Experiences
involving awe, such as optimal athletic performances (Ravizza,
Corresponding Author:
Melanie Rudd, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business,
Marketing, 655 Knight Way, Stanford, CA 94305
E-mail: mrudd@stanford.edu

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Rudd et al.

1977), peak experiences (Maslow, 1964), and spiritual or mystical events (L. M. Fredrickson & Anderson, 1999), often also
involve a sense of timelessness (Csikszentmihalyi & Hunter,2003). The phenomenology of awe, therefore, suggests that it
might expand perceptions of time.
Prior theory, too, has suggested that awe might have theability to increase perceived time availability. For instance,
two psychological theories provide support. The first is theextended-now theory (Vohs & Schmeichel, 2003), which suggests that focusing on the present moment elongates time perception. Awe focuses people’s attention on what is currently
unfolding before them, and the extended-now theory predicts
that such focus would expand the perception of time. The second theory is the socioemotional selectivity theory (SST),
which posits that people are motivated to acquire new knowledge when time feels expansive (Carstensen, Isaacowitz, &Charles, 1999). Awe triggers in people a desire to make newknowledge structures (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Thus, a speculative suggestion from SST is that awe’s ability to stimulate
the creation of mental schemas may be a signal that the mind
perceives an expanded amount of time in response to awe.

The Consequences of Perceived
Time Availability
Whether people believe they have enough time to accomplish
their goals affects numerous outcomes. First, perceived time
availability influences some prosocial behaviors. Classic studies on the power of the situation demonstrate that feeling timepressured hinders the tendency to help someone in distress(Darley & Batson, 1973). Insufficient time availability is also
a common barrier to volunteering and engaging in community
service (Strober & Weinberg, 1980), behaviors linked togreater well-being (Thoits & Hewitt, 2001). Therefore, we
predicted that creating the perception that more time is available would augment people’s willingness to spend time helping other people.
Second, time perception affects choices that people makeabout how to live life. For instance, feeling that one lacks time
is associated with markers of unhealthy diets, such as eating
few family meals at home (Neumark-Sztainer, Hannan, Story,
Croll, & Perry, 2003) and consuming fast food (Darian &Cohen, 1995). Furthermore, not having enough time is anoften-cited reason for not engaging in leisure experiences(Mannell & Zuzanek, 1991). Elongated time perception may
also influence product decisions, such that one desires toacquire experiences as opposed to material goods (Van Boven& Gilovich, 2003)—a decision pattern associated withenhanced well-being (J. Zhong & Mitchell, 2010). Indeed, one
quality of experiential products is that they, by their nature,require the experiencer to devote time in order to savor theattendant feelings and sensations (Quoidbach, Dunn, Petrides,& Mikolajczak, 2010). Thus, we predicted that inducing a
sense of ample time availability would lead people to choose
experiences over material goods.

Third, one’s sense of the amount of time available is often
an indicator of health and well-being. Feeling that time is constricted is associated with a heightened risk of hypertension(Yan et al., 2003) and with ailments such as headaches, stomach pain, and poor sleep quality (Kivimäki, Kalimo, &Julkunen, 1996; Spence, Helmreich, & Pred, 1987). Mental
health also suffers to the extent that time feels compressed. For
instance, people who report feeling “always” rushed havelower life satisfaction than do others (Robinson & Godbey,1997), and feeling that one has little time available has been
linked to depression symptoms (Roxburgh, 2004). Consequently, we predicted that elongating perceptions of time, by
eliciting awe, would lead people to experience boosts inmomentary life satisfaction.

Overview of the Experiments
In Experiment 1, we examined whether awe would alter timeperception by first manipulating whether people were induced
to feel awe or happiness and then having them rate selfperceived time availability. Experiment 2 examined whether
feeling awe, relative to feeling happiness, would alter timeperception (i.e., impatience) and, in turn, willingness to donate
time. Experiment 3 tested whether awe, compared with a neutral state, would increase participants’ choice of experiential(vs. material) goods and momentary life satisfaction, two outcomes that we hypothesized would follow from awe’s ability
to expand perceptions of time.

Experiment 1
Experiment 1 tested the hypothesis that feeling awe can
expand people’s perception of time. We chose happiness as thecomparison state because awe and happiness are alike in being
positively valenced and having the ability to broaden one’s
perspective (B. L. Fredrickson, 2001), but differ in whether
perceptual vastness and a need for accommodation are experienced (Shiota et al., 2007).
Because awe is often elicited during events such as exposure to music or nature (Shiota et al., 2007), and because these
events commonly occur when people are under minimal timepressure, it is possible that an expanded perception of time is aprerequisite for experiencing awe and not a consequence of it.
To address this alternative, we initially primed all participants
to perceive time as constricted, before they received a novel
manipulation in which they were induced to feel either awe orhappiness.

MethodParticipants. Sixty-three students (39 women, 24 men) participated for $20.
Procedure. To provide a cover story, we told participants thatthey would be participating in several unrelated studies. In the

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Awe Expands the Perception of Time
first of three surveys, they were given a sentence-unscramblingtask (Srull & Wyer, 1979) involving 12 sets of words. Each set
consisted of five words (e.g., “not available enough timemuch”), and participants were asked to use four of them tocreate a meaningful phrase. Half of the unscrambled word sets
pertained to non-time-related topics, whereas the other word
sets pertained to the idea of constricted time. A pretest (N = 30)
confirmed that completing this task (M = 5.33, SD = 1.53),
compared with a control sentence-unscrambling task (with all
non-time-related word sets; M = 4.13, SD = 1.22), resulted inhigher ratings on a two-item index of perceived time constriction (“I am pressed for time,” “Time is constricted”; 1 =strongly disagree/not at all, 7 = strongly agree/very much; α =.88), F(1, 28) = 5.65, p = .03, ηp2 = .17.
In the second survey, participants were randomly assigned
to watch either an awe-eliciting 60-s commercial for an LCD
television or a happiness-eliciting one. The awe-eliciting commercial depicted people in city streets and parks encounteringand interacting with vast, mentally overwhelming, and seemingly realistic images, such as waterfalls, whales, and astronauts in space. The happiness-eliciting commercial depictedpeople in city streets and parks encountering and interactingwith rainbow confetti falling through the air and a parade ofsmiling, joyful people who were waving flags while wearing
brightly colored outfits and face paint. Participants then completed filler questions about television brands.
In the third, and final, survey, participants rated their agreement with items about personal beliefs. Embedded among fillers were four key items: “I have lots of time in which I can get
things done,” “Time is slipping away” (reverse-scored), “Timeis expanded,” and “Time is boundless” (1 = strongly disagree/
not at all, 7 = strongly agree/very much). We averaged the ratings for these items to create a perceived-time-availability
index (α = .86). Last, participants reported the degree to which
they were currently experiencing each of eight feelings(“angry,” “awe,” “sad,” “happy,” “calm,” “bored,” “excited,”and “afraid”; 1 = not at all, 7 = very much).

Results and discussion
Manipulation checks. Emotion reports confirmed that participants in the awe condition (M = 6.06, SD = 0.91) experienced stronger feelings of awe during the experiment than did
participants in the happiness condition (M = 3.84, SD = 1.88),
F(1, 61) = 35.97, p < .01, ηp2 = .37. In turn, participants in thehappiness condition (M = 5.61, SD = 0.88) experienced stronger feelings of happiness than did participants in the awe condition (M = 4.84, SD = 1.53), F(1, 61) = 5.95, p = .02, ηp2 =.09. Ratings of other emotions did not differ significantly
between conditions, Fs < 3.52.
Time perception. To test the hypothesis that awe expands timeperceptions, we conducted an analysis of variance (ANOVA) on
the perceived-time-availability index, which revealed the predicted effect of emotion condition, F(1, 61) = 7.44, p = .01, ηp2 =.11. Participants in the awe condition (M = 3.38, SD = 1.49)

perceived time as more plentiful than did participants in thehappiness condition (M = 2.44, SD = 1.20). Correlational analyses supported this effect by showing that, across conditions,stronger feelings of awe were associated with greater perceived
time availability, r = .36, p < .01.
Discussion. Thus, awe, relative to happiness, led to the perception that time is more plentiful and expansive. Experiment
1 also demonstrated that the time-expansion effect associatedwith the experience of awe is not simply due to the positive
valence of this emotion, as participants induced to feel a different positive emotion—happiness—perceived time as moreconstricted than did participants induced to feel awe. It is
important to note that the predicted effect emerged even after
we primed participants with the idea of time being constricted,
as this reduces concern about the possibility of a natural confound between a lack of time pressure and the experienceof awe.

Experiment 2
Experiment 1 showed that awe can make people perceive time
as more plentiful than they do when experiencing another positively valenced emotion, happiness. Experiment 2 wasdesigned to provide further evidence of this time-expansion
effect, but for convergent validity, we used a different measureof perceived time availability. The perception that one has too
many things to do in the time available can elicit impatience(Lang & Markowitz, 1986) and impatient behavior (Darley &Batson, 1973). Therefore, we predicted that participants who
experienced awe (vs. happiness) would feel less impatient
because impatience arises in response to the feeling that theamount of available time is inadequate.
Experiment 2 also assessed whether awe can alter prosocial
decisions that exact a temporal cost. We tested the hypothesisthat awe, by altering time perception, would increase people’s
willingness to volunteer their time. To test the specificity of
our account, we also examined whether awe alters people’s
willingness to behave prosocially in a manner not involving
time. Specifically, we tested awe’s effects on monetary donations. Because our theory centered on awe’s ability to alter
perceptions of time, not prosociality, we expected that awe
would not affect participants’ willingness to donate money.
A final objective was to examine different types of aweeliciting events and to analyze their relationship to time perception. We predicted that the feeling of awe, not the type of
event that elicited it, would be what shifted participants’ perception of how much time was available. Therefore, in Experiment 2, we used a different method of manipulating felt
emotion: Participants wrote narratives about an emotioneliciting personal experience.

MethodParticipants. Eighty-six students (53 women, 33 men) participated for $20.

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Procedure. To provide a cover story, we told participants thatthey would complete several unrelated surveys. In the firstsurvey, to manipulate felt emotion, we asked participants towrite a narrative about a personal experience during which
they felt either awe or happiness, depending on the condition
to which they were randomly assigned. Participants in the awe
condition read that awe is “a response to things perceived asvast and overwhelming that alters the way you understand theworld” and wrote about an experience that made them feelawe. Participants in the happiness condition read that happiness is feeling “contentment or joy” and wrote about an experience that made them feel happy.
In the second survey, participants answered filler items andthen reported their feelings of impatience (1 = not at all, 7 =extremely). In the third, and final, survey, four items assessed
how likely and willing participants were to volunteer time anddonate money to “support a worthy cause” and “help a charity” (1 = not at all, 7 = very; “How willing are you to donate
your money to support a worthy cause?”; “How willing are
you to volunteer your time to support a worthy cause?”; “Howlikely are you to donate your money to help a charity?”; “Howlikely are you to volunteer your time to help a charity?”).
Responses to the time-donation items and the money-donation
items were averaged separately (donate time: α = .94; donate
money: α = .94) to create two willingness-to-give indices.
Last, for our manipulation checks, in this final survey we also
had participants report the degree to which they were currently
feeling “excitement,” “awe,” “pride,” and “happiness” (1 =not at all, 7 = very much).

Results and discussion
Manipulation checks. Emotion reports confirmed that participants in the awe condition (M = 4.24, SD = 2.06) experienced stronger feelings of awe during the experiment than did
participants in the happiness condition (M = 2.93, SD = 1.74),
F(1, 84) = 10.12, p < .01, ηp2 = .12. Also, participants in thehappiness condition (M = 4.95, SD = 1.26) experienced stronger feelings of happiness than did participants in the awe condition (M = 4.12, SD = 1.45), F(1, 84) = 8.17, p < .01, ηp2 =.09. Ratings of other emotions did not differ between conditions, Fs < 1.75.
Impatience. We used an ANOVA to test the hypothesis thatawe reduces impatience. As predicted, participants in the awe
condition (M = 3.90, SD = 1.57) reported feeling less impatient than did participants in the happiness condition (M =4.64, SD = 1.48), F(1, 84) = 4.93, p = .03, ηp2 = .06.
To determine whether awe-eliciting events were associatedwith less time pressure than happiness-eliciting events andwhether the type of recalled event influenced temporal perception, we asked two judges to code the events described inparticipants’ narratives. The coders rated the time pressure associated with each event (1 = none at all, 9 = an extreme amount;intraclass correlation coefficient for interrater reliability, r, was.92). Using a non–mutually exclusive system developed by
Shiota et al. (2007; 0 = no, 1 = yes), the coders also rated
whether the narrative described each of five categories of
events: being in nature, exposure to art or music, personal
accomplishments, other people’s accomplishments, and social
interactions. Ninety-eight percent of participants described anexperience that fit into one or more categories (interrater reliability for all category ratings: κs > .90, ps < .01).
Were awe-eliciting situations merely characterized by lesstime pressure than happiness-eliciting situations? An ANOVA
on time-pressure ratings suggests otherwise: There were no
significant differences in the time pressure associated with
awe narratives (M = 1.21, SD = 0.68) compared with happiness narratives (M = 1.18, SD = 0.66), F(1, 84) = 0.05.
We then assessed whether certain types of emotioneliciting experiences were differentially related to time perception within and across the awe and happiness conditions.
Correlational analyses between ratings of impatience andscores for each of the five event categories revealed no significant correlations within the awe condition (rs < |.12|, ps > .43);
that is, the type of awe experience recalled was not a correlateof time perception. Similar null effects were found within thehappiness condition (rs < |.17|, ps > .27) and across both conditions (rs < |.16|, ps > .14). In short, the effect of condition ontime perception seemed not to be driven by any differences inthe types of events recalled by participants in the two emotion
conditions.
Willingness to give time and money. To test whether awe
alters prosocial decisions involving time, we conducted an
ANOVA on the willingness-to-give-time index. Results
revealed the predicted effect of condition, F(1, 84) = 6.16, p =.02, ηp2 = .07. Participants in the awe condition (M = 5.43,
SD = 1.23) reported greater willingness to volunteer their timethan did participants in the happiness condition (M = 4.77,
SD = 1.22). To assess whether awe affected non-time-related
forms of prosociality, we conducted an ANOVA on the willingness-to-give-money index. Supporting our time-expansion
account, the results showed that participants in the awe condition (M = 4.71, SD = 1.35) were no more willing to donate
money than were participants in the happiness condition(M = 4.63, SD = 1.12), F < 1.
Last, to test the process by which awe influences willingness to donate time, we conducted a mediation analysis with
impatience as the mediator (Baron & Kenny, 1986). Condition (happiness = 0, awe = 1) was a significant predictor of
impatience, b = −0.73, p = .03, and of the willingness-to-givetime index, b = 0.66, p = .02. Impatience was negatively correlated with the willingness-to-give-time index, r = −.33, p <.01. Results supported mediation: When condition and impatience ratings were entered as simultaneous predictors of thewillingness-to-give-time index, impatience remained a significant predictor, b = −0.34, p < .01, whereas the effect ofcondition became nonsignificant, b = 0.41, p = .10, Sobel z =1.97, p = .05.

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Discussion. Experiment 2 showed that the temporal consequences of awe are evident in reduced impatience andincreased willingness to volunteer one’s time—a prosocial
benefit of awe. Awe did not, however, make people more generous in general, as it had no measurable impact on willingness to donate money. Furthermore, a mediation analysis
demonstrated that awe’s effect on willingness to give time tohelp other people was driven by reduced impatience.

Experiment 3
Experiments 1 and 2 showed that awe, relative to happiness,increases the perception that time is plentiful, reduces impatience, and inspires a greater desire to volunteer time. These
outcomes have been related to well-being (Robinson &Godbey, 1997; Roxburgh, 2004), which suggests that life satisfaction itself might be increased by awe. Experiment 3 tested
this hypothesis and also examined the prediction that awe, byinfluencing perceived time availability, would alter decision
making. Although experiences deliver more psychologicalbenefits than material possessions, they are temporally costlier(Cooper-Martin, 1991; Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003). Becauseof awe’s ability to expand perceptions of time, we predictedthat feeling awe would cause participants to choose moreexperiential, as opposed to material, goods. For convergent
validity, this experiment used a different comparison condition
and a different procedure for eliciting awe than did the previous two experiments.

MethodParticipants. One hundred five members of a nationwide
panel (60 women, 45 men) participated for $10.
Procedure. To provide a cover story, we told participants theywould be completing several unrelated surveys. In the firstsurvey, participants were instructed to read a short story and totry to feel as the character in the story would have felt
(Griskevicius, Shiota, & Neufeld, 2010). We randomly
assigned participants to either the awe condition or a neutral
condition. Participants in the awe condition read a story about
ascending the Eiffel Tower and seeing Paris from on high. Participants in the neutral condition read about ascending an
unnamed tower and seeing a plain landscape from on high. To
guard against demand effects, we did not use the word awe ineither story.
The second survey included filler items and then aperceived-time-availability index (“I have lots of time in which
I can get things done,” “Time is slipping away” (reversescored), “Time is expanded,” and “Time is boundless”; 1 =strongly disagree/not at all, 7 = strongly agree/very much; α =.76). The third, and final, survey included a measure of momentary life satisfaction (“All things considered, how satisfied are
you with your life as a whole, right now?”; 1 = not at all satisfied with life, 7 = extremely satisfied with life; cf. Kahneman,

Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2006). In this survey,
participants also made hypothetical choices between experiential and material goods (said to be equivalent in price). Participants chose between a watch and Broadway show tickets,
between a $10 gas card and a $10 movie-theater pass, betweena jacket and a restaurant dinner, between a scientific calculator
and a professional massage, and between a $50 backpack and a$50 iTunes card. Last, participants reported their current feelings of “calmness,” “anxiety,” “relaxation,” “worry,” “awe,”“sadness,” “boredom,” and “fear” (1 = not at all, 7 = very much).

Results and discussion
Manipulation checks. Emotion ratings confirmed that participants in the awe condition (M = 2.98, SD = 2.01) experienced stronger feelings of awe than did participants in theneutral condition (M = 2.25, SD = 1.40), F(1, 103) = 4.65, p =.03, ηp2 = .04. Ratings of other emotions did not differ between
conditions, Fs < 1.95.
Time perception. Testing whether awe expands time perceptions, an ANOVA on the perceived-time-availability index
revealed the predicted condition effect, F(1, 103) = 8.45, p <.01, ηp2 = .08. Participants in the awe condition (M = 3.83,
SD = 1.38) perceived time as more plentiful than did participants in the neutral condition (M = 3.09, SD = 1.22).
Experiential- versus material-product choices. To test
whether awe influences decision making, we calculated thepercentage of experiential products chosen by each participant(cf. Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003). As predicted, an ANOVA
revealed that participants in the awe condition (M = 65.66%,
SD = 25.83) favored experiential products more than participants in the neutral condition did (M = 54.23%, SD = 26.37),
F(1, 103) = 5.03, p = .03, ηp2 = .05.
To test how awe influences decisions to choose experiential(vs. material) goods, we conducted a mediation analysis withperceived time availability as the mediator (Baron & Kenny,1986). Condition (neutral = 0, awe = 1) predicted perceived
time availability, b = 0.74, p < .01, and percentage of experiential products selected, b = 11.43, p = .03. Perceived time
availability and percentage of experiential products chosenwere positively correlated, r = .30, p < .01. When conditionand perceived time availability were included as simultaneouspredictors of experiential choices, perceived time availability
remained a significant predictor, b = 5.08, p = .01, whereas theeffect of condition became nonsignificant, b = 7.67, p = .14,
Sobel z = 1.96, p = .05. Thus, the results of this analysis supported mediation.
Life satisfaction. To test the hypothesis that awe would affectmomentary life-satisfaction ratings, we performed an ANOVA,
which revealed the predicted condition effect, F(1, 103) =6.97, p = .01, ηp2 = .06. Participants in the awe condition (M =5.42, SD = 1.28) reported greater momentary life satisfaction

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than did participants in the neutral condition (M = 4.65, SD =1.66).
Last, we conducted a mediation analysis to examine how
awe affects life-satisfaction ratings. Condition (neutral = 0,
awe = 1) predicted perceived time availability, b = 0.74, p <.01, and life satisfaction, b = 0.76, p = .01. Perceived time
availability was positively correlated with life satisfaction, r =.34, p < .01. When condition and perceived time availability
were simultaneously included in the model, perceived time
availability remained a significant predictor of life satisfaction,b = 0.33, p < .01, whereas the effect of condition became nonsignificant, b = 0.52, p = .08, Sobel z = 2.11, p = .03. Thus, theresults supported the hypothesis that perceived time availability
mediates the relationship between awe and life satisfaction.
Discussion. Experiment 3 provided further evidence that awe
expands perceptions of time. Eliciting a feeling of awe, compared with a neutral state, increased perceived time availability, which in turn led participants to more strongly preferexperiential goods over material ones and to view their lives as
more satisfying. Experiment 3 also found evidence of mediation: Greater perceived time availability mediated awe’s effecton momentary life satisfaction and participants’ choice ofexperiential over material products.

General Discussion
People increasingly report feeling time starved, and that feeling exacts a toll on health and well-being (Menzies, 2005).
Drawing on research showing that being in the present moment
elongates time perception (Vohs & Schmeichel, 2003), we predicted and found that experiencing awe, relative to otherstates, caused people to perceive that they had more time
available (Experiments 1 and 3) and lessened impatience(Experiment 2). Furthermore, by expanding time perception,awe, compared with other states, led participants to morestrongly desire to spend time helping other people (Experiment 2) and to partake in experiential goods over material
ones (Experiments 3). A small dose of awe even gave participants a momentary boost in life satisfaction (Experiment 3).
Thus, these results not only have implications for how people
spend their time, but also underscore the importance andpromise of cultivating awe in everyday life.
That awe expands time perception suggests that it could
also amplify the savoring of pleasurable moments (Quoidbach
et al., 2010) or reduce aggressive and distracted driving(Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, 2008). Furthermore,
awe’s complexity suggests that it might have multifaceted
effects that are not wholly positive. For instance, being stuck in
the present moment can cause people to fail at self-regulation(Vohs & Schmeichel, 2003), and this finding hints at a potential downside of awe. We look forward to future research that
continues the examination of how experiences of awe producechanges in people’s perception and behaviors and how such

effects are distinct from those of other discrete positive
emotions.
In summary, awe offset the feeling that time is limited, andthis increase in perceived time availability heightened willingness to volunteer time, accentuated preferences for experiential goods, and lifted satisfaction with life. Our studies also
demonstrated that awe can be elicited by reliving a memory,
reading a brief story, or even watching a 60-s commercial.
Therefore, awe-eliciting experiences might offer one effective
way of alleviating the feeling of time starvation that plagues somany people in modern life.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest withrespect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

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