Awe is an emotional response to stimuli that are perceived to be vast (e.g., tall trees, sunsets) and that defy accommodation by existing mental structures. Curiously, awe has prosocial effects despite often being elicited by nonsocial stimuli. The prevailing explanation for why awe has prosocial effects is that awe reduces attention to self-oriented concerns (i.e., awe makes the self small), thereby making more attention available for other-oriented concerns. However, several questions remain unaddressed by the current formulation of this small-self hypothesis. How are awe researchers defining the self, and what implications might their theory of selfhood have for understanding the "smallness" of the self? Building on theories regarding psychological selfhood, we propose that awe may interact with the self not just in terms of attentional focus but rather at multiple layers of selfhood. We further reinterpret the small self using the notion of the quiet ego from personality psychology. Linking awe to an enriched model of the self provided by personality psychology may be fruitful for explaining a range of phenomena and motivating future research.

中文翻译：

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为什么敬畏会产生亲社会效应？关于敬畏和小我的新观点。

敬畏是对刺激的一种情感反应，这种刺激被认为是巨大的（例如，高大的树木，落日），并且破坏了现有心理结构的适应能力。奇怪的是，尽管通常是由非社会刺激引起的，敬畏却具有亲社会效应。敬畏之所以会产生亲社会效应的普遍解释是，敬畏会减少对自我导向问题的关注（即敬畏会使自我变小），从而使更多关注点可用于其他定向关注。但是，目前这个小自我假设的提法仍未解决几个问题。研究人员如何定义自我，以及他们的自我理论对理解自我的“渺小”会有什么影响？建立在有关心理自理的理论上，我们建议敬畏不仅可以在注意力集中方面与自我互动，还可以在自我的多个层次上互动。我们使用来自人格心理学的安静自我的概念进一步重新诠释了小自我。将敬畏与人格心理学提供的丰富的自我模型联系起来，对于解释一系列现象和激发未来的研究可能是富有成果的。