Feeling happy might do more to open people’s minds to social diversity than experiencing a sense of awe. New research published in the International Journal of Psychology indicates that a brief burst of joy leads to more positive attitudes toward inclusion, while awe has little effect. The findings challenge the expectation that awe would outperform other positive emotions in fostering acceptance of others.
Awe is an emotional response typically triggered by perceiving something vast and extraordinary that challenges a person’s usual understanding of the world, like a starry night sky or a towering mountain range. This feeling tends to diminish attention to oneself and make people view their surroundings as interconnected and meaningful.
Because awe encourages people to feel part of something larger than themselves, researchers have wondered whether it could help foster more positive attitudes toward diversity. The research, led by Jens Agerström, a professor of psychology at Linnaeus University, set out to test whether experiencing awe could encourage greater openness toward different social groups.
“Previous research has shown that people who are exposed to awe-inducing stimuli (e.g., vast and beautiful landscapes, moon landings) are more likely to act more prosocially (e.g., help another person),” Agerström told PsyPost. “We wanted to extend the research literature by examining whether awe can also make people more diversity oriented by, for instance, expressing more positive attitudes toward ethnic minority groups.”
Prior work provided reason to think awe might bridge social divides. For instance, a 2015 study found that awe shifts attention away from the self and promotes generosity: in one experiment, adults who watched an awe-inducing nature clip gave away more raffle tickets than those who watched a happiness-inducing one. Building on this, an experiment covered by PsyPost in 2023 found that experiencing awe, rather than joy, made children more likely to donate to members of an outgroup.
Happiness served as the comparison. Like awe, it is a positive emotion that tends to broaden people’s outlook and encourage helping and cooperation, which made it a solid benchmark. But the researchers expected awe to come out ahead, because awe is more strongly tied to a sense of a smaller self and a connection to others. Happiness also has a more mixed record: a 1994 study found that happy moods can lead people to rely more heavily on social stereotypes.
To test this, the researchers recruited 3,196 adults through the online research platform Prolific. The participants, who averaged about 40 years old, were randomly assigned to one of three groups, and each group watched a 28-second video designed to evoke a specific emotional response.
The awe group viewed majestic images of the universe, vast landscapes, and the Apollo 11 moon landing accompanied by sweeping music. The happiness group watched cheerful scenes of children playing and birthday parties paired with joyful music. A third, neutral control group saw everyday images of people studying or taking a coffee break with ambient background noise.
Immediately after watching the clips, the participants completed three questionnaires assessing their orientation toward diversity. The first survey measured general attitudes toward diversity, asking respondents if they value getting to know people from different racial or cultural backgrounds. The second survey measured diversity fatigue, which captures feelings of weariness or annoyance toward societal inclusion efforts. The third survey assessed social dominance orientation, which captures how much a person believes some social groups are simply inferior to others and that inequality between groups is acceptable.
The researchers found that the awe video did not measurably change how participants answered the surveys. On all three measures, the awe group’s responses did not differ statistically from those of the neutral control group.
Happiness, on the other hand, consistently shifted responses in a more inclusive direction. The neutral group’s average diversity attitude score was about 4.6 on a 6-point scale, and the happiness group scored about 0.08 points higher. The happiness group also scored 0.10 points lower on diversity fatigue (neutral group average: about 2.1 on a 5-point scale) and 0.15 points lower on preference for group hierarchy (neutral group average: about 2.4 on a 6-point scale).
When the two emotions were compared directly, the happiness group reported more positive attitudes toward diversity than the awe group and showed a slightly lower preference for social hierarchy, a difference that fell just short of statistical significance. The two groups did not differ reliably in diversity fatigue. The results held when the researchers excluded participants who finished unusually quickly or slowly and when they accounted for age and gender.
These shifts are small, but the authors note they emerged after a 28-second video and on measures thought to be fairly stable. The researchers suggest that happiness may promote social bonding, cooperation, and concern for others, which could carry over into more welcoming attitudes, though the study did not test this explanation.
“Brief inductions of awe do not seem to make people more diversity oriented,” Agerström noted. “Somewhat unexpectedly we found that happiness, which we used as a contrasting emotion, resulted in more positive diversity-related attitudes. Perhaps most interestingly, happiness seems to reduce social dominance, an individual difference characteristic capturing preferences for inequality and discrimination.”
The team’s biggest surprise, Agerström said, was “that happiness seems to triumph over awe when it comes to diversity.”
The lack of an effect for awe is in tension with research covered by PsyPost in 2025, which found that evoking awe through science fiction increased people’s identification with all of humanity. However, that earlier study measured a broad sense of global connection rather than specific attitudes toward demographic diversity and social equality.
“The main takeaway is that even a brief experience of happiness can make people more positive toward diversity and reduce diversity fatigue and social dominance orientation. Interestingly, the researchers did not find similar effects for awe,” said Ewa Palikot of the Institute of Psychology at the Polish Academy of Sciences, who was not involved in the study. “Like the authors, I expected awe to have a positive effect on attitudes toward diversity, especially since previous research suggests that awe can make people feel more connected to others and encourage prosocial behavior.”
As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study relied on a very short video clip to spark emotion. A 28-second video can easily lift a person’s mood, but it might not be intense enough to trigger the profound, transformative sense of awe that comes from standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. It is possible that a stronger, real-world experience of awe would yield different results.
The researchers note, however, that in a pretest with 125 people, the awe video produced about as much awe as the happiness video produced happiness, so a weaker emotional jolt does not obviously explain the difference. The main study itself did not check how participants felt after watching.
The researchers offer a few possible explanations for why awe fell short. Awe is a complex emotion, and although their awe video produced very little fear, it did produce some surprise, which the authors suggest could prompt a disorienting search for order rather than curiosity and openness. It is also possible the video did not create the “small self” feeling thought to drive awe’s social benefits, something the study did not measure.
“The size of the observed effects of happiness was small and it is important to examine whether happiness has the potential to shape diversity-oriented behavior in real-world settings,” Agerström said. “For example, can a more joyful workplace reduce prejudice?”
Palikot cautioned against generalizing the experimental findings to everyday life. “It is important to remember that these findings do not mean that happier people are necessarily more open to diversity in everyday life,” she told PsyPost. “The researchers looked at how a brief feeling of happiness affected people’s reported attitudes right after watching a video. We still don’t know how long these effects last or whether they influence people’s actual behavior.”
The participants in this study also started out with relatively low preferences for social hierarchy, which left less room for their scores to drop, although the happiness effect still emerged.
“As is always the case, findings need to be replicated before strong conclusions are drawn,” Agerström emphasized. “Also, other awe-inducing methods (than those we tested) may have the potential to increase diversity. Future research needs to look into this.”
Looking ahead, Agerström said the team’s long-term plan is “to unobtrusively study effects of awe and happiness on diversity behavior.” Unobtrusive studies observe what people actually do without making the measured behavior obvious, which can reduce the pull to give socially desirable answers.
“From a cross-cultural perspective, I would be curious to see whether happiness and awe have similar effects across cultures,” Palikot said. “Previous research shows that happiness and positive emotions are not viewed in the same way in different cultural contexts. For example, in some East Asian cultures, emotional balance is more valued, and strong positive emotions like happiness can also be associated with negative consequences. This does not necessarily mean that these emotions have different effects on social attitudes, but I think it would be interesting to explore.”
The study, “Happiness, Not Awe, Makes People More Diversity-Oriented,” was authored by Jens Agerström, Magnus Carlsson, and Towe Nilsson.
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