how connection developsTwo groups of older adults were asked to take an outdoor walk of at least fifteen minutes each week. One group received an additional invitation to notice things that evoked wonder and, where possible, explore somewhere new. Over eight weeks, that group reported greater increases in awe during their walks and in feelings such as compassion and admiration in daily life.
The study by Virginia Sturm and colleagues examined what a way of attending to one's surroundings could add to walking itself. Both groups walked outdoors. The contrast was in the extra guidance to seek awe, an experience the authors describe in relation to encountering something vast that stretches one's usual understanding.
That possibility does not depend on every outing being extraordinary. The instructions encouraged participants to look for wonder in their surroundings, including unfamiliar details and a sense of scale. The handout made room for both a broad view and the intricate detail of a leaf or flower. Familiar places were welcome too, if participants could keep noticing something new within them. The researchers then examined how the experience developed across repeated walks.
The same basic activity with a different focus
Participants were healthy adults aged sixty to ninety recruited through a University of California, San Francisco aging research network. Sixty entered the study and fifty-two contributed sufficient data for the analyses, twenty-four in the awe group and twenty-eight in the comparison group. To be included, participants had to take at least two walks and complete the before-and-after questionnaires. Their median age was seventy-five.
Both groups were asked to walk alone at a light to moderate pace, in an outdoor setting of their choice, and avoid using their phones except for photographs. The awe group was additionally encouraged to attend to novelty and physical vastness, bring a sense of wonder, and visit new places when possible.
The groups' walks were broadly similar in reported speed, strenuousness, beauty, and urban or rural character. Unexpectedly, the comparison group took more walks. The awe group averaged about eight walks over the study and the comparison group about nineteen. The additional emotional changes in the awe group therefore cannot simply be described as a consequence of that group walking more often.
The fifteen minutes was a minimum, rather than the actual average time spent walking. The awe group averaged thirty-eight minutes per walk and the comparison group about forty-seven. The study tested the added guidance within these outdoor walks, not whether fifteen minutes was the smallest amount needed for an emotional change.
Participants reported their emotions after each walk and in separate daily surveys. They also took photographs of themselves during the walks. These different records let the researchers distinguish the immediate experience of an outing from aspects of the rest of the day.
Awe grew with repeated attention
Participants given the awe instructions reported greater awe during their walks, and the difference in how awe developed became more pronounced over time. The experience did not simply fade as the exercise became familiar.
Positive emotions during the walks also changed. Compared with the ordinary-walk group, the awe group showed greater increases in a cluster of emotions oriented toward others, including compassion, admiration, and appreciation. A separate cluster involving joy also increased more during their walks.
This gives repetition a particular significance. The practice was not only an invitation to have one striking experience. Across the study, attending to the surroundings in this way was associated with an increasing emotional response. The researchers also found that cumulative awe walks were related to greater gains, although participants were not randomly assigned to different numbers of walks. That analysis cannot establish a precise dose that will produce a particular result.
Distress during the walks did not decrease more in the awe group. More positive experience and less negative experience were not interchangeable outcomes in this part of the study.
More room for the surroundings in a photograph
The photographs provided another record of change. Researchers measured the proportion of each picture occupied by the participant, while trained coders who did not know the group assignments rated the strength of the smiles. Over time, participants in the awe group included proportionately less of themselves and more of the surrounding scene in their pictures. Their smiles also became more intense relative to those in the comparison group.
The researchers described the photographic change as a smaller self. Here, smallness concerns the space a person occupies within an image and their relation to a wider setting. It is not a measure of diminished worth or importance.
Participants' reports added nuance. During the walks, the awe group showed greater increases in feeling part of something larger and being in the presence of something vast. Their direct ratings of feeling small during the walks did not show the same significant change. The photographs and the self-reports therefore did not provide identical evidence on every aspect of the experience.
Taken together, they suggest a shift in how the participants situated themselves within their surroundings. The scene occupied more of the picture, and the reported experience increasingly included a sense of being part of something larger.
What carried into the rest of the day
Outside the walks, the awe group showed greater increases in positive emotions oriented toward others. The detailed analyses identified differences over time in compassion, admiration, and amusement. Their daily ratings also showed a growing sense of being part of something larger relative to the comparison group, alongside greater increases in feelings of vastness and smallness. This was a reported relationship to the wider world, rather than evidence that their social networks expanded.
Daily awe and joy did not increase more in the awe group. The experience outside the walk was not simply a continuation of every feeling reported during it. The pattern was more selective, with the clearer positive changes appearing in emotions the researchers grouped as prosocial. The supplemental results also showed a greater increase in daily warmth considered on its own, although the broader joy cluster containing warmth did not change differently between the groups. A finding for one feeling does not mean that every feeling grouped with it changed.
The daily prosocial changes were gradual. On the seven-point emotion scale, the model estimated that the awe group's average score rose about six thousandths of a point per day, compared with about two thousandths in the comparison group. The difference was small, but it accumulated across the study. It describes a pattern in repeated ratings, not a promise that each walk will deliver a noticeable lift.
That label describes the emotional qualities being measured. It does not establish that participants performed more helpful actions. The groups did not differ in reported helpful acts or doing things for a good cause. Feeling greater compassion and acting on it remain distinct outcomes.
Daily distress declined more over time in the awe group, particularly sadness and fear. The authors noted an important complication. That group began with somewhat higher daily distress, so part of the decrease may have reflected a return toward more typical levels. The finding warrants more caution than a simple claim that awe walks reduced distress by a known amount.
Emotional changes within a specific scope
Broader measures of anxiety, depression, and life satisfaction did not show significant improvement from the intervention. Participants were already physically and cognitively healthy and generally reported little anxiety or depression. This was a study of everyday emotional experience in that group, rather than evidence that awe walks treat a mental health condition.
Most participants were white and highly educated. The paper also did not establish how long the emotional differences lasted after the eight-week walking period. Those features set the scope for the result without removing its practical interest.
The additional instruction was small enough to fit within an ordinary activity. Participants attended to details, scale, and novelty in the world around them. Over the study, that attention was accompanied by increasing awe on the walks, greater smiles, and changes in some daily feelings toward others. The emotional contribution appeared in particular parts of experience, where the measurements could make it visible.
Sources
Sturm, V. E., Datta, S., Roy, A. R. K., Sible, I. J., Kosik, E. L., Veziris, C. R., Chow, T. E., Morris, N. A., Neuhaus, J., Kramer, J. H., Miller, B. L., Holley, S. R., & Keltner, D. (2022). Big smile, small self: Awe walks promote prosocial positive emotions in older adults. Emotion, 22(5), 1044–1058. Read the author manuscript. Read the supplemental methods and results.