Given the state of the nation’s politics and the near constant drumbeat of grim surveys about the state of our mental health, a whole lot of experts are frantically trying to figure out how to make Americans happier and more united.
It’s certainly not a complete solution, but just watching the total solar eclipse on Monday might be a good start.
Why? This once-in-a-lifetime celestial phenomenon offers a heroic dose of awe, a feeling research shows that produces a host of important mental health benefits.
The powerful emotional effects of viewing an eclipse
The eclipse will be visible across a wide arc of the United States on Monday, starting near Houston around 1pm local time and sweeping all the way up to Niagara Falls after 3pm. The event will of course be fascinating from a scientific perspective, but experts insist seeing the sun disappear also stirs up powerful emotions in humans.
“When the light changes and the temperature drops, that triggers primal fear. When we have that threat response, our whole body is tuned in to taking in as much information as possible,” explains psychologist Kate Russo in a recent Scientific American article.
Primal fear doesn’t sound terribly beneficial. But this kind of deep awe at something so much larger and more powerful than us usually comes along with other feelings, including a profound connection to others and a deep sense of beauty and wonder that can alter your outlook and positively improve your mental health.
One study that analyzed Twitter (now X) data from nearly 3 million users during a 2017 solar eclipse found that during the phenomenon, language related to awe, humility, and togetherness spiked.
Being less self-absorbed, lonely, and stressed sounds like just what America needs right about now. So if you can find a way to see the upcoming eclipse in person, you should probably make the effort.
“The awe we feel during a total eclipse makes us think outside our sense of self. It makes you more attuned to things outside of you,” explains Sean Goldy, one of the Johns Hopkins University researchers behind the study.
Awe reminds us we are a small part of something much larger, fighting isolation and disconnection. It also has a tendency to put our everyday stresses and annoyances in perspective.
“When anxiety strikes, its sufferers are overwhelmed by, and hyperfocused on, their own worrisome, dark thoughts,” psychologist Robert Leahy has explained. This kind of thinking is known as rumination, and “awe is the opposite of rumination,” Leahy insists.
For the parents out there, other research recently published in the journal Psychological Science even found kids exposed to awe-inspiring sights and events became a little kinder and more generous. Humans of all ages seem to benefit from awe.
Can’t make it to the path of the eclipse? No worries.
Being less self-absorbed, lonely, and stressed sounds like just what America needs right about now. So if you can find a way to see the upcoming eclipse in person, you should probably make the effort. The experience is likely to be powerful psychological medicine to soothe some of the worst effects of modern life.
But what if the path of the eclipse is simply too far for you to catch it in person? Fear not — the eclipse may be a particularly powerful way to experience awe, but other science shows it’s perfectly possible to cultivate the emotion using even the most everyday experiences.
University of California, San Francisco researchers instructed participants to spend just 15 minutes a week walking around their local environment and actively looking for small moments of awe, from the sparkle of a drop of dew on a leaf to the glorious colors of fall foliage. They then compared the effects to another group who just went on a normal weekly stroll.
After eight weeks, the awe wakers “felt more socially connected, and reported bigger increases in positive emotions — including prosocial emotions such as gratitude and compassion, and also joy — while they were walking. The boost in prosocial emotions, specifically, carried through into everyday life. Daily distress also decreased more over time in the awe group,” reports the British Psychological Society Research Digest blog.
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