The Psychology of Awe Reflected Through Selfies
There is something wonderfully strange about a psychology study that finds part of its answer in the way people frame a selfie. In 2020, a research team led by Virginia Sturm at the University of California, San Francisco published a compelling study in the journal Emotion that explored how shifting attention during outdoor walks impacts emotional wellbeing in older adults.
The study asked participants aged 60 to 90 to take a short outdoor walk at least once a week for eight weeks. Half were given standard walking instructions, while the other half were encouraged to seek out experiences of awe—moments of novelty, vastness, and things that made the world feel larger than their immediate concerns.
What stood out from the findings was visible not just in reported emotions, but intriguingly in the photographs participants took of themselves. Over time, those instructed to notice awe tended to occupy less space in their selfies, allowing more of the surrounding landscape into the frame. Their smiles also grew more intense. This subtle but consistent shift hints at how attention shapes our perception of self in relation to the wider world.
Designing the Awe Walk Study
The researchers recruited 60 healthy adults with a median age of 75, ultimately analyzing data from 52 participants who completed the study protocol. Twenty-four were assigned to the awe-walk group and 28 to the control group. Each participant was instructed to walk outdoors for at least 15 minutes weekly, alone and at a light to moderate pace.
The awe group received special instructions to seek out new places when possible and to approach familiar environments with “fresh, childlike eyes,” looking for physical vastness and novelty—key triggers of awe. The control group walked with no specific focus other than the act itself, allowing researchers to isolate the effect of intentional attention to awe rather than exercise alone.
Interestingly, control participants actually took more walks on average (18.9) than the awe group (7.5), which challenges the notion that the benefits observed were simply due to increased physical activity.
From 1,184 Selfies to Quantitative Behavioral Data
Each participant took three photographs per walk: one before, one during, and one after. In total, 1,184 images were analyzed. The researchers didn’t rely on subjective impressions but used rigorous image analysis techniques. They outlined each person’s silhouette in the photos, converting images into pixels representing “self” and “non-self,” then calculated the percentage of the frame occupied by the individual’s face and body.
Smile intensity was assessed separately using the Facial Action Coding System, a validated method where certified coders—blind to the study’s aims—rated the upward pull of the mouth corners on a five-point scale. This objective approach ensured reliability and minimized bias.
Over the eight weeks, a clear pattern emerged: participants in the awe group progressively took selfies where they appeared smaller in the frame and smiled more intensely compared to the control group. The study illustrated this shift with example photos, but the key insight came from analyzing the entire dataset, revealing a gradual, group-level transformation rather than isolated before-and-after snapshots.
Understanding the “Small Self”
In everyday language, feeling “small” might suggest insignificance or humiliation. However, in psychological terms, the “small self” refers to a reduced emphasis on the individual as the center of experience. This concept has roots in prior research; for example, a 2015 series of studies by Paul Piff and colleagues demonstrated that awe diminishes self-focus and promotes prosocial behaviors like generosity and helping others (source).
Sturm’s study attempted to make this abstract concept visible by using selfies as a behavioral measure. Typically, a selfie centers the person with the environment as mere backdrop. However, on awe walks, this hierarchy softened—the landscape occupied more of the photograph because participants’ attention extended beyond themselves, reflecting a broader, more inclusive perspective.
This observation ties into the psychological phenomenon known as the spotlight effect, where people overestimate how much others notice and judge them. Rather than merely trying to diminish self-consciousness, the awe walks seemed to shift attention outward, making the self less central because something else—nature, novelty, vastness—captured participants’ focus.
Emotional Outcomes: Real but Specific
Participants in the awe group reported greater increases in feelings of awe and joy during their walks, as well as enhanced socially oriented positive emotions such as compassion, admiration, and appreciation. Outside the walks, daily surveys showed these participants experienced a steeper decline in distress and higher increases in socially oriented positive emotions compared to controls.
However, the study found no significant changes in broader psychological measures like anxiety, depression, or overall life satisfaction. The gains were particularly tied to the walking context and immediate emotional experience rather than long-term mood shifts or behavioral changes such as increased helping behavior.
While this smaller-scale experiment does not offer a universal prescription for happiness, it underscores the role of attentional quality during routine activities. The simple act of intentionally seeking awe appears to enhance emotional wellbeing beyond the physical act of walking alone.
Awe in Everyday Life: Beyond Mountains and Cathedrals
The concept of awe often evokes grand imagery: mountains, cathedrals, or celestial events. Yet participants were encouraged to find awe in everyday details—leaves, shifting light, colors after rain, and familiar streets seen anew. One participant described autumn leaves softened by rain, while a control walker focused on pre-holiday tasks, illustrating the stark difference in attentional focus rather than environmental beauty.
As someone living in a bustling city like Singapore, where walks can blend into the workday’s mental load, this study resonates deeply. Children’s curiosity—fixating on a drain cover, an unfamiliar bird, or raindrops on a leaf—reminds us that the same path can yield vastly different experiences depending on where attention lands.
This insight echoes previous reflections on happiness as something noticed rather than chased, emphasizing that attention determines how much of the world genuinely reaches us.
Limitations and the Value of the Photographic Evidence
The study’s sample was small, predominantly white, highly educated, and unusually healthy, which limits generalizability to younger populations, diverse cultures, or those with health challenges. The design was intended to detect change over time rather than uncover every nuance, meaning larger replications are needed to confirm and refine these findings.
Participants were aware of their group assignment, which introduces some expectation bias, though they did not know the other group’s instructions. Additionally, selfies are imperfect windows into inner experience; framing can change with camera familiarity, preferred angles, or understanding the exercise’s aims.
Despite these caveats, the gradual compositional changes in photographs—without explicit instructions to alter framing—are compelling. By the study’s end, participants had not vanished from their pictures; rather, they smiled more and shared space with the wider world—the mountains, trees, buildings, and sky allowed further into the frame.
This provides a grounded metaphor for awe: it does not erase the self or solve life’s problems but temporarily shifts perspective. The world expands, the self becomes one part of a larger whole, and the frame holds both in a harmonious balance.
