Awe was largely absent from emotion research until recently, treated as a variety of pleasure or surprise. It is now studied separately because it has features that neither of those accounts for.
The working definition has two components
Researchers characterise awe as requiring perceived vastness — something that exceeds the observer's ordinary frame of reference — combined with a need to accommodate it.
Accommodation means the existing mental model does not fit and has to be adjusted, which is what distinguishes awe from admiration or simple pleasure.
Vastness need not be physical. A demonstration of extraordinary skill, a moral act, or the scale of a scientific idea can all meet the criterion.
It reliably alters self-focus
The most consistent experimental finding is a reduction in attention to oneself, sometimes described by participants as feeling small in a way that is not unpleasant.
Studies using various inductions find people subsequently describe themselves in less individual terms and more often in terms of belonging to something larger.
That shift in framing is what connects awe to the reports found across contemplative traditions, which describe a similar reduction in self-preoccupation.
It also affects behaviour towards others
Induced awe has been associated in experimental work with increased willingness to help and greater generosity in subsequent tasks.
The proposed mechanism runs through the self-focus shift: attention that is less occupied with one's own concerns is more available for other people's.
Effect sizes are modest and this literature has seen the replication scrutiny common across the field, so the finding is best held as suggestive rather than settled.
Time perception changes as well
People report having more available time after awe inductions, and show greater willingness to spend it, despite nothing about their schedule having changed.
One explanation is that awe pulls attention firmly into the present, and time pressure is largely a feature of anticipating a queue of future demands.
This is the same mechanism proposed for why absorbing activity of any kind leaves people feeling less rushed than passive rest does.
Not all of it is pleasant
Awe has a threatening variant, produced by overwhelming force or scale, and this version shares the vastness and accommodation features without the positive tone.
Traditions describing encounters with the sacred frequently emphasise fear alongside wonder, which fits the two-variant account better than a purely positive one.
Treating awe as a reliably pleasant experience to be sought therefore describes only part of what the research and the traditions actually report.