A new study suggests that awe-inspiring moments - like the sight of the Grand Canyon or the Aurora Borealis - might increase our tendency to believe in God and the supernatural.
The new findings suggest that awe-inspiring sights increase our motivation to make sense of the world around us, and may underlie a trigger of belief in the supernatural.
"Many historical accounts of religious epiphanies and revelations seem to involve the experience of being awe-struck by the beauty, strength or size of a divine being, and these experiences change the way people understand and think about the world", psychological scientist Piercarlo Valdesolo of Claremont McKenna College, said.
"We wanted to test the exact opposite prediction: It's not that the presence of the supernatural elicits awe, it's that awe elicits the perception of the presence of the supernatural," Valdesolo said.
Valdesolo and his colleague Jesse Graham of the University of Southern California tested this prediction by having participants watch awe-inspiring scenes from BBC's Planet Earth documentary series or neutral video clips from a news interview.
Afterward, the participants were asked how much awe they felt while watching the video, and whether they believed that worldly events unfold according to some god's or other non-human entity's plan.
Overall, participants who had watched the awe-inspiring video tended to believe more in supernatural control, and were more likely to believe in God when compared with the news-watching group.
This effect held even when awe-inspiring but impossible scenes, such as a massive waterfall through city streets, were presented.
The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
