Common to experiences of natural awe: Pollan, Michael. “The Intelligent Plant: Scientists Debate a New Way of Understanding.” New Yorker, December 16, 2013.
GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT
Musicoffered up: For an excellent summary of the kinds of chanting found in different cultures and religions, and their place in ritual and ceremony, see: Gass, Robert. Chanting: Discovering Spirit in Sound. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. Chanting worldwide was and is a way in which people communicate about their encounters with mystical forces. It is interesting to observe how many of the sounds by which we communicate emotions like compassion and awe weave their way into chanting. Through influences on breathing, and in particular exhalation, which usually accompanies the production of the sounds of speech and emotional communication, chanting can slow the heart rate, activate the vagus nerve, reduce blood pressure, and enable a physical state of openness and wonder.
GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT
visual design of jewels: Huxley, Aldous. The Doors of Perception: And Heaven and Hell. New York: Harper & Row, 1963.
GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT
No one mentioned their laptop: This really shouldn’t surprise us, for in general the time we spend on smartphones, Facebook, and other digital platforms tends to mildly depress our well-being. Tangmunkongvorakul, Arunrat, Patou M. Musumari, Kulvadee Thongpibul, Kriengkrai Srithanaviboonchai, Teeranee Techasrivichien, S. P. Suguimoto, Masako Ono-Kihara, and Masahiro Kihara. “Association of Excessive Smartphone Use with Psychological Well-Being among University Students in Chiang Mai, Thailand.” PloS ONE 14, no. 1 (2019): e0210294. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210294.
GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT
a realm beyond the profane: Many scholars have differentiated what we might think of as what is sacred from the mundane and profane. For Mary Douglas, this distinction centers on what is clean and pure (the sacred), and what is unclean and dirty. Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Routledge, 2004. Rudolf Otto differentiated between the phenomenal—our sensory experiences of the immediate physical world—and the numinous—what lies beyond the senses. Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. Translated by J. W. Harvey. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950. Philip Tetlock, Jennifer Lerner, and their colleagues have done fascinating work showing that people become morally outraged when offered money for things that they deem sacred in their lives. Tetlock, Philip E., Orie Kristel, Beth Elson, Melanie C. Green, and Jennifer S. Lerner. “The Psychology of the Unthinkable: Taboo Trade-Offs, Forbidden Base Rates and Heretical Counterfactuals.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, no. 5 (2000): 853–70.
GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT
The study of emotional experience: For a summary of the origins of this narrow focus in the science of emotion, and the considerable statistical and inferential problems that arise from this narrow focus, see: Cowen, Alan, Disa Sauter, Jessica Tracy, and Dacher Keltner. “Mapping the Passions: Toward a High-Dimensional Taxonomy of Emotional Experience and Expression.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 20, no. 1 (2019): 69–90. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100619850176.
GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT
widely used emotional experience questionnaire: Watson, David, Lee A. Clark, and Auke Tellegen. “Development and Validation of Brief Measures of Positive and Negative Affect: The PANAS Scales.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54, no. 6 (1988): 1063–70.
GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT
emotionally rich GIFs: Cowen, Alan S., and Dacher Keltner. “Self-Report Captures 27 Distinct Categories of Emotion with Gradients between Them.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 114, no. 38 (2017): E7900-E7909.
GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT
In subsequent mapping studies: Cowen, Alan, and Dacher Keltner. “Emotional Experience, Expression, and Brain Activity Are High-Dimensional, Categorical, and Blended.” Trends in Cognitive Science 25, no. 2 (2021): 124–36.
GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT
