Awe and social conformity: Awe promotes the endorsement of social norms and conformity to the majority opinion.

Abstract

Given that awe experiences promote collective identity and decrease self-importance, we reasoned that they should lead individuals to be more prone to cherish social conformity value and to adopt conformity behaviors. In two online experiments (N = 593), compared to neutral and amusement emotional states, awe was found to drive individuals to value the respect of social norms in a greater extent (Experiment 1), and to lead individuals to conform to the majority opinion on an evaluative judgment task (Experiment 2). The present research provides the first empirical evidence of awe as leading to conformity and, although more research is needed, it offers important theoretical implications about the social function of awe as well as, more generally, the importance of emotions in social influence situations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).