Abstract
The experience of awe, an emotional response to vast stimuli overwhelming ones’ current mental structure, has often been measured using a questionnaire method. The purpose of the present study was to develop and validate the Japanese version of the Situational Awe Scale (SAS), which is a useful tool for measuring awe experiences from the perspective of the discriminability between positive- and threat-awe. The present study investigated the factor structure and validity of the Japanese version of the SAS (SAS-J) using awe-inducing video clips, through three online surveys (N = 1034; mean age = 38.74, SD = 10.95, range = 18–75). Results revealed that the SAS-J consisted of the same four factors as the original SAS (i.e., connection, oppression, chills, and diminished self) and had the convergent, criterion, and discriminative validity in measuring both positive- and threat-awe experiences. Additionally, results showed that the SAS-J could distinguish between positive- and threat-awe experiences. These results suggested that the SAS-J could measure both positive- and threat-awe experiences with validity. This study would make a methodological contribution to awe research.
Highlights
Awe, an emotional response to vast stimuli that transcend ones’ current schema (Keltner & Haidt, 2003), has been widely researched from various social, cognitive, clinical, and physiological psychology perspectives
To the best of our knowledge, there are two measures of awe experiences: the Situational Awe Scale (SAS; Krenzer et al, 2020), a scale composed of four factors, and the Awe Experience Scale (AWE-S; Yaden et al, 2019), a scale composed of six factors
We examined whether the four SAS-J sub-components correlated with the small self and dispositional awe to confirm convergent validity
Summary
An emotional response to vast stimuli that transcend ones’ current schema (Keltner & Haidt, 2003), has been widely researched from various social, cognitive, clinical, and physiological psychology perspectives. Awe is manly regarded as a positive emotion in Western cultures (Shiota et al, 2006), Japanese people tend to recall positive- and threat-awe experiences when asked to recall awe experiences (Nomura et al 2022). These previous studies have demonstrated that threat appraisals are associated with the culturally specific characteristics of awe experiences in Japan, suggesting that threat-awe is an important topic for investigating cultural differences in awe experiences. Considering the significance of the discriminability between positive- and threat-awe experiences, in the current study, we aimed to develop and validate a Japanese version of the Situational Awe Scale (SAS-J) according to original research (Krenzer et al, 2020). We examined whether the SAS-J could be distinguished from a measure of dispositional awe (i.e., the Dispositional Awe Scale; Shiota et al, 2006) to confirm its discriminative validity
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