Department of Psychology, Research Center in Communication Psychology, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy.
Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Via Verdi 10, 10124, Turin, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2024 May 30;14(1):12474. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-62654-3.
Over the last two decades, awe has attracted the attention of an increasing number of researchers. The use of virtual reality has been identified as one of the most effective techniques for eliciting awe, in addition to more personalized methods for inducing emotion, such as autobiographical recall. However, previous measures of awe were unable to uncover the hidden structure of this experience. Awe experience scale (AWE-S) has been validated as a comprehensive measure of contingent awe in English, providing new opportunities for analysis. In this two-phases study, we investigated whether the latent structure of the experience of awe evoked by the autobiographical recall technique (Study 1) overlapped with that induced by exposing participants to a validated virtual reality awe-eliciting training (Study 2). The original English AWE-S structure held both in autobiographical recall induction and virtual reality-based elicitation. Despite evidence of overlap between English and Italian structures, low correlations were found between Italian trait measures used to test the concurrent validity of the AWE-S in the Italian sample and AWE-S state dimensions. This study highlights cultural differences in awe experience, trait, and state variations, and provides new insights into the standardized induction of this emotion through simulated environments.
在过去的二十年中，敬畏吸引了越来越多的研究人员的关注。除了更个性化的情感诱发方法，如自传式回忆，虚拟现实的使用已被确定为引发敬畏感的最有效技术之一。然而，以前的敬畏感测量方法无法揭示这种体验的隐藏结构。敬畏感体验量表（AWE-S）已在英语中被验证为一种综合的敬畏感偶然测量方法，为分析提供了新的机会。在这项两阶段研究中，我们研究了自传式回忆技术（研究 1）引起的敬畏感体验的潜在结构是否与参与者暴露于经过验证的虚拟现实敬畏感诱发训练（研究 2）引起的结构相重叠。原始的英语 AWE-S 结构在自传式回忆诱导和基于虚拟现实的诱发中都成立。尽管英语和意大利语结构之间存在重叠的证据，但在意大利样本中测试 AWE-S 同时效度的意大利特质测量与 AWE-S 状态维度之间的相关性较低。这项研究强调了敬畏感体验、特质和状态变化的文化差异，并为通过模拟环境标准化诱发这种情感提供了新的见解。
