Improving Mental Health and Well-Being Via Awe Walks

Anxiety Clinical Trial

Official title:

Effects of Awe on Mental Health and Well-Being

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT03550144
• Other study ID #: 16-20001
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: December 5, 2016
• Est. completion date: May 26, 2018

Study information

• Verified date: March 2022
• Source: University of California, San Francisco
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

Awe is a powerful positive emotion that offsets negative emotion and fosters prosocial behavior. This study examined the effects of awe on health and well-being in healthy older adults. Half of the participants took a weekly "awe walk" while the other half took a weekly walk with no further instructions.

Description:

Awe fosters well-being and positive emotions that promote social relationships. Awe shifts attention from ourselves to the outside world and is associated with diminished self-focused attention. We aimed to increase awe in healthy older adults to test whether greater awe experience would lead to gains in other types of positive emotional experience and reductions in negative emotional experience.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 60
• Est. completion date: May 26, 2018
• Est. primary completion date: December 10, 2017
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 40 Years to 90 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• Stable medical condition for 3 months prior to screening

• Reliant informant with frequent contact with participant who is available to provide observations of participant

• Fluent in English or Spanish

• Age: 40 and above

• Able to complete baseline assessments

• Education or work history sufficient to exclude mental retardation

• Physically acceptable for this study as confirmed by medical history, physical exam, neurological exam and clinical tests

Exclusion Criteria:

• Major memory concerns/diagnosed memory condition

• Korsakoff encephalopathy

• Active substance abuse

• Brain tumor

• Active neoplastic disease (skin tumors other than melanoma are not exclusionary)

• Parkinson's disease

• Multiple sclerosis (untreated)

• Sleep apnea

• History of clinically significant stroke

• Current evidence or history in the past 2 years of epilepsy, focal brain lesion, cancer, steroid use, or DSM-IV criteria for any major psychiatric disorder including psychosis, major depression, bipolar disorder, alcohol or substance abuse

• Blindness, deafness, language difficulties or any other disability which may prevent the participant from participating or cooperating in the protocol

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Anxiety
• Awe
• Compassion

Intervention

Behavioral:
• Awe Walk
To examine the effect of weekly awe walks in cognitively healthy older adults.
• Control Walk
To examine the effect of weekly walks in cognitively healthy older adults.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	UCSF Memory and Aging Center	San Francisco	California

Sponsors (2)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
University of California, San Francisco	University of California, Berkeley

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

References & Publications (8)

Diener E, Chan MY. Happy people live longer: Subjective well-being contributes to health and longevity. .Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being 2011;3:1-43

Emmons RA, McCullough ME. Counting blessings versus burdens: an experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2003 Feb;84(2):377-89. — View Citation

Fredrickson BL, Cohn MA, Coffey KA, Pek J, Finkel SM. Open hearts build lives: positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2008 Nov;95(5):1045-1062. doi: 10.1037/a0013262. — View Citation

Kaup AR, Byers AL, Falvey C, Simonsick EM, Satterfield S, Ayonayon HN, Smagula SF, Rubin SM, Yaffe K. Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms in Older Adults and Risk of Dementia. JAMA Psychiatry. 2016 May 1;73(5):525-31. doi: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2016.0004. — View Citation

Keltner D, Haidt J. Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. Cogn Emot. 2003 Mar;17(2):297-314. doi: 10.1080/02699930302297. — View Citation

Levenson RW, Ascher E, Goodkind M, McCarthy M, Sturm V, Werner K. Chapter 25 Laboratory testing of emotion and frontal cortex. Handb Clin Neurol. 2008;88:489-98. doi: 10.1016/S0072-9752(07)88025-0. Review. — View Citation

Stellar JE, John-Henderson N, Anderson CL, Gordon AM, McNeil GD, Keltner D. Positive affect and markers of inflammation: discrete positive emotions predict lower levels of inflammatory cytokines. Emotion. 2015 Apr;15(2):129-33. doi: 10.1037/emo0000033. Epub 2015 Jan 19. — View Citation

Williams JE, Paton CC, Siegler IC, Eigenbrodt ML, Nieto FJ, Tyroler HA. Anger proneness predicts coronary heart disease risk: prospective analysis from the atherosclerosis risk in communities (ARIC) study. Circulation. 2000 May 2;101(17):2034-9. — View Citation

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Daily awe experience questionnaire	Increase in awe experience	8 weeks
Secondary	Daily compassion experience questionnaire	Increase in daily compassion experience	8 weeks
Secondary	Daily negative emotional experience questionnaire	Decrease in daily negative emotional experience	8 weeks
Secondary	Generalized Anxiety Disorder- 7 Item Scale	Decrease in anxiety	8 weeks
Secondary	Satisfaction With Life Scale	Increase in well-being	8 weeks

External Links

•   Global Brain Health Institute
•   Greater Good Science Center