Questioning Beliefs Through Awe: Investigating the Relationship Between Dispositional Awe and Environmental Belief Updating

False beliefs pose a critical challenge for society as they can lead to harmful behaviour, especially in the case of environmental misconceptions. But false beliefs are difficult to change. Emotions, particularly awe, may play a role in belief change. Awe is an epistemic emotion associated with updating one's worldview, open-mindedness and deep conceptual processing. It is also associated with feelings of oneness with nature. However, the relationship between awe experiences and belief change has not been empirically investigated. We hypothesized that people with a greater tendency to experience awe would be more likely to change their beliefs about environmental myths in light of corrective information. We also expected this relationship would be mediated by feelings of connectedness to nature. Participants who were “doubtful” about the existence or causes of climate change were recruited from Prolific for an online study. They completed self-report measures of dispositional awe, openness to experience and connectedness to nature. Participants then rated their belief in ten environmental claims (half true, half false). We aimed to correct two target myths using a refutation-style correction: one about plant-based diets (a controversial claim) and one about the causes of seasons (a common but uncontroversial misunderstanding). After the self-report measures, participants were randomly assigned to read refutations (N=152) with a smaller sample assigned to read unrelated passages as a control condition (N=32). Approximately one-week later participants rated their belief in the claims again, allowing us to measure belief change. Results demonstrated that both myths were effectively corrected, though the refutation of the seasons myth was more effective compared to the plant-based diets myth. Dispositional awe was positively correlated with openness to experience and connectedness to nature but not with belief change. Our results indicate that merely experiencing awe frequently is not sufficient to facilitate belief change. Encouraging daily experiences of awe may not be helpful to promote belief updating. Future research should investigate if current awe states (as opposed to a disposition towards awe) facilitate belief updating processes.