CONCEPT
Cognitive Restructuring (Keltner)
The measurable change in information processing that awe produces — increased need for cognition, expanded time horizon, and conceptual integration — distinguishing awe from ordinary positive emotions.
Keltner's research has identified several specific cognitive changes that accompany the awe experience, each documented through controlled experiments and each directly relevant to the AI transition. Awe produces increased need for cognition (motivation for effortful thinking), expansion of the perceived time horizon, and conceptual integration (the capacity to hold contradictory ideas without collapsing them into premature resolution). These changes are not the metaphorical effects of a pleasant emotion but measurable shifts in how the mind processes information. They constitute the cognitive infrastructure of sustained wonder — the state the AI transition most urgently demands and most systematically fails to support.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The first cognitive change is increased need for cognition. Participants who have experienced awe are more willing to spend time on complex problems, more persistent in the face of cognitive difficulty, and more likely to seek additional information before forming judgments. Awe disrupts the default mode of processing and creates cognitive hunger — a desire to understand that is not satisfied