A short-form version of the AWE-S (AWE-SF) was developed and validated within psychedelic samples to measure awe while reducing participant burden. Across five studies, the original six-factor structure was replicated, and the 12-item AWE-SF showed strong associations with positive emotions and openness to experience. It effectively predicted both mystical-type and challenging psychedelic experiences, as well as long-term well-being outcomes like life satisfaction and psychological richness. Connection and vastness facets were linked to positive emotional states and mystical-type experience, while accommodation and self-loss were linked to negative emotional states and challenging psychedelic experience. The AWE-SF is a robust and reliable tool for measuring awe.
Jerome L. Singer, who died in 2019 at age 95, is remembered as the pioneering researcher who established daydreaming and mind wandering as normal, adaptive mental activities rather than signs of pathology. Over more than 50 years of work, his research showed that daydreaming is a pervasive aspect of human experience serving positive social and creative functions, earning him the nickname "the father of daydreaming." After earning a PhD in clinical psychology in 1951, he trained as a psychoanalyst and held research appointments before directing the clinical psychology program at City University in 1963, where he studied "decoupled attention" with collaborator John Antrobus. He joined Yale University in 1972, becoming emeritus in 2006, and with his wife Dorothy codirected Yale's Family TV Research and Consultation Center for over 30 years.