Visit Lake Tahoe launches docuseries, featuring the science of awe
You probably already know the feeling. You’ve come around a bend on Highway 50 and caught your first glimpse of Lake Tahoe's improbable blue, and something in your chest has done something involuntary. For most people, that moment lasts a few seconds.
Paul K. Piff, associate professor of psychology at UC Irvine, calls it awe.
Piff spent the summer of 2025 turning the largest alpine lake in North America into a research laboratory. His team conducted seven field studies at locations across the Tahoe basin, from scenic overlooks and hiking trails to kayak launches, enrolling more than 1,000 participants in an ambitious real-world investigation of awe.
The results, which are being shaped into several peer-reviewed papers, are drawing attention not just for what they found, but for how large the effects are.
“These are effects we would consider almost impossible to achieve even under controlled lab conditions,” Piff said. “And we're finding them naturally in Tahoe.”
The findings are the subject of “Beyond Awestruck: The Scientific Search for Connection,” a three-part documentary series produced by Visit Lake Tahoe that premieres March 16 at BeyondAwestruck.com and on the Outside TV network.
Piff describes awe as a specific emotional state characterized by a feeling of smallness that paradoxically expands your attention outward, a slowing of time, a physical response, like goosebumps or chills, and a sense of connection to something larger than yourself. He points to nature as the most reliable trigger.
“When people encounter something vast, whether it’s a sweeping landscape or a powerful shared moment, they often begin to see themselves and their relationships differently,” Piff says. “That’s what makes studying awe in real-world environments so important.”
Preliminary research shows that after just two minutes spent engaging with Lake Tahoe’s landscapes, participants reported up to a 70% increase in feelings of awe and a 33% increase in happiness during the experience.
The findings are part of an ongoing multi-year research project led by Piff and this research team. Some highlights from the preliminary results:
- At the Emerald Bay overlook, researchers randomly assigned participants to one of two conditions: spend two minutes intentionally appreciating the view, or spend two minutes on their phone. The results weren't close. The view group reported 70% more awe, 37% more contentment, and 33% more happiness than the phone group.
- The same two-minute pause at the Heavenly Gondola viewpoint, compared to browsing the gondola gift shop, produced a 7.6% boost in life satisfaction and an 11.5% increase in feelings of belonging. Participants felt, more strongly, that they were people who belonged in places like this.
- The partners of awe-experiencers, who simply watched them take in the view, independently rated them as happier and more at ease.
Piff has spent years studying how experiences of vastness affect social behavior, and one finding from this summer even surprised him.
Participants who paused to take in the Heavenly Gondola view reported anticipating 13% greater success in "important-but-difficult conversations," such as negotiating a raise, resolving a conflict with a former friend or discussing politics with someone whose views are entirely different from their own.
The effect wasn't explained by the fact that they simply felt happier. Statistical modeling showed that awe was the driver. Something about being briefly overwhelmed by something larger than yourself, the data suggest, makes it easier to extend that openness to other people.
Piff says the research has spurred ideas for future study such as exploring how experiences of awe bring families closer together, triggering parents to bond more deeply with their kids, and even making adults themselves feel like kids again.