How Pixar’s “Soul” met the Science of Awe

Five years ago, I (Dacher) received a call from Pixar writer and direc­tor Pete Doc­ter to talk about his new film. The last time I said yes to such a request, I served as a sci­en­tif­ic con­sul­tant for his film Inside Out. So, I was intrigued.

Before my vis­it, Pete offered a brief sketch of the film. The main char­ac­ter, Joe, is a mid­dle-aged jazz pianist in a rut as a mid­dle school band teacher in Queens. Just before his break­through show with a famous quar­tet, he falls into a man­hole and dies, enter­ing into anoth­er realm of con­scious­ness. There he encoun­ters “The Great Beyond”—but escapes to a pre-life realm, the “Great Before,” where he befriends a cyn­i­cal “new soul” named 22. The sto­ry is about their respec­tive quests: for 22 to find her rea­son for liv­ing, and for Joe to get back to life in his body for a once-in-a-life­time gig.

Pete asked that I talk with Soul’s core cre­ative team about the sci­ence of awe, which has pre­oc­cu­pied my lab at Berke­ley for 15 years. Awe is the feel­ing we expe­ri­ence when encoun­ter­ing vast things that we don’t under­stand. Around the world and in cul­tur­al­ly vary­ing ways, stud­ies show, we expe­ri­ence awe in response to oth­ers’ kind­ness and courage, nature, music, reli­gious or spir­i­tu­al prac­tice, the visu­al and dra­mat­ic arts, and epiphany. We sense awe in our bod­ies in the chills, tears, and the chest-warm­ing sense of being part of some­thing larg­er than our egos. It leads us to share, col­lab­o­rate, and won­der. In expe­ri­ences of awe, peo­ple often speak as if they have found their soul.

Lat­er, I met my coau­thor, Michael Fred­er­ick­son, a devel­op­ment artist on Soul. After work­ing on Inside Out—which per­son­i­fied five major emo­tions as characters—Michael had been giv­ing a talk around Pixar enti­tled “The Sixth Emo­tion.” That emo­tion is awe, which was not a char­ac­ter in Inside Out. Michael’s talk con­sid­ered the role of spec­ta­cle in growth and nar­ra­tive, and visu­al strate­gies for cre­at­ing awe-inspir­ing moments in film. On Soul, Michael and a team of oth­er artists engaged in artis­tic exper­i­ments to trans­late the sci­ence of awe to the visu­als that hope­ful­ly inspire it in Soul’s audience.

Thanks in part to Michael’s work, we can see this dynam­ic expe­ri­ence in an ear­ly scene in Soul. As Joe impro­vis­es dur­ing an audi­tion for his break­through gig, the jazz club dis­solves into a wash of rip­pling cur­tains of col­or dis­tort­ed by the piano’s bass notes. Joe floats in space. Time seems to expand. Stud­ies find that after watch­ing awe-inspir­ing nature videos or recall­ing an expe­ri­ence of the emo­tion, our sense of time and space shift, and sens­es, like col­or and sound, often blend.

Upon return­ing from this solo, Joe sits silent­ly at his piano. Next to him, the bass player’s eyes are wide and mouth agape, a uni­ver­sal expres­sion of awe. The music reveals some­thing of Joe’s soul—and the rest of the band can feel it, too. Awe has merged their indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences into a shared recog­ni­tion of the sub­lime Joe finds in music.

We often feel awe in response to men­tal states that depart from those that make up our wak­ing life: in dreams, pre­mo­ni­tions, epipha­nies, mys­ti­cal encoun­ters, med­i­ta­tion, visions in many indige­nous tra­di­tions, or those brought on by psy­che­delics, the focus of new sci­ence. This often-inef­fa­ble space of expe­ri­ence is explored in Soul after Joe falls into the manhole.

When we first encounter Joe in this new realm as a soul approach­ing the “Great Beyond,” he is com­i­cal­ly small on screen. In empir­i­cal stud­ies from dif­fer­ent cul­tures, people’s selves do seem to shrink (or van­ish) when feel­ing awe—when tak­ing in vast views, for exam­ple, or stand­ing sur­round­ed by large trees, or when moved by a stranger’s courage.

This van­ish­ing of the self has been locat­ed in the brain in stud­ies from Japan and the US: Awe deac­ti­vates the default mode net­work, regions of your cor­tex that rep­re­sent the world from an ego­cen­tric point of view. This dis­so­lu­tion of the ego is por­trayed in Joe’s escape from “the Great Beyond.”

To visu­al­ize such self-trans­for­ma­tion, Pixar’s design­ers start­ed with play­ful tests, like scrib­bling “lost souls” in vir­tu­al real­i­ty. Or imag­in­ing geo­met­ric forms in dif­fer­ent num­bers of dimen­sions. Or turn­ing spaces inside out. The end result is that as Joe plum­mets through space, the out­line of his self alter­nates between thin line and split spec­trums of col­or. Joe’s soul fills the screen or appears infin­i­tes­i­mal. It ric­o­chets at the speed of light through diaphanous liq­uids and two- and three-dimen­sion­al vibrat­ing lines. The Pixar team hoped using new tech­niques to ren­der a sequence unlike the usu­al visu­als found in their films would awak­en a sense of awe in audiences.

When Joe lands in the “Great Before,” he’s sur­round­ed by hun­dreds of new souls. Here Pixar artists grap­pled with a peren­ni­al ques­tion: What might the soul look like? Every cul­ture arrives at its own answers, stud­ies in anthro­pol­o­gy sug­gest, draw­ing upon ideas of the times and even the local nat­ur­al environment.

For inspi­ra­tion, Pixar’s artists looked to nature, long a source of metaphor about the soul, and the physics of light. In Soul, the souls are blur­ry. They are only sep­a­rat­ed from the envi­ron­ment by occa­sion­al sketch lines, and appear to be made of the same grain, line, and vaporous pris­mat­ic sub­stance. In expe­ri­ences of awe, our stud­ies find, the bound­aries between self and oth­er do seem to dis­solve. We shift from the sense that we are dis­tinct and sep­a­rate to the view that we share some pri­ma­ry qual­i­ty with others.

Joe final­ly makes it back to Earth, along with 22. He sees New York through 22’s eyes, and is struck by the city’s dai­ly won­ders. Illu­mi­nat­ed by a vivid autumn light, New York is brim­ming with quo­tid­i­an awe. Joe and 22 find this in the soul­ful song of a busker in the sub­way, the swirl of leaves in the wind, the wis­dom in the play­ful ban­ter in a bar­ber­shop, and the taste of piz­za. In rel­e­vant empir­i­cal sci­ence from East Asian and West­ern Euro­pean cul­tures, peo­ple do report moments of every­day awe like these two to three times a week.

Joe ends up play­ing the gig of his life­time. His trans­port­ing impro­vi­sa­tions rouse the audi­ence to a stand­ing ova­tion. Joe feels strange­ly unful­filled, though, still won­der­ing what the point of his life is. He finds hints of an answer lat­er that night at home at the piano when he puts away his musi­cal score. We won’t spoil your expe­ri­ence in watch­ing this por­tray­al of the sub­lime, but sim­ply note how it dove­tails with the new sci­ence of awe that pop­u­lat­ed our talks at Pixar.

Of course, Soul isn’t just about awe—it’s also about pur­pose, cre­ativ­i­ty, and con­nec­tion. In impor­tant ways, the point of mak­ing and appre­ci­at­ing the arts, in music, paint­ing, dance, and film, is to rep­re­sent human emo­tion, and to allow us to expe­ri­ence emo­tions togeth­er and enjoy the insights that ensue. We were a very small part of this artis­tic archiv­ing of awe, in the artis­tic and sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ments we weaved into its cre­ation. That is why it was so very hum­bling, and awe-inspir­ing to see it for the first time. We felt the chills and tears that mark the recog­ni­tion of being part of some­thing larg­er than ourselves.

Dacher Kelt­ner, Ph.D., is the found­ing direc­tor of the Greater Good Sci­ence Cen­ter and a pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. He is the author of The Pow­er Para­dox: How We Gain and Lose Influ­ence and Born to Be Good, and a co-edi­tor of The Com­pas­sion­ate Instinct.

Michael Fred­er­ick­son is a visu­al artist, musi­cian, and tech­ni­cal direc­tor at Pixar Ani­ma­tion Stu­dios. His work at Pixar focus­es on blend­ing pro­ce­dur­al and hand craft­ed meth­ods to cre­ate awe-inspir­ing worlds. Most recent­ly, Michael worked as a visu­al devel­op­ment artist for the Great Before in Pixar’s Soul. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he worked on a team award­ed a Visu­al Effects Soci­ety Award for build­ing the City of the Dead for Pixar’s Coco. Oth­er film cred­its include Inside Out and Up.

Based at UC-Berke­ley, Greater Good high­lights ground break­ing sci­en­tif­ic research into the roots of com­pas­sion and altru­ism. Copy­right Greater Good.

Related Reading:

• Four “Inside Out” insights to dis­cuss and improve our kids’ emo­tion­al lives (and our own)
• Awe­some: Brain scans shed light on the brain net­works sup­port­ing Awe
• A con­ver­sa­tion with Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg on Cre­ativ­i­ty, Neu­ro­science, and Innovation