Emily Smith

Emily Smith

For our inaugural blog post on this site–which is devoted to psychological research on self-transcendent emotions like awe and elevation–we thought we’d draw your attention to a beautiful and unexpected moment from Wednesday night’s Boston Bruins game: The entire crowd comes together to sing the national anthem. I’ve been to quite a few hockey games and have never seen anything quite like this:

This was the first NHL game since the tragic Boston marathon bombings, and the crowd is clearly still grieving. At the same time, they’re using self-transcendent emotions to heal, as Jonathan Haidt pointed out when he sent this video clip to me to post.

Thanks to Matthew Ackerman for sending this video along from The Daily Beast.