The experience often described as feeling moved, understood chiefly as a social-relational emotion with social bonding functions, has gained significant research interest in recent years. Although ...listening to music often evokes what people describe as feeling moved, very little is known about the appraisals or musical features contributing to the experience. In the present study, we investigated experiences of feeling moved in response to music using a continuous rating paradigm. A total of 415 US participants completed an online experiment where they listened to seven moving musical excerpts and rated their experience while listening. Each excerpt was randomly coupled with one of seven rating scales (perceived sadness, perceived joy, feeling moved or touched, sense of connection, perceived beauty, warmth in the chest, or chills) for each participant. The results revealed that musically evoked experiences of feeling moved are associated with a similar pattern of appraisals, physiological sensations, and trait correlations as feeling moved by videos depicting social scenarios (found in previous studies). Feeling moved or touched by both sadly and joyfully moving music was associated with experiencing a sense of connection and perceiving joy in the music, while perceived sadness was associated with feeling moved or touched only in the case of sadly moving music. Acoustic features related to arousal contributed to feeling moved only in the case of joyfully moving music. Finally, trait empathic concern was positively associated with feeling moved or touched by music. These findings support the role of social cognitive and empathic processes in music listening, and highlight the social-relational aspects of feeling moved or touched by music.
Many situations elicit multiple emotions at the same time. Therefore, emotion theories should explain when and how emotions co-occur. We compared four parsimonious, formal theories that could explain ...emotion co-occurrence inspired by distinct emotion, network, and dimensional approaches to emotions. In three studies (N = 1,038), diverse participants rated the intensity of awe and kama muta (Study 1; US community sample; conducted in 2020), shame and guilt (Study 2; Dutch students; conducted in 2006), or awe and fear (Study 3; GB community sample; conducted in 2022) on multi-componential scales in response to emotion-eliciting stimuli (i.e., vignettes or videos). All three studies indicated that the network theory explains the data best. The theory implies that emotions co-occur because the networks of interacting components representing different emotions partly overlap. The parsimonious model can serve as a starting point for a comprehensive formal theory that is able to integrate seemingly inconsistent findings in research on co-occurring emotions.
The coronavirus outbreak manifested in Norway in March 2020. It was met with a combination of mandatory changes (closing of public institutions) and recommended changes (hygiene behavior, physical ...distancing). It has been emphasized that health-protective behavior such as increased hygiene or physical distancing are able to slow the spread of infections and
. Drawing on previous health-psychological studies during the outbreak of various pandemics, we investigated psychological and demographic factors predicting the adoption and engagement in health-protective behavior and changes in such behavior, attitudes, and emotions over time. We recruited a non-representative sample of Norwegians (
= 8676) during a 15-day period (March 12-26 2020) at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Norway. Employing both traditional methods and exploratory machine learning, we replicated earlier findings that engagement in health-protective behavior is associated with specific demographic characteristics. Further, we observed that increased media exposure, perceiving measures as effective, and perceiving the outbreak as serious was positively related to engagement in health-protective behavior. We also found indications that hygiene and physical distancing behaviors were related to somewhat different psychological and demographic factors. Over the sampling period, reported engagement in physical distancing increased, while experienced concern or fear declined. Contrary to previous studies, we found no or only small positive predictions by confidence in authorities, knowledge about the outbreak, and perceived individual risk, while all of those variables were rather high. These findings provide guidance for health communications or interventions targeting the adoption of health-protective behaviors in order to diminish the spread of COVID-19.
This paper provides an accessible review of the biological and psychological evidence to guide new and experienced researchers in the study of emotional piloerection in humans. A limited number of ...studies have attempted to examine the physiological and emotional correlates of piloerection in humans. However, no review has attempted to collate this evidence to guide the field as it moves forward.
We first discuss the mechanisms and function of non-emotional and emotional piloerection in humans and animals. We discuss the biological foundations of piloerection as a means to understand the similarities and differences between emotional and non-emotional piloerection.
We then present a systematic qualitative review (k = 24) in which we examine the physiological correlates of emotional piloerection. The analysis revealed that indices of sympathetic activation are abundant, suggesting emotional piloerection occurs with increased (phasic) skin conductance and heart rate. Measures of parasympathetic activation are lacking and no definite conclusions can be drawn. Additionally, several studies examined self-reported emotional correlates, and these correlates are discussed in light of several possible theoretical explanations for emotional piloerection.
Finally, we provide an overview of the methodological possibilities available for the study of piloerection and we highlight some pressing questions researchers may wish to answer in future studies.
•Provides an overview of biological and psychological research on piloerection•Summarises the main physiological correlates of emotional piloerection•Summarises emotional correlates of emotional piloerection•Provides an overview of methodological possibilities for studying emotional piloerection•Identifies questions for future research to answer
Seeing someone in need may evoke a particular kind of closeness that has been conceptualized as
or
(which is distinct from other
constructs). In other contexts, when people suddenly feel
to others, ...or observe others suddenly feeling closer to each other, this sudden closeness tends to evoke an emotion often labeled in vernacular English as
, or
feelings. Recent theory and empirical work indicates that this is a distinct emotion; the construct is named
. Is empathic concern for people in need simply an expression of the much broader tendency to respond with kama muta to all kinds of situations that afford closeness, such as reunions, kindness, and expressions of love? Across 16 studies sampling 2918 participants, we explored whether empathic concern is associated with kama muta. Meta-analyzing the association between ratings of state being moved and trait empathic concern revealed an effect size of,
= 0.35 95% CI: 0.29, 0.41. In addition, trait empathic concern was also associated with self-reports of the three sensations that have been shown to be reliably indicative of kama muta: weeping, chills, and bodily feelings of warmth. We conclude that empathic concern might actually be a part of the kama muta construct.
A configuration of infantile attributes including a large head, large eyes, with a small nose and mouth low on the head comprise the visual baby schema or Kindchenschema that English speakers call ..."cute." In contrast to the stimulus gestalt that evokes it, the evoked emotional response to cuteness has been little studied, perhaps because the emotion has no specific name in English, Norwegian, or German. We hypothesize that cuteness typically evokes kama muta, a social-relational emotion that in other contexts is often labeled in English as being moved or touched, heartwarming, nostalgia, patriotic feeling, being touched by the Spirit, the feels, etcetera. What evokes kama muta is sudden intensification of a communal sharing (CS) relationship, either CS between the person and another, or CS between observed others. In accord with kama muta theory, we hypothesize that a kama muta response to cuteness results from a sudden feeling of CS with the cute target. In colloquial terms, the perceiver adores the cute kittens and their heart goes out to them. When a person perceives cute targets interacting affectionately - that is, intensifying CS between them - this should strengthen a kama muta response. We experimentally investigated these predictions in two studies (
= 356). Study 1 revealed that videos of cute targets evoked significantly more kama muta than videos of targets that were not particularly cute. Study 2, pre-registered, found that, as hypothesized, when cute targets interacted affectionately they evoked more kama muta and were humanized more than when they were not interacting. We measured the level of kama muta by self-reports of sensations and signs and of feelings labeled
, and
. Participants' ratings of kama muta were positively correlated with reported cuteness. In addition, as in our previous research on kama muta elicited by other types of stimuli, trait empathic concern predicted kama muta responses and perceived cuteness. The studies thus provide first evidence that cute stimuli evoke the heartwarming emotion of kama muta.
Concern about climate change is often rooted in sympathy, compassion, and care for nature, living beings, and future generations. Feeling sympathy for others temporarily forms a bond between them and ...us: we focus on what we have in common and feel a sense of common destiny. Thus, we temporarily experience
. A sudden intensification in communal sharing evokes an emotion termed
, which may be felt through tearing up, a warm feeling in the chest, or goosebumps. We conducted four pre-registered studies (
= 1,049) to test the relationship between kama muta and pro-environmental attitudes, intentions, and behavior. In each study, participants first reported their attitudes about climate change. Then, they received climate change-related messages. In Study 1, they saw one of the two moving video clips about environmental concerns. In Study 2, participants listened to a more or less moving version of a story about a typhoon in the Philippines. In Study 3, they listened to a different, also moving version of this story or an unrelated talk. In Study 4, they watched either a factual or a moving video about climate change. Participants then indicated their emotional responses. Finally, they indicated their intentions for climate mitigation actions. In addition, we measured time spent reading about climate-related information (Studies 1, 2, and 4) and donating money (Study 4). Across all studies, we found that feelings of kama muta correlated positively with pro-environmental intentions (
= 0.48 0.34, 0.62) and behavior (
= 0.10 0.0004, 0.20). However, we did not obtain evidence for an experimental effect of the type of message (moving or neutral) on pro-environmental intentions (
= 0.04 -0.09, 0.18), though this relationship was significantly mediated by felt kama muta across Studies 2-4. The relationship was not moderated by prior climate attitudes, which had a main effect on intentions. We also found an indirect effect of condition through kama muta on donation behavior. In sum, our results contribute to the question of whether kama muta evoked by climate-change messages can be a motivating force in efforts at climate-change mitigation.
A widespread perspective describes emotions as distinct categories bridged by fuzzy boundaries, indicating that emotions are distinct and dimensional at the same time. Theoretical and methodological ...approaches to this perspective still need further development. We conceptualize emotions as overlapping networks of causal relationships between emotion components—networks representing distinct emotions share components with and relate to each other. To investigate this conceptualization, we introduce network analysis to emotion research and apply it to the reanalysis of a data set on multiple positive emotions. Specifically, we describe the estimation of networks from data, and the detection of overlapping communities of nodes in these networks. The network perspective has implications for the understanding of distinct emotions, their co-occurrence, and their measurement.
Feeling moved or touched can be accompanied by tears, goosebumps, and sensations of warmth in the centre of the chest. The experience has been described frequently, but psychological science knows ...little about it. We propose that labelling one's feeling as being moved or touched is a component of a social-relational emotion that we term kama muta (its Sanskrit label). We hypothesise that it is caused by appraising an intensification of communal sharing relations. Here, we test this by investigating people's moment-to-moment reports of feeling moved and touched while watching six short videos. We compare these to six other sets of participants' moment-to-moment responses watching the same videos: respectively, judgements of closeness (indexing communal sharing), reports of weeping, goosebumps, warmth in the centre of the chest, happiness, and sadness. Our eighth time series is expert ratings of communal sharing. Time series analyses show strong and consistent cross-correlations of feeling moved and touched and closeness with each other and with each of the three physiological variables and expert-rated communal sharing - but distinctiveness from happiness and sadness. These results support our model.
The emotion commonly labeled in English as being moved or touched is widely experienced but only tacitly defined, and has received little systematic attention. Based on a review of conceptualizations ...from various disciplines, we hypothesize that events appraised as an increase in interpersonal closeness, or as moral acts, when sufficiently intense, elicit a positive emotion typically labeled "being moved," and characterized by tears, goosebumps, and a feeling of warmth in the chest. We predicted this to be true for events a person participates in, as well as for events they observe. In Study 1, we elicited reports of recent episodes of weeping evoked by something positive, and also weeping because of something negative; we measured emotion terms, bodily sensations, and appraisals in a U.S. sample. We discovered that events of positive tears, rather than negative tears, were associated with self-reported being moved or touched, with goosebumps, with feelings of chest warmth, and with the appraisals of increased closeness and moral acts. These appraisals mediated the difference in being moved between positive and negative events. We further found that appraisal patterns for personally experienced events were similar to the patterns for observed events. Finally, the 2 appraisals were more closely associated with being moved than with other emotion labels. This was corroborated in Study 2 in the U.S. and Norway, where we induced being moved, sadness, anxiety, and happiness through videos and measured these emotions, plus the appraisals and sensations from Study 1.
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