When communal sharing relationships (CSRs) suddenly intensify, people experience an emotion that English speakers may label, depending on context, “moved,” “touched,” “heart-warming,” “nostalgia,” “patriotism,” or “rapture” (although sometimes people use each of these terms for other emotions). We call the emotion kama muta (Sanskrit, “moved by love”). Kama muta evokes adaptive motives to devote and commit to the CSRs that are fundamental to social life. It occurs in diverse contexts and appears to be pervasive across cultures and throughout history, while people experience it with reference to its cultural and contextual meanings. Cultures have evolved diverse practices, institutions, roles, narratives, arts, and artifacts whose core function is to evoke kama muta. Kama muta mediates much of human sociality.

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 (N = 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 heartwarming, being moved, and being touched. 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.

Some political ads used in the 2016 U.S. election evoked feelings colloquially known as being moved to tears. We conceptualise this phenomenon as a positive social emotion that appraises and motivates communal relations, is accompanied by physical sensations (including lachrymation, piloerection, chest warmth), and often labelled metaphorically. We surveyed U.S. voters in the fortnight before the 2016 U.S. election. Selected ads evoked the emotion completely and reliably, but in a partisan fashion: Clinton voters were moved to tears by three selected Clinton ads, and Trump voters were moved to tears by two Trump ads. Viewers were much less moved by ads of the candidate they did not support. Being moved to tears predicted intention to vote for the candidate depicted. We conclude that some contemporary political advertising is able to move its audience to tears, and thereby motivates support.

When do people say that they are moved, and does this experience constitute a unique emotion? We review theory and empirical research on being moved across psychology and philosophy. We examine feeling labels, elicitors, valence, bodily sensations, and motivations. We find that the English lexeme being moved typically (but not always) refers to a distinct and potent emotion that results in social bonding; often includes tears, piloerection, chills, or a warm feeling in the chest; and is often described as pleasurable, though sometimes as a mixed emotion. While we conclude that it is a distinct emotion, we also recommend studying it in a more comprehensive emotion framework, instead of using the ambiguous vernacular term being moved as a scientific term.

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.

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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. (PsycINFO Database Record

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.

Seeing someone in need may evoke a particular kind of closeness that has been conceptualized as sympathy or empathic concern (which is distinct from other empathy constructs). In other contexts, when people suddenly feel close 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 being moved, touched, or heart-warming feelings. Recent theory and empirical work indicates that this is a distinct emotion; the construct is named kama muta. 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, r(3631) = 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.

As evidence for the second process of the Embracing factor, the target article characterizes being moved as a mixed emotion linked to sadness through metonymy. We question these characterizations and argue that emotions should not be equated with their vernacular labels.

English-speakers sometimes say that they feel "moved to tears," "emotionally touched," "stirred," or that something "warmed their heart;" other languages use similar passive contact metaphors to refer to an affective state. The authors propose and measure the concept of kama muta to understand experiences often given these and other labels. Do the same experiences evoke the same kama muta emotion across nations and languages? They conducted studies in 19 different countries, 5 continents, 15 languages, with a total of 3,542 participants. They tested the construct while validating a comprehensive scale to measure the appraisals, valence, bodily sensations, motivation, and lexical labels posited to characterize kama muta. The results are congruent with theory and previous findings showing that kama muta is a distinct positive social relational emotion that is evoked by experiencing or observing a sudden intensification of communal sharing. It is commonly accompanied by a warm feeling in the chest, moist eyes or tears, chills or piloerection, feeling choked up or having a lump in the throat, buoyancy, and exhilaration. It motivates affective devotion and moral commitment to communal sharing. Although the authors observed some variations across cultures, these 5 facets of kama muta are highly correlated in every sample, supporting the validity of the construct and the measure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).