Being Moved: A Meaningful but Enigmatic Emotional Experience

Abstract

The emotion often labelled as “being moved” is a commonly felt but somewhat mysterious experience in which joy and sadness are combined in a specific way. In recent years, it has gained much research attention, particularly within psychology, mostly using quantitative methods. The topics of discussion have included, for example, whether being moved is caused by an intensification of social relations or rather by core values of life becoming salient. This article aspires to shed further light on this emotion by exploring descriptions and reflections on moving experiences written by Finnish participants (N = 56). The writings were collected through a web-based data collection service and analyzed by inductive categorization. The findings suggest that being moved is a commonly recognized emotional state with characteristic bodily concomitants, that it is difficult to control and is often held private. Yet being moved is evaluated as a positive and valuable phenomenon. The events that were reported in this study to arouse such experiences are categorized into three main groups: important life course events (progression of the life course, memories, achievements, the birth and growth of a child), intensification of social relations (compassion and empathy, opening interindividual boundaries, communal experiences, morality), and beauty (art, nature). Our interpretation of what is common to the diversity of events behind the emotion is that they reveal core issues deeply meaningful for individuals and human life.