Kama Muta: Similar Emotional Responses to Touching Videos Across the United States, Norway, China, Israel, and Portugal

Abstract

Ethnographies, histories, and popular culture from many regions around the world suggest that marked moments of love, affection, solidarity, or identification everywhere evoke the same emotion. Based on these observations, we developed the kama muta model, in which we conceptualize what people in English often label being moved as a culturally implemented social-relational emotion responding to and regulating communal sharing relations. We hypothesize that experiencing or observing sudden intensification of communal sharing relationships universally tends to elicit this positive emotion, which we call kama muta. When sufficiently intense, kama muta is often accompanied by tears, goosebumps or chills, and feelings of warmth in the center of the chest. We tested this model in seven samples from the United States, Norway, China, Israel, and Portugal. Participants watched short heartwarming videos, and after each video reported the degree, if any, to which they were “moved,” or a translation of this term, its valence, appraisals, sensations, and communal outcome. We confirmed that in each sample, indicators of increased communal sharing predicted kama muta; tears, goosebumps or chills, and warmth in the chest were associated sensations; and the emotion was experienced as predominantly positive, leading to feeling communal with the characters who evoked it.

The Role of Social Relational Emotions for Human-Nature Connectedness

“…In this context, we highlight the potential of one specific positive emotion, kama muta, (Sanskrit: being moved by love; Seibt et al, 2017;Fiske et al, 2019;Zickfeld et al, 2019), which may be the most crucial social relational emotion in connectedness. Holding a new-born baby in your arm, surprisingly seeing a loved one again after a long time, or unexpectedly receiving a great kindness are typical example of moments in which people experience kama muta.…”

“…The primary appraisal involved in kama muta is experiencing a sudden intensification of communal sharing. A number of studies suggest that kama muta has evolved (biologically and culturally) to regulate communal sharing relations (Seibt et al, 2017;Schubert et al, 2018). Communal sharing, one out of four relationships humans use to coordinate their social interactions, is the foundation of relationships in which people feel shared identity, are motivated by unity, share resources according to need and ability or signal and commit to being one by assimilating each other's bodies (see: Relational Models Theory: Fiske, 1991Fiske, , 1992Fiske, , 2004.…”

Touching the base: heart-warming ads from the 2016 U.S. election moved viewers to partisan tears

“…In sum, appraisal, labelling, physiology, and motivation of this state integrate to make up a biologically and culturally determined emotion that is recognisably similar across cultures, but that is evoked by different practices, is experienced differently, and has different meanings in different cultures (Fiske, Schubert, & Seibt, 2017a;Fiske, Seibt, et al, 2017;Seibt, Schubert, Zickfeld, Zhu, et al, 2017). We term this emotion kama muta, borrowing from the Sanskrit ("moved by love") to emphasise that we are denoting a theoretical construct, not the varying and fuzzy denotations of any particular vernacular term in any one language.…”

The Sudden Devotion Emotion: Kama Muta and the Cultural Practices Whose Function Is to Evoke It

“…2. It is a positive emotion in five respects (Schubert et al, 2016;Seibt et al, 2016;Seibt et al, 2017;Steinnes, 2017 e. In many cultures in appropriate circumstances, the emotion is culturally valued or even prescribed for at least some people, such as kawaii for contemporary Japanese women, patriotic sentiment for European men between about 1770 and 1840, the feeling of union with God for worshippers attending Methodist revival meetings in the Great Awakenings, and the feeling of hal for Sufis or saltana for Egyptians listening to tarab music.…”

“…3. When it is mild, many people experience few or no sensations, but when it is strongly felt, most (but not all) people usually have some of the following sensations and/or show some of the following signs (Schubert et al, 2016;Seibt et al, 2016;Seibt et al, 2017Steinnes, 2017;Zickfeld, 2015; see also Benedek & Kaernbach, 2011;Wassiliwizky et al, 2015;Wassiliwizky et al, 2017…”