Objectives
Experiences of "being moved" can be intense emotional episodes that involve strong feelings for others, crying and goosebumps, and social motives. We investigate the basis of this emotion in social relations using a variety of measures from social psychology and anthropology.
Outcomes
We have discovered that kama muta is a universal emotion that is experienced as positive and motivating. Please visit our project page kamamutalab.org to learn more about our research, as well as our full publication list.
Background
Kama muta is the sudden feeling of oneness, love, belonging, or union with an individual person, a family, a team, a nation, nature, the cosmos, God, or a kitten. People often describe the emotion as "being moved", but they also use other terms, such as heartwarming. When intense, kama muta is accompanied by tears, a warm feeling in the chest, and goosebumps. We investigate experiences of kama muta using Relational Models Theory (Fiske, 1992).
Tools
We use the resources of the research group for this project, in particular the psychophysiology lab and the online survey tool Qualtrics.
