TY - JOUR
T1 - Kama Muta
T2 - Conceptualizing and Measuring the Experience Often Labelled Being Moved Across 19 Nations and 15 Languages
AU - Zickfeld, Janis H.
AU - Schubert, Thomas W.
AU - Seibt, Beate
AU - Blomster, Johanna K.
AU - Arriaga, Patricia
AU - Basabe, Nekane
AU - Blaut, Agata
AU - Caballero, Amparo
AU - Carrera, Pilar
AU - Dalgar, Ilker
AU - Ding, Yi
AU - Dumont, Kitty
AU - Valerie, G.
AU - Gracanin, Asmir
AU - Gyenis, Reka
AU - Hu, Chuan Peng
AU - Kardum, Igor
AU - Lazarevic, Ljiljana B.
AU - Mathew, Leemamol
AU - Mentser, Sari
AU - Ravit, N.
AU - Mayuko, O.
AU - Daro, P.
AU - Anna, P.
AU - Kaiping, P.
AU - Boban, P.
AU - Jos Pizarro, J.
AU - Victoria, S.
AU - Magdalena, S.
AU - VAkihiko, T.
AU - Vingerhoets, A.
AU - Anja, V.
AU - Jonna, V.
AU - Lei, Z.
AU - Alan, P. F.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by funding from the University of Oslo. Ravit Nussinson has previously published under the name Ravit Levy-Sadot. We are very thankful to all collaborators for making this project possible. We gratefully thank the people who kindly did the back-translations of each scale, including Pirjo Nikonen, Mari Nikonen, Yifat Weiss, Zohar Weinstein, Doron Cohen, Anat Gafni, Roni Amir, Dorota Rokita, Magdalena Mucha, Aleksandra Markowicz, Marcus Roth, and Rea Frenken. We thank the participants for their engagement. We are also thankful to Hans IJzerman, Rodrigo Vergara and Teresa Parrao for their help and engagement in the project.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 American Psychological Association.
PY - 2019/4
Y1 - 2019/4
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Being moved
KW - Communal sharing
KW - Cross-cultural
KW - Empathy
KW - Kama muta
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85048232974&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/emo0000450
DO - 10.1037/emo0000450
M3 - Article
C2 - 29888936
AN - SCOPUS:85048232974
SN - 1528-3542
VL - 19
SP - 402
EP - 424
JO - Emotion
JF - Emotion
IS - 3
ER -