Stanton, Sarah

Moore, Adam

Hajnosz, Ian S.

2024-09-18T15:12:36Z

2024-09-18T15:12:36Z

2024-09-18

Only recently have psychologists codified the emotion that English speakers often label as feeling “moved” or “touched.” This emotion, called kama muta (Sanskrit for “moved by love”), is commonly experienced as feeling choked up, teary eyes, and/or a warm pleasant swelling in the chest. People feel kama muta when they perceive the rapid strengthening or creation of a communal relationship (relationships characterized by mutual care, compassion, and belonging) with another person or entity, or observe it happen to others. This characterization of kama muta has been observed across the world, in a wide variety of different languages and cultures. Psychologists have theorized that kama muta is a crucial social emotion that affectively (re)directs and motivates individuals to devote, commit, and attend to their own communal relationships. However, to date, there is little empirical evidence of kama muta leading to such downstream prosocial effects. We present four studies, utilizing multiple designs (cross-sectional, longitudinal), methods (experimental, observational), and levels of analysis (individual, dyad) to assess which psychosocial consequences can be uniquely attributed to this kama muta emotion. Studies 1-2 drew on self-determination theory to investigate whether experimentally manipulating kama muta affects basic psychological needs. We found that kama muta manipulations were associated with small, immediate increases in basic needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Crucially, however, the experimental manipulations only had such effects via positive affect, rather than self-reported kama muta feelings. These findings suggest kama muta, outside of its (potent, but general) feel-good qualities, is not uniquely associated with driving immediate changes to theoretically fundamental elements of individuals’ motivation and behavior. Studies 3-4 took a more naturalistic perspective in the form of daily diary studies, examining how kama muta was experienced in daily life and whether kama muta experiences were associated with a core communal relationship appraisal, perceived partner responsiveness (PPR; how much one feels cared for, understood, and validated by one’s partner). We found participants consistently reported close others as the most common cause of their kama muta experiences, with romantic partners, family, and friends accounting for ~50% of all evokers. Participants also reported that they felt mild kama muta at least every few days, and more pronounced kama muta roughly every 10 days. Kama muta and PPR covaried on the day (i.e., feeling more kama muta than usual one day coincided with feeling more PPR than usual that same day). However, we found no cross-lagged links between one’s own kama muta and one’s own PPR (i.e., feeling more kama muta than usual one day was not associated with feeling more PPR than usual the following day, nor vice versa). In Study 4, we found partner cross-lagged effects within couples such that (a) one partner feeling more kama muta than usual one day was associated with the other partner feeling more PPR than usual the following day and (b) one partner feeling more PPR than usual one day was associated with the other partner feeling more kama muta than usual the following day. These findings point to kama muta as an interpersonal emotion that is associated with feeling communally fulfilled and directs individuals towards making others feel more communally fulfilled. Overall, our results support an account of kama muta as a common, recurrent socioemotional experience that contributes to communality in close relationships.

https://hdl.handle.net/1842/42193

http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/4914

en

The University of Edinburgh

Social connection

kama muta

moved

touched

perceived partner responsiveness

Social connection and kama muta: the psychosocial consequences of feeling emotionally moved or touched

Thesis or Dissertation

Doctoral

PhD Doctor of Philosophy