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

Some political ads used in the 2016 U.S. election evoked feelings colloquially known as being moved to tears. We conceptualise this phenomenon as a positive social emotion that appraises and motivates communal relations, is accompanied by physical sensations (including lachrymation, piloerection, chest warmth), and often labelled metaphorically. We surveyed U.S. voters in the fortnight before the 2016 U.S. election. Selected ads evoked the emotion completely and reliably, but in a partisan fashion: Clinton voters were moved to tears by three selected Clinton ads, and Trump voters were moved to tears by two Trump ads. Viewers were much less moved by ads of the candidate they did not support. Being moved to tears predicted intention to vote for the candidate depicted. We conclude that some contemporary political advertising is able to move its audience to tears, and thereby motivates support.

Too sweet to eat: Exploring the effects of cuteness on meat consumption.

Although daily meat consumption is a widespread habit, many individuals at the same time put a high value on the welfare of animals. While different psychological mechanisms have been identified to resolve this cognitive tension, such as dissociating the animal from the consumed meat or denying the animal's moral status, few studies have investigated the effects of the animal's appearance on the willingness to consume its meat. The present article explored how the perception of cuteness influences hypothetical meat consumption. We hypothesized that cuter animals would reduce the willingness to consume meat, and that this relationship would be mediated by empathy felt towards the animal. Across four pre-registered studies sampling 1074 US and Norwegian participants, we obtained some support for this prediction in the US but to a lesser degree in Norway. However, in all studies an indirect mediation effect of cuteness on meat consumption going through empathy towards the animal was observed. We also explored possible moderating and additional mediating mechanisms of trait pro-social orientation, caretaking intentions and sex effects for which we found mixed evidence. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Warm and touching tears: tearful individuals are perceived as warmer because we assume they feel moved and touched.

Recent work investigated the inter-individual functions of emotional tears in depth. In one study (Van de Ven, N., Meijs, M. H. J., & Vingerhoets, A. (2017). What emotional tears convey: Tearful individuals are seen as warmer, but also as less competent. British Journal of Social Psychology, 56(1), 146-160. Https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12162) tearful individuals were rated as warmer, and participants expressed more intentions to approach and help such individuals. Simultaneously, tearful individuals were rated as less competent, and participants expressed less intention to work with the depicted targets. While tearful individuals were perceived as sadder, perceived sadness mediated only the effect on competence, but not on warmth. We argue that tearful individuals might be perceived as warm because they are perceived as feeling moved and touched. We ran a pre-registered extended replication of Van de Ven et al. Results replicate the warmth and helping findings, but not the competence and work effects. The increase in warmth ratings was completely mediated by perceiving feeling moved and touched. Possible functions of feeling moved and touched with regard to emotional tears are discussed.

Moment-to-moment changes in feeling moved match changes in closeness, tears, goosebumps, and warmth: time series analyses.

Feeling moved or touched can be accompanied by tears, goosebumps, and sensations of warmth in the centre of the chest. The experience has been described frequently, but psychological science knows little about it. We propose that labelling one's feeling as being moved or touched is a component of a social-relational emotion that we term kama muta (its Sanskrit label). We hypothesise that it is caused by appraising an intensification of communal sharing relations. Here, we test this by investigating people's moment-to-moment reports of feeling moved and touched while watching six short videos. We compare these to six other sets of participants' moment-to-moment responses watching the same videos: respectively, judgements of closeness (indexing communal sharing), reports of weeping, goosebumps, warmth in the centre of the chest, happiness, and sadness. Our eighth time series is expert ratings of communal sharing. Time series analyses show strong and consistent cross-correlations of feeling moved and touched and closeness with each other and with each of the three physiological variables and expert-rated communal sharing - but distinctiveness from happiness and sadness. These results support our model.

Being moved is a positive emotion, and emotions should not be equated with their vernacular labels.

As evidence for the second process of the Embracing factor, the target article characterizes being moved as a mixed emotion linked to sadness through metonymy. We question these characterizations and argue that emotions should not be equated with their vernacular labels.

Committed (dis)honesty: A systematic meta-analytic review of the divergent effects of social commitment to individuals or honesty oaths on dishonest behavior.

People feel committed to other individuals, groups, organizations, or moral norms in many contexts of everyday life. Such social commitment can lead to positive outcomes, such as increased job satisfaction or relationship longevity; yet, there can also be detrimental effects to feeling committed. Recent high-profile cases of fraud or corruption in companies like Enron or Volkswagen are likely influenced by strong commitment to the organization or coworkers. Although social commitment might increase dishonest behavior, there is little systematic knowledge about when and how this may occur. In the present project, we reviewed 20,988 articles, focusing on studies that experimentally manipulated social commitment and measured dishonest behavior. We retained 445 effect sizes from 121 articles featuring a total of 91,683 participants across 33 countries. We found no evidence that social commitment increases or reduces dishonest behavior in general. Nonetheless, we did find evidence that the effect strongly depends on the target of the commitment. Feeling committed to other individuals or groups reduces honest behavior (g = -0.17 [-0.24, -0.11]), whereas feeling committed to honesty norms through honesty oaths or pledges increases honest behavior (g = 0.27 [0.19, 0.36]). The analysis identified several moderating variables and detected some degree of publication bias across effects. Our findings highlight the diverging effects of different forms of social commitment on dishonest behavior and suggest a combination of the different forms of commitment could be a possible means to combat corruption and dishonest behavior in the organizational context. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content.

Dishonest behaviours such as tax evasion impose significant societal costs. Ex ante honesty oaths-commitments to honesty before action-have been proposed as interventions to counteract dishonest behaviour, but the heterogeneity in findings across operationalizations calls their effectiveness into question. We tested 21 honesty oaths (including a baseline oath)-proposed, evaluated and selected by 44 expert researchers-and a no-oath condition in a megastudy involving 21,506 UK and US participants from Prolific.com who played an incentivized tax evasion game online. Of the 21 interventions, 10 significantly improved tax compliance by 4.5 to 8.5 percentage points, with the most successful nearly halving tax evasion. Limited evidence for moderators was found. Experts and laypeople failed to predict the most effective interventions, though experts' predictions were more accurate. In conclusion, honesty oaths were effective in curbing dishonesty, but their effectiveness varied depending on content. These findings can help design impactful interventions to curb dishonesty.

Comparing implications of distinct emotion, network, and dimensional approaches for co-occurring emotions.

Many situations elicit multiple emotions at the same time. Therefore, emotion theories should explain when and how emotions co-occur. We compared four parsimonious, formal theories that could explain emotion co-occurrence inspired by distinct emotion, network, and dimensional approaches to emotions. In three studies (N = 1,038), diverse participants rated the intensity of awe and kama muta (Study 1; US community sample; conducted in 2020), shame and guilt (Study 2; Dutch students; conducted in 2006), or awe and fear (Study 3; GB community sample; conducted in 2022) on multi-componential scales in response to emotion-eliciting stimuli (i.e., vignettes or videos). All three studies indicated that the network theory explains the data best. The theory implies that emotions co-occur because the networks of interacting components representing different emotions partly overlap. The parsimonious model can serve as a starting point for a comprehensive formal theory that is able to integrate seemingly inconsistent findings in research on co-occurring emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Global heart warming: kama muta evoked by climate change messages is associated with intentions to mitigate climate change.

Concern about climate change is often rooted in sympathy, compassion, and care for nature, living beings, and future generations. Feeling sympathy for others temporarily forms a bond between them and us: we focus on what we have in common and feel a sense of common destiny. Thus, we temporarily experience communal sharing relationships. A sudden intensification in communal sharing evokes an emotion termed kama muta, which may be felt through tearing up, a warm feeling in the chest, or goosebumps. We conducted four pre-registered studies (n = 1,049) to test the relationship between kama muta and pro-environmental attitudes, intentions, and behavior. In each study, participants first reported their attitudes about climate change. Then, they received climate change-related messages. In Study 1, they saw one of the two moving video clips about environmental concerns. In Study 2, participants listened to a more or less moving version of a story about a typhoon in the Philippines. In Study 3, they listened to a different, also moving version of this story or an unrelated talk. In Study 4, they watched either a factual or a moving video about climate change. Participants then indicated their emotional responses. Finally, they indicated their intentions for climate mitigation actions. In addition, we measured time spent reading about climate-related information (Studies 1, 2, and 4) and donating money (Study 4). Across all studies, we found that feelings of kama muta correlated positively with pro-environmental intentions (r = 0.48 [0.34, 0.62]) and behavior (r = 0.10 [0.0004, 0.20]). However, we did not obtain evidence for an experimental effect of the type of message (moving or neutral) on pro-environmental intentions (d = 0.04 [-0.09, 0.18]), though this relationship was significantly mediated by felt kama muta across Studies 2-4. The relationship was not moderated by prior climate attitudes, which had a main effect on intentions. We also found an indirect effect of condition through kama muta on donation behavior. In sum, our results contribute to the question of whether kama muta evoked by climate-change messages can be a motivating force in efforts at climate-change mitigation.

Commitment to honesty oaths decreases dishonesty, but commitment to another individual does not affect dishonesty.

Social commitment influences our behavior in various ways. Recent studies suggest that social commitment to other individuals or groups can increase dishonest behavior while feeling commitment to moral norms might decrease it. Here we show in a pre-registered series of 7 studies investigating the influence of social commitment on dishonest behavior by sampling 7566 participants across three countries (the UK, the US, and Mexico) that commitment to moral norms via honesty oaths might decrease dishonesty (OR = 0.79 [0.72, 0.88]). To the contrary, we found no credible evidence that social commitment to other individuals increases dishonesty (OR = 1.08 [0.97, 1.20]). Finally, we observed that commitment to moral norms was less effective if participants were committed to another individual at the same time (OR = 0.95 [0.86, 1.06]). Our findings point at the potential effectiveness of honesty oaths, while the observed effect sizes were small compared to previous studies.

The Psychological Science Accelerator's COVID-19 rapid-response dataset.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data.

The physiological study of emotional piloerection: A systematic review and guide for future research.

This paper provides an accessible review of the biological and psychological evidence to guide new and experienced researchers in the study of emotional piloerection in humans. A limited number of studies have attempted to examine the physiological and emotional correlates of piloerection in humans. However, no review has attempted to collate this evidence to guide the field as it moves forward. We first discuss the mechanisms and function of non-emotional and emotional piloerection in humans and animals. We discuss the biological foundations of piloerection as a means to understand the similarities and differences between emotional and non-emotional piloerection. We then present a systematic qualitative review (k = 24) in which we examine the physiological correlates of emotional piloerection. The analysis revealed that indices of sympathetic activation are abundant, suggesting emotional piloerection occurs with increased (phasic) skin conductance and heart rate. Measures of parasympathetic activation are lacking and no definite conclusions can be drawn. Additionally, several studies examined self-reported emotional correlates, and these correlates are discussed in light of several possible theoretical explanations for emotional piloerection. Finally, we provide an overview of the methodological possibilities available for the study of piloerection and we highlight some pressing questions researchers may wish to answer in future studies.

The role of affect in late perceptual processes: Evidence from bi-stable illusions, object identification, and mental rotation.

Computational views of perception do not consider affect to be required to solve a perceptual task. Previous research provided evidence for an affective component in early perceptual processes, but it is unclear whether late perceptual processes yield concomitant affect. Three studies using three different tasks explored changes in affect related to late perceptual processes by exposing participants to a visual object and measuring activity in facial muscles (zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii) using facial EMG as indicators for affect. In the first task, change of muscle activity was measured before and after participants indicated that the perspective of bistable illusions shifted. In the second task, change of muscle activity was measured before and after participants indicated that they identified an object that emerged from a pattern mask. The third task examined the affective consequences, as measured by facial EMG, of solving mental rotation tasks. The three studies found that shifts in bistable illusions, identification of objects, and solving mental rotation problems yielded increasing zygomaticus major activity, indicating increased positive affect after task completion. Simultaneously, corrugator supercilii activity decreased after successful perception. These studies suggest that success in perception is inherently affective, even when memory, comparison, and decision processes are involved. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Tears do not influence competence in general, but only under specific circumstances: A systematic investigation across 41 countries.

Research on the effect of emotional tears on perceived competence has yielded an inconsistent pattern of findings, with some studies showing that tearful individuals may be perceived as less competent, while others report no such effect. These mixed results point to the likely existence of third variables influencing the link between tears and perceived competence and suggest that crying may affect competence only in specific circumstances. In the current project, we reexamine this link using a large, openly available dataset of responses to tearful faces collected across 41 countries and 7,007 participants (Zickfeld et al., 2021). Our results show that tears have no general effect on perceptions of competence but do reduce competence when crying is regarded as inappropriate (e.g., there is no clear reason for shedding tears) or when the target is perceived as helpless. Moreover, shedding tears increases competence when the target is perceived as honest. As emotional tears have been found to signal both helplessness and honesty, the interplay of these effects might result in no overall effect of tears on perceptions of competence. The present findings suggest that the link between emotional tears and perceived competence is highly context dependent. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Feeling moved by music: Investigating continuous ratings and acoustic correlates.

The experience often described as feeling moved, understood chiefly as a social-relational emotion with social bonding functions, has gained significant research interest in recent years. Although listening to music often evokes what people describe as feeling moved, very little is known about the appraisals or musical features contributing to the experience. In the present study, we investigated experiences of feeling moved in response to music using a continuous rating paradigm. A total of 415 US participants completed an online experiment where they listened to seven moving musical excerpts and rated their experience while listening. Each excerpt was randomly coupled with one of seven rating scales (perceived sadness, perceived joy, feeling moved or touched, sense of connection, perceived beauty, warmth [in the chest], or chills) for each participant. The results revealed that musically evoked experiences of feeling moved are associated with a similar pattern of appraisals, physiological sensations, and trait correlations as feeling moved by videos depicting social scenarios (found in previous studies). Feeling moved or touched by both sadly and joyfully moving music was associated with experiencing a sense of connection and perceiving joy in the music, while perceived sadness was associated with feeling moved or touched only in the case of sadly moving music. Acoustic features related to arousal contributed to feeling moved only in the case of joyfully moving music. Finally, trait empathic concern was positively associated with feeling moved or touched by music. These findings support the role of social cognitive and empathic processes in music listening, and highlight the social-relational aspects of feeling moved or touched by music.

Tears of joy, aesthetic chills and heartwarming feelings: Physiological correlates of Kama Muta.

Situations involving increased closeness or exceptional kindness are often labeled as moving or touching and individuals often report bodily symptoms, including tears, goosebumps, and warmth in the body. Recently, the kama muta framework has been proposed as a cross-cultural conceptualization of these experiences. Prior research on kama muta has mostly relied on subjective reports. Thus, our main goal of the present project was to examine the pattern of physiological responses to kama muta inducing videos and compare it to the patterns for the similar, though distinct emotions of sadness and awe. One hundred forty-four Portuguese and Norwegian participants were individually exposed to all three emotion conditions. Several psychophysiological indexes of the autonomic nervous system were collected continuously during exposure, including cardiovascular, respiratory, and electrodermal activity, facial EMG, skin temperature, as well as piloerection and lachrymation using cameras. Overall, the results partly replicated previous findings on being moved experiences and self-report studies. Strong self-reported experiences of kama muta were associated with increased phasic skin conductance, skin temperature, piloerection, and zygomaticus activity, while they were associated with reduced heart rate, respiration rate, and tonic skin conductance. The physiological profile of kama muta was successfully distinguished from sadness and awe, partly corroborating self-report evidence. We obtained no clear evidence of a kama muta association with the occurrence of lachrymation or heart rate variability. Our findings provide a systematic overview of psychophysiological response to experiences of kama muta, and help to inform future research on this emotion and positive emotions in general.

Correlates of Health-Protective Behavior During the Initial Days of the COVID-19 Outbreak in Norway.

The coronavirus outbreak manifested in Norway in March 2020. It was met with a combination of mandatory changes (closing of public institutions) and recommended changes (hygiene behavior, physical distancing). It has been emphasized that health-protective behavior such as increased hygiene or physical distancing are able to slow the spread of infections and flatten the curve. Drawing on previous health-psychological studies during the outbreak of various pandemics, we investigated psychological and demographic factors predicting the adoption and engagement in health-protective behavior and changes in such behavior, attitudes, and emotions over time. We recruited a non-representative sample of Norwegians (n = 8676) during a 15-day period (March 12-26 2020) at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Norway. Employing both traditional methods and exploratory machine learning, we replicated earlier findings that engagement in health-protective behavior is associated with specific demographic characteristics. Further, we observed that increased media exposure, perceiving measures as effective, and perceiving the outbreak as serious was positively related to engagement in health-protective behavior. We also found indications that hygiene and physical distancing behaviors were related to somewhat different psychological and demographic factors. Over the sampling period, reported engagement in physical distancing increased, while experienced concern or fear declined. Contrary to previous studies, we found no or only small positive predictions by confidence in authorities, knowledge about the outbreak, and perceived individual risk, while all of those variables were rather high. These findings provide guidance for health communications or interventions targeting the adoption of health-protective behaviors in order to diminish the spread of COVID-19.

Too Cute for Words: Cuteness Evokes the Heartwarming Emotion of Kama Muta.

A configuration of infantile attributes including a large head, large eyes, with a small nose and mouth low on the head comprise the visual baby schema or Kindchenschema that English speakers call "cute." In contrast to the stimulus gestalt that evokes it, the evoked emotional response to cuteness has been little studied, perhaps because the emotion has no specific name in English, Norwegian, or German. We hypothesize that cuteness typically evokes kama muta, a social-relational emotion that in other contexts is often labeled in English as being moved or touched, heartwarming, nostalgia, patriotic feeling, being touched by the Spirit, the feels, etcetera. What evokes kama muta is sudden intensification of a communal sharing (CS) relationship, either CS between the person and another, or CS between observed others. In accord with kama muta theory, we hypothesize that a kama muta response to cuteness results from a sudden feeling of CS with the cute target. In colloquial terms, the perceiver adores the cute kittens and their heart goes out to them. When a person perceives cute targets interacting affectionately - that is, intensifying CS between them - this should strengthen a kama muta response. We experimentally investigated these predictions in two studies (N = 356). Study 1 revealed that videos of cute targets evoked significantly more kama muta than videos of targets that were not particularly cute. Study 2, pre-registered, found that, as hypothesized, when cute targets interacted affectionately they evoked more kama muta and were humanized more than when they were not interacting. We measured the level of kama muta by self-reports of sensations and signs and of feelings labeled heartwarming, being moved, and being touched. Participants' ratings of kama muta were positively correlated with reported cuteness. In addition, as in our previous research on kama muta elicited by other types of stimuli, trait empathic concern predicted kama muta responses and perceived cuteness. The studies thus provide first evidence that cute stimuli evoke the heartwarming emotion of kama muta.

Data from the Human Penguin Project, a cross-national dataset testing social thermoregulation principles.

In the Human Penguin Project (N = 1755), 15 research groups from 12 countries collected body temperature, demographic variables, social network indices, seven widely-used psychological scales and two newly developed questionnaires (the Social Thermoregulation and Risk Avoidance Questionnaire (STRAQ-1) and the Kama Muta Frequency Scale (KAMF)). They were collected to investigate the relationship between environmental factors (e.g., geographical, climate etc.) and human behaviors, which is a long-standing inquiry in the scientific community. More specifically, the present project was designed to test principles surrounding the idea of social thermoregulation, which posits that social networks help people to regulate their core body temperature. The results showed that all scales in the current project have sufficient to good psychometrical properties. Unlike previous crowdsourced projects, this dataset includes not only the cleaned raw data but also all the validation of questionnaires in 9 different languages, thus providing a valuable resource for psychological scientists who are interested in cross-national, environment-human interaction studies.

Kama muta: Conceptualizing and measuring the experience often labelled being moved across 19 nations and 15 languages.

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. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).