Interpersonal Closeness and Morality Predict Feelings of Being Moved

The emotion commonly labeled in English as being moved or touched is widely experienced but only tacitly defined, and has received little systematic attention. Based on a review of conceptualizations from various disciplines, we hypothesize that events appraised as an increase in interpersonal close...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Emotion (Washington, D.C.) D.C.), 2017-04, Vol.17 (3), p.389-394
Main Authors: Seibt, Beate, Schubert, Thomas W, Zickfeld, Janis H, Fiske, Alan Page
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Aged
Anxiety - psychology
Cognitive Appraisal
Crying
Emotional Responses
Emotions
Emotions - physiology
Female
Happiness
Human
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Interpersonal Relationships
Male
Middle Aged
Morality
Morals
Norway
Physiological Arousal
Skin (Anatomy)
United States
Young Adult
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Summary:The emotion commonly labeled in English as being moved or touched is widely experienced but only tacitly defined, and has received little systematic attention. Based on a review of conceptualizations from various disciplines, we hypothesize that events appraised as an increase in interpersonal closeness, or as moral acts, when sufficiently intense, elicit a positive emotion typically labeled "being moved," and characterized by tears, goosebumps, and a feeling of warmth in the chest. We predicted this to be true for events a person participates in, as well as for events they observe. In Study 1, we elicited reports of recent episodes of weeping evoked by something positive, and also weeping because of something negative; we measured emotion terms, bodily sensations, and appraisals in a U.S. sample. We discovered that events of positive tears, rather than negative tears, were associated with self-reported being moved or touched, with goosebumps, with feelings of chest warmth, and with the appraisals of increased closeness and moral acts. These appraisals mediated the difference in being moved between positive and negative events. We further found that appraisal patterns for personally experienced events were similar to the patterns for observed events. Finally, the 2 appraisals were more closely associated with being moved than with other emotion labels. This was corroborated in Study 2 in the U.S. and Norway, where we induced being moved, sadness, anxiety, and happiness through videos and measured these emotions, plus the appraisals and sensations from Study 1.
ISSN:1528-3542
1931-1516
DOI:10.1037/emo0000271