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.

Kama muta is our scientific name for an emotion that has names in many languages (but not all). In English, it overlaps closely with being moved to tears. We started using the term in scientific publications that came out in 2017.

Kama muta is Sanskrit for “being moved by love”. In Sanskrit letters, it is written काममूत

The kama muta lab is a group of scientists from psychology and anthropology studying this emotion. The group is coordinated by researchers at the University of Oslo, Norway and University of California, Los Angeles.

Latest publication by the lab:

Fiske, A. P., Schubert, T. W., & Seibt, B. (2025). Seeking communal emotions in social practices that culturally evolved to evoke the emotions: Worship, kitten videos, memorials, narratives of love, and more. Annual Review of Psychology, 76, 607-633. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-020124-023338 [open access]

Latest press report on the lab:

For most of us, kama muta is probably not a very familiar turn of phrase. But the concept is “nothing new,” Professor Thomas Schubert told IFLScience – it’s just a new name for something that is, as it turns out, pretty fundamental to humanity itself! #psychology www.iflscience.com/kama-muta-th…
— IFLScience (@iflscience.com) 2025-02-14T15:00:59.080Z

Latest article by scholars outside of our lab on kama muta:

Have you ever felt kama muta? It is a complex, positive #emotion typically described as being ‘touched’ or ‘moved’? Koh et al. (2025) investigated how #kamamuta relates to situations of collective threat [https://spb.psychopen.eu/index.php/spb/article/view/13457]🧵 1/5
— Social Psychological Bulletin (@socialpsychbull.bsky.social) 2025-02-10T11:49:24.803Z

Read more about us, our publications, who talks about us, and what is happening currently.

Kama Muta Lab

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.