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”. In Norwegian, it is close to “ble rørt” or “ble beveget”. German even has a noun for it: “Rührung”. We started using the term kama muta in scientific publications in 2015.
We borrowed the term kama muta from Sanskrit, where it apparently meant “being moved by love”.1I you are immediately thinking about kama sutra: Kama means love, so you are partly right. 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:
Wiecha, J., Åbom, A. K., Śmieja, M., Wójcik, M. E. (2026). The Fabric of Connection? Exploratory Studies on Being Moved in Committed Relationships. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.70068
Latest press reports on the lab:
During the FIFA World Cup, NRK and VG published features on the kama muta that Norwegian soccer fans felt. Inspired by these articles, Norwegian singer-songwriter Bjørn Eidsvåg wrote a song titled Kama muta about Norwegians’ World Cup experience:
Selected recent articles on kama muta by scholars outside of our lab:
Farley, S., Akin, K., Smith, J. et al. (2026). The heartfelt gesture signals social self-transcendent emotion. Motivation and Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-026-10271-0
from the paper’s Discussion: “Social [self-transcendent emotions] such as kama muta, gratitude, and empathy are the bedrock of our social world. They promote cooperation, foster connection, cement social bonds, and increase prosociality (Abatista & Cova, 2023; Stellar et al., 2017). The identification of a cross-cultural nonverbal expression of these critical emotions – the heartfelt gesture – is of paramount importance, given it allows deeply felt social connection and prosocial intent to be communicated from a distance.”
Read more about us, our publications, who talks about us, what is happening currently,
or contact us by writing to thomas.schubert@psykologi.uio.no
