Our main method for measuring kama muta are self reports. We have developed two main scales to measure it, one for measuring the full experience in self report, and, one for the disposition to experience kama muta. However, we are typically adapting the scale and measures in general to fit every particular application and project. Below we introduce the two main measures and point to additional projects.
The KAMMUS scale
The KAMMUS scale to measure KAMA MUTA in the moment was developed in our publication
Zickfeld, J. H., Schubert, T. W., Seibt, B., Blomster, J. K., Arriaga, P., Basabe, N., … & Fiske, A. P. (2019). Kama Muta: Conceptualizing and measuring the experience often labelled being moved across 19 nations and 15 languages. Emotion, 19, 402-424. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000450 [preprint]
The scale is translated and tested in 15 languages, and has been used by people outside of our lab in recent work.
All translations are available on open science framework. You do not need to ask for permission to use the scale, but we ask you to cite the paper above when you publish your work.
When you use the scale, please note that the likelihood that a given psychological state is kama muta is reflected in the coherence of the component scales. We therefore recommend against using only an overall kama muta score that would result from averaging or summing all five aspects together. To verify that there is a relationship between kama muta and another construct, that relationship should be shown for each of the five aspects separately, and those five aspects should be highly correlated with each other in the condition where kama muta is predicted (though not necessarily in any other condition).
The KAMF scale for disposition
In addition, we have developed a scale that measures the disposition to feel kama muta. This was originally developed for
IJzerman, H., Lindenberg, S., Dalğar, İ., Weissgerber, S. S., Vergara, R. C., Cairo, A. H., ... & McCarthy, R. (2018). The Human Penguin Project: Climate, social integration, and core body temperature. Collabra: Psychology, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.165
Data collected in this project with this scale in many different countries are available from
Hu, C. P., Yin, J. X., Lindenberg, S., Dalğar, İ., Weissgerber, S. C., Vergara, R. C., ... & IJzerman, H. (2019). Data from the Human Penguin Project, a cross-national dataset testing social thermoregulation principles. Scientific data, 6(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-019-0029-2
Again, the scale is available on osf.io.
Items for subtler experiences
In this project we changed the items of the KAMMUS to measure more subtler experiences:
Grüning, D. J., & Schubert, T. W. (2022). Emotional campaigning in politics: Being moved and anger in political ads motivate to support candidate and party. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 781851. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.781851 [open access]
Items for past experiences
The KAMMUS can be used to report past experiences that are remembered well. However, for the following publication we developed a measure that creates a score for the amount or frequency people experienced kama muta in a past period (e.g., the past year).
Lizarazo Pereira, D. M., Schubert, T. W., & Roth, J. (2022). Moved by social justice: The role of kama muta in collective action toward racial equality. Frontiers in Psychology. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.780615/
Physiological measures
There is no “objective” physiological measure of kama muta. Kama muta has physiological symptoms such as goosebumps, changes in heart rate, and temperature that can be measured, but they are typically also involved in other emotions. For more information, see
Zickfeld, J. H., Arriaga, P., Vilar Santos, S., Schubert, T. W., Seibt, B. (2020). Tears of joy, aesthetic chills and heartwarming feelings: Physiological correlates of Kama Muta. Psychophysiology. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13662 [preprint]