This book describes a ubiquitous and potent emotion that has only rarely and recently been studied in any systematic manner. The words that come closest to denoting it in English are being moved or touched, having a heart-warming feeling, feeling nostalgic, feeling patriotic, or pride in family or team. In religious contexts when the emotion is intense, it may be labeled ecstasy, mystical rapture, burning in the bosom, or being touched by the Spirit. All of these are instances of what scientists now call ‘kama muta’ (Sanskrit, ‘moved by love’). Alan Page Fiske shows that what evokes this emotion is the sudden creation, intensification, renewal, repair, or recall of a communal sharing relationship – when love ignites, or people feel newly connected. He explains the social, psychological, cultural, and likely evolutionary processes involved – and how they interlock. Kama muta is described as it manifests in diverse settings at many points in history across scores of cultures, in everyday experiences as well as the peak moments of life. The chapters illuminate the occurrence of kama muta in a range of contexts, including religion, oratory, literature, sport, social media, and nature. The book will be of interest to students and scholars from a number of disciplines who are interested in emotion or social relationships. Supplementary notes can be found online at: www.routledge.com/9780367220945

The proliferation of new digital technologies has given rise to an entirely changed media landscape and revolutionized how we seek entertainment. Older entertainment media like novels, radio, and film have been joined by a host of digital media that smartphones allow us to carry almost anywhere and at all times, from video games and social media to video on demand services. This unprecedented ubiquity of entertainment media calls for new and more sophisticated theories that help us understand the fascination that different entertainment media exert on us and how they change the human experience. The Oxford Handbook of Entertainment Theory surveys and furthers the most influential psychology-driven research on media entertainment to illuminate how people are drawn into media experiences. The 41 chapters in this Handbook not only offer fresh perspectives on established theories but also introduce emerging models and highlight the importance of considering the diverse backgrounds of media users when conducting research. They also cover the motivations and reactions of media users in relationship to different types of media, the trend towards interactive media such as video games and virtual reality, and particularly popular media contents like sexuality, violence, sports, and the news. As the most comprehensive overview of psychology-based research on media entertainment available, this Handbook is an invaluable resource for seasoned researchers and those beginning to learn about the field alike.

This edited volume brings together the latest research in understanding the nature, origins, and evolution of human sociability, one of the most intriguing aspects of human psychology. Sociability—our sophisticated ability to interact with others, imagine, plan, and execute interdependent behaviours—lies at the heart of our evolutionary success, and is the most important prerequisite for the development of increasingly elaborate civilizations. With contributions from internationally renowned researchers in areas of social psychology as well as anthropology and evolutionary psychology, this book demonstrates the role of social psychology in explaining how human sociability evolved, how it shapes our mental and emotional lives, and how it influences both large-scale civilizational practices and intimate interpersonal relations. Chapters cover the core psychological characteristics that shape human sociability, including such phenomena as the role of information exchange, affective processes, social norms, power relations, personal relationships, attachment patterns, personality characteristics, and evolutionary pressures. Featuring a wide variety of empirical and theoretical backgrounds, the book will be of interest to students and researchers in all areas of the social sciences, as well as practitioners and applied professionals who deal with issues related to sociability in their daily lives.

In this Handbook, Laith Al-Shawaf and Todd K. Shackelford have gathered a group of leading scholars in the field to present a centralized resource for researchers and students wishing to understand emotions from an evolutionary perspective. Experts from a number of different disciplines, including psychology, biology, anthropology, psychiatry, and others, tackle a variety of "how" (proximate) and "why" (ultimate) questions about the function of emotions in humans and nonhuman animals, how emotions work, and their place in human life. Comprehensive and integrative in nature, this Handbook is an essential resource for students and scholars from a diversity of fields wishing to build upon their theoretical and empirical understanding of the emotions.

In their volume Universalism without Uniformity, anthropologists Julia Cassaniti and Usha Menon bring together a set of distinguished papers to address the interconnections between culture and mind. As the title suggests, they seek to understand how one can conceive of a shared humanity while also doing justice to cross-cultural psychological diversity. The chapters investigate topics such as emotion, identity, mental health, and conflict, among others. Through the construction of a new approach that focuses squarely on the interrelationship of culture and mind, this volume questions old, entrenched disciplinary assumptions. Geared toward students of anthropology, psychology, and ethnic studies, Universalism without Uniformity seeks to uncover the intricate connections and mechanisms of psyche and culture.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Information in Contemporary Society, iConference 2019, held in Washington, DC, USA, in March/April 2019. The 44 full papers and 33 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 133 submitted full papers and 88 submitted short papers. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Scientific work and data practices; methodological concerns in (big) data research; concerns about “smart” interactions and privacy; identity questions in online communities; measuring and tracking scientific literature; limits and affordances of automation; collecting data about vulnerable populations; supporting communities through public libraries and infrastructure; information behaviors in academic environments; data-driven storytelling and modeling; online activism; digital libraries, curation and preservation; social-media text mining and sentiment analysis; data and information in the public sphere; engaging with multi-media content; understanding online behaviors and experiences; algorithms at work; innovation and professionalization in technology communities; information behaviors on Twitter; data mining and NLP; informing technology design through offline experiences; digital tools for health management; environmental and visual literacy; and addressing social problems in iSchool research.

The common dimensional model of emotion has emphasized that emotional information is generally processed from two dimensions: valence (from negative to positive) and arousal (from low to high). Recently, several theories have proposed that emotions also vary along a sociality dimension, ranging from non-social emotions (i.e., basic biological drives) to social emotions (i.e., complex social interactions). Specifically, non-social emotions (e.g., fear) are derived from incentives or aversive emotions that have direct physiological relevance, whereas social emotions (e.g., guilt) are elicited within the context of social information processing or social cognition. Multiple empirical studies have investigated the processing of non-social emotions and the influences of these emotions on other cognitive processes. However, questions regarding social emotion processes and their influences are still open. For example, little is known about psychological and neural mechanisms underlying different social emotions processes (e.g., guilt, shame, love, envy and pride), the development and individual differences of social emotions, or the influences of social emotions on social behaviors and decision-making. Therefore, this Research Topic aims to gain a deeper understanding of how different social emotions are processed among different populations and how these social emotions influence other cognitive processes. We aim to have a collection of studies which extend the theoretical, technical and empirical knowledge about psychological and neural mechanisms underlying social emotions processes as well as the influences of these processes on other cognitive processes, in particular on social decision making. We encourage studies from different domains (e.g., emotion, behavioural economics and decision making), implemented by different techniques (e.g., behaviour, electrophysiology, neuroimaging and brain stimulations), among different populations (e.g., healthy adults, children and elderly, persons with psychological traits and personalities, and psychiatric patients).

Introduction to Positive Media Psychology summarizes and synthesizes the key concepts, theories, and empirical findings on the positive emotional, cognitive, and behavioral effects of media use. In doing so, the book offers the first systematic overview of the emerging field of positive media psychology. The authors draw on a growing body of scholarship that explores the positive sides of media use, including fostering one’s own well-being; creating greater connectedness with others; cultivating compassion for those who may be oppressed or stigmatized; and motivating altruism and other prosocial actions. The authors explore these issues across the entire media landscape, examining the ways that varying content (e.g., entertainment, news) delivered through traditional (e.g., film, television) and more recent media technologies (e.g., social media, digital games, virtual reality) can enhance well-being and promote other positive outcomes in viewers and users. This book serves as a benchmark of theory and research for current and future generations of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars in communication, psychology, education, and social work.

A richly diverse collection of classical Indian terms for expressing the many moods and subtleties of emotional experience Words for the Heart is a captivating treasury of emotion terms drawn from some of India’s earliest classical languages. Inspired by the traditional Indian genre of a “treasury”—a wordbook or anthology of short texts or poems—this collection features 177 jewel-like entries evoking the kinds of phenomena English speakers have variously referred to as emotions, passions, sentiments, moods, affects, and dispositions. These entries serve as beautiful literary and philosophical vignettes that convey the delightful texture of Indian thought and the sheer multiplicity of conversations about emotions in Indian texts. An indispensable reference, Words for the Heart reveals how Indian ways of interpreting human experience can challenge our assumptions about emotions and enrich our lives. Brings to light a rich lexicon of emotion from ancient IndiaUses the Indian genre of a “treasury,” or wordbook, to explore the contours of classical Indian thought in three of the subcontinent’s earliest languages—Sanskrit, Pali, and PrakritFeatures 177 alphabetical entries, from abhaya (“fearlessness”) to yoga (“the discipline of calm”)Draws on a wealth of literary, religious, and philosophical writings from classical IndiaIncludes synonyms, antonyms, related words, and suggestions for further readingInvites readers to engage in the cross-cultural study of emotionsReveals the many different ways of naming and interpreting human experience