When researchers ask people to describe the most powerful moments in their lives when they were moved, the answers are almost never about visual art. They’re about reunions, children, funerals, a phone call that came at just the right moment. Pictures on the wall rank far down the list. And yet most of us have a poster or a painting at home that we can’t sell, can’t throw away, and can’t quite explain why we look at it every morning. In recent years, the study of emotion has begun to map this exact state, and it has been given a name: kama muta. This article explores what research has actually measured, why it differs from everything we thought about beautiful subjects, and what the findings mean when you choose art for your own home.
Kama muta—the feeling that 3,542 people in 19 countries put into words
The term is Sanskrit and roughly means “moved by love.” It was adopted by a research group seeking to solve an old problem: the English being moved, Swedish “bli berörd,” and German gerührt all describe something that no one had quite managed to define. Is it a form of joy? A form of sadness? Something entirely its own?
In 2019, Janis Zickfeld, Thomas Schubert, Beate Seibt, and a large international team published a study in the journal Emotion that tested the phenomenon on a large scale. The material included 3,542 participants across 19 nations on five continents and in 15 languages. The conclusion was that this is a distinct, positive, socially grounded emotion with a clear trigger: a sudden intensification of communal bonds. Something that was separate becomes connected. Someone shows unexpected care. A relationship becomes visible to us just when we least expect it.
What matters for someone choosing art is that the condition has nothing to do with beauty. A subject can be technically perfect and harmonious in color, yet leave us cold. Another can be crooked, hastily painted, and set the whole apparatus in motion—because it points to something relational.
Quick facts: Zickfeld’s study in Emotion (2019) included 3,542 participants, 19 nations, five continents, and 15 languages. The researchers validated a scale that measures five distinct parts of the experience: the appraisal of the situation, the emotional tone, bodily sensations, motivation, and the words participants themselves chose to describe it.
Warmth in the chest, a lump in the throat, goosebumps—the body’s five markers
What makes kama muta unusually easy to study is that it leaves traces in the body. Participants in the international study repeatedly reported the same set of sensations: warmth spreading through the chest, moist eyes or actual tears, goosebumps and shivers along the arms and neck, a lump in the throat or the feeling of being unable to speak, and finally a lightness—a feeling of being lifted.
The last point is interesting because it contradicts the everyday notion of being moved as something heavy. Participants describe a mixture of melancholy and elation at the same time. A 2025 study also found that the state affects posture: people who had just been moved swayed noticeably less while standing still than people in a neutral state. Being moved stills us, quite literally.
For anyone who has hung art in their home, this is worth pausing over. We often describe subjects as "calming" and mean muted colors and few details. But there’s a second path to calm, and it runs through an emotion that is anything but neutral.
The Vienna experiment: abstract art that moved people without a single word on a sign
The question that had long gone unanswered was whether visual art could evoke the state on its own at all. Music and film can – this is well established. But they have time, movement, and often text on their side. A still image has none of that.
A study by Zhou and Leder, submitted in fall 2025, tackled the question in three parts. First, participants were asked to describe autobiographical memories of being deeply moved, and the discouraging finding was confirmed: visual art almost never came up. Then the researchers took the study out into the real world, to the Heidi Horten Collection in Vienna, and asked visitors to point out the paintings that moved them. The picture changed. The ratings spanned the entire intensity scale, all the way to the top.
Three factors were found to be clearly linked to how moved visitors felt. The first was understanding – feeling that you grasped what the work was about. The second was sadness, which was positively rather than negatively associated with being moved. The third was a measurable increase in prosocial impulses, meaning the desire to seek out other people afterward. And this was all in front of abstract works, with no narrative subject matter and no curated explanatory text.
"We almost never remember a painting when asked to think of life’s most moving moments – but when faced with the right canvas, we still cry."
The conclusion is twofold and a little uncomfortable. Visual art is rarely the most powerful thing we experience, but when it does affect us, it can reach remarkably deep. That also explains why an abstract poster can become the most meaningful thing in a home, even though it’s the hardest to explain to guests.
Chills can be predicted—and they wear off with repetition
Alongside research on kama muta, a related field has emerged around aesthetic chills—that is, goosebumps and shivers down the spine. A study published in PNAS Nexus showed that it’s possible to predict with around 73.5 percent accuracy who will get chills from a given stimulus. The model is based on age, gender, current emotional state, personality traits, and previous cultural exposure. In other words, the reaction isn’t random, and it doesn’t reside solely in the artwork.
Even more useful for the home is a finding from 2024, published in PLOS One. When the same stimulus is shown over and over, the likelihood of getting chills at all decreases. But among those who still experience them, their intensity and duration increase. Familiarity dulls the response for most of us, but deepens the experience for those who stick with it.
This line of reasoning is close to the mere exposure effect we’ve written about before, but with one crucial difference. Mere exposure makes us like what’s familiar more. Research on chills shows that the strong physical reaction also becomes rarer. So an image can become more beloved and less stirring on exactly the same wall, at the same time.
Tip: Do you have an image that once brought tears to your eyes but now goes unnoticed? Move it instead of replacing it. A piece that has hung in the living room for three years and is moved to the bedroom or hallway meets you in different light, at a different pace, and often in a different state of mind—and regains some of its impact.
Why being moved and feeling awe aren’t the same thing—and why the difference guides your choice of imagery
It’s easy to confuse kama muta with awe—the feeling of smallness that a mountain range, a starry sky, or a vast cathedral can evoke. Research clearly distinguishes between the two, and the difference is useful in practice when choosing imagery.
Awe is triggered by vastness and grandeur. It makes us feel smaller, quieter, and more inclined to put our own worries into perspective. The images that evoke it are often panoramic: horizons, mountain ranges, vast bodies of water. We’ve written about this at length in our overview of research on awe and sublime imagery.
Kama muta takes the opposite approach. It’s triggered by closeness, not expansiveness. By a gesture, a face, two figures touching, a home someone has painted from the inside. It doesn’t make us feel smaller, but warmer, and leaves us with an impulse to contact someone. In terms of subject matter, that means figures over landscapes, interiors over vistas, and close-ups over wide shots.
That’s also why artworks by famous artists often carry this emotional charge better than you might think. Not because the signature itself does anything, but because the subjects are often populated. There are people looking at one another.
From the lab to the wall: four practical takeaways
The first is about who you’re hanging it for. Since understanding correlates with being moved, choosing a subject solely because it’s considered important isn’t a good idea. An artwork you can explain to yourself, even in simple words, goes further than one you merely respect from a distance.
The second is about placement. If the reaction requires you to actually pause, the artwork needs to hang where you do. A wall you pass by in a rush leaves no time for something that requires a few seconds of contemplation. The reading nook, the foot of the bed, and the spot opposite the kitchen table work better than the hallway.
The third is about the role of sadness. A subject’s melancholy isn’t a warning sign. In the Vienna study, sadness was positively associated with being moved. That’s a reason to dare to hang black-and-white art and subdued, serious images even in rooms meant to feel comfortable.
The fourth is about rotation. Since the bodily response fades with repetition, a framing system where the artwork is changed twice a year isn’t a sign of indecision. It’s a way to keep the wall alive. Read more in our article about the viewer’s share and why abstract art becomes personal.
Frequently asked questions about moving art
The research doesn’t offer a ready-made shopping list, and that’s probably its best feature. It suggests that subjects featuring people, a touch of melancholy, and something you can relate to have a greater impact than things that are merely beautiful. If you’re looking for a place to start, photographic art is an easy entry point, since close-ups and faces are readily available there. Spend some time with a few works before you decide, and notice where you feel the response in your body. Surprisingly often, it’s in the chest, half a second before your mind has had time to explain why.
Sources and further reading: Kama Muta Lab, Zhou & Leder, "Being moved by modern abstract art" and PLOS One on repeated exposure and aesthetic chills.