English-speakers sometimes say that they feel "moved to tears," "emotionally touched," "stirred," or that something "warmed their heart;" other languages use similar passive contact metaphors to refer to an affective state. The authors propose and measure the concept of kama muta to understand experiences often given these and other labels. Do the same experiences evoke the same kama muta emotion across nations and languages? They conducted studies in 19 different countries, 5 continents, 15 languages, with a total of 3,542 participants. They tested the construct while validating a comprehensive scale to measure the appraisals, valence, bodily sensations, motivation, and lexical labels posited to characterize kama muta. The results are congruent with theory and previous findings showing that kama muta is a distinct positive social relational emotion that is evoked by experiencing or observing a sudden intensification of communal sharing. It is commonly accompanied by a warm feeling in the chest, moist eyes or tears, chills or piloerection, feeling choked up or having a lump in the throat, buoyancy, and exhilaration. It motivates affective devotion and moral commitment to communal sharing. Although the authors observed some variations across cultures, these 5 facets of kama muta are highly correlated in every sample, supporting the validity of the construct and the measure. (PsycINFO Database Record

Tearful crying is a ubiquitous and likely uniquely human phenomenon. Scholars have argued that emotional tears serve an attachment function: Tears are thought to act as a social glue by evoking social support intentions. Initial experimental studies supported this proposition across several methodologies, but these were conducted almost exclusively on participants from North America and Europe, resulting in limited generalizability. This project examined the tears-social support intentions effect and possible mediating and moderating variables in a fully pre-registered study across 7,007 participants (24,886 ratings) and 41 countries spanning all populated continents. Participants were presented with four pictures out of 100 possible targets with or without digitally-added tears. We confirmed the main prediction that seeing a tearful individual elicits the intention to support, d = .49 [.43, .55]. Our data suggest that this effect could be mediated by perceiving the crying target as warmer and more helpless, feeling more connected, as well as feeling more empathic concern for the crier, but not by an increase in personal distress of the observer. The effect was moderated by the situational valence, identifying the target as part of one's group, and trait empathic concern. A neutral situation, high trait empathic concern, and low identification increased the effect. We observed high heterogeneity across countries that was, via split-half validation, best explained by countrylevel GDP per capita and subjective well-being with stronger effects for higher-scoring countries. These findings suggest that tears can function as social glue, providing one possible explanation why emotional crying persists into adulthood.

Negative emotional appeals do not always help to reduce risk behaviors. We report two studies about a new strategy based on the presentation of appeals with mixed sequential emotions (e.g., sadness/fear-joy/relief). Study 1 shows that a mixed message generates lower post-message discomfort than an exclusively negative message; moreover, in this first study, reported probability of performing the risk behavior, binge drinking, in the future is also lower in the mixed condition. Study 2 replicates these results and relates them to the extended parallel process model (EPPM) (Witte, 1992). Here, the mixed emotional message again generates lower post-message discomfort than the negative one, and participants are motivated to control the danger (response efficacy is evaluated more positively in the mixed condition).

Esta es la versión de autor del artículo publicado en: This is an author produced version of a paper published in: AbstractThe Theory of Planned Behavior offers a parsimonious explanation of purposive behavior, but in the study of healthy and risk behaviors its sufficiency may be questioned (Perugini & Bagozzi, 2001). Working in the field of binge-drinking, we used two strategies for improving predictions from TPB: using new proximal antecedents of behaviors and adding new predictors. Resultsshow that behavioral intention (BI) and behavioral expectations (BE) are not equivalent constructs, so that they cannot be used interchangeably. Hierarchical regression analyses show that where anticipated emotions (joy) improved TPB explanation about BI, anticipatory emotions (joy) did so about BE. The higher the future joy, anticipated or anticipatory, the higher, respectively, the intention and expectation to perform risk behavior in the near future.Future-oriented emotions 2

Esta es la versión de autor del artículo publicado en: This is an author produced version of a paper published in: El acceso a la versión del editor puede requerir la suscripción del recurso Access to the published version may require subscription Observing a person in need usually provokes a compound and dynamic emotional experience 3 made up of empathy and personal distress which, in turn, may influence helping behavior. As the 4 exclusive use of rating scales to measure these two emotions does not permit the analysis of their 5 concurrent evolution, we added the Analogical Emotional Scale (AES) in order to measure how 6 these two emotions evolve throughout the emotional experience, from its onset to its conclusion. 7Therefore, in two studies, the concurrence of empathy and personal distress was induced, both 8 rating scales and AES were used, and participants were given an unexpected opportunity to help. 9Two effects were found. First, the helping behavior was lower when personal distress prevailed 10 over empathy at the end of the experience (Studies 1 and 2). Second, this "end" effect was 11 coherent with the nature of the different motives evoked by personal distress and empathy -12 directed to increasing either one's own welfare (egoistic) or the victim's welfare (altruism) 13 (Study 2). These results support the usefulness of combining the rating scales and the AES for 14 gaining a better understanding of the nature and behavioral consequences of complex, compound 15 and dynamic emotional experiences. 16Keys words: empathy, personal distress, helping behavior. Can we feel both empathy and personal distress together? Yes, we can. Research has 3 consistently shown that these two emotions (a) are elicited by the situation of perceiving a person 4 in need, (b) are usually reported in rating scales as occurring simultaneously, and (c) may lead to 5 an increase in helping behavior (for a review, see Batson, Fultz, Schoenrade & Paduano 1987). 6 However, our initial question is not altogether irrelevant; while previous studies have shown that 7 the response to another's relatively severe and unexpected need involves the emotional 8 experiences of empathy and distress, distinguishing between these two emotional reactions has 9 been highlighted as important, and for two reasons: they are easily confused with one another 10 (Batson, Early & Salvarani, 1997) and they have a powerful effect on helping behavior (for a 11 review see Batson, 1991; Batson, 2011). 12Focusing on both their usual misidentification and their impact on helping behavior, 13 researchers have warned that empathy and personal distress are two emotions with very different 14 natures. For example, Batson and collaborators claim that empathy is an other-oriented emotion 15 that evokes the altruistic motivation to reduce the other's need, whereas personal distress is a 16 self-oriented emotion that evokes the egoistic motivation to reduce one's own aversive arousal 17 (Batson, Duncan, Ackerman, Buckley, & Birch, 1981; Batson, O'Quin, Fultz, Vanderpla...

Previous research has shown that while considering future behavioral intentions, desirability is more salient in making decisions in an abstract mindset than in a concrete one. Based on this premise, we test whether behavioral intentions to engage in desirable but difficult actions are more likely in an abstract mindset than a concrete mindset. We experimentally manipulated (Studies 1 through 4 using cognitive primes) and measured as a personal disposition (Study 5 using the Behavioral Identification Form) the construal level to evaluate its influence on the willingness to perform challenges. The behaviors tested focused on self-benefits (Studies 4 and 5) and benefits to others (Studies 1 through 3 and 5). Studies 1 and 2 included only demanding behaviors, whereas Studies 3 through 5 included both difficult and easy conditions. In Studies 1 and 2, the participants were more motivated to attempt a difficult task when they were in an abstract mindset. In Studies 3 through 5, the participants in the abstract (compared to concrete) mindset reported a greater willingness and commitment to attempt desirable but demanding behaviors. Finally, in Study 5, the influence of the construal level on the global behavioral plan index (three behaviors) was moderated by feasibility. Public Significance StatementThe present studies suggest that an abstract style of thinking enhances people's intentions to perform desirable but demanding actions. An abstract construal level is a personal trait that can be modified by different procedures. Interventions aiming to change the construal level could be useful in clinical and educational settings and social communication campaigns to persuade the broader population to overcome difficulties associated with the recommended behavior.

Background: Nicaragua is one of the poorest countries in Latin America, with an extremely low human development index (HDI). Fifty-two percent of the Nicaraguan population are children and adolescents under 18 years of age. Nicaraguan adolescents present several risk behaviors (such as teenage pregnancies, consumption of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis). Our study examines the links between risk behaviors, fatalism, real economic scarcity, and concrete construal level for adolescents with low and middle-low socioeconomic status in Nicaragua. Methods: Nicaraguan adolescents (N = 834) from schools located in especially vulnerable areas (low economic status) or in neighborhoods with middle-low social class completed several scales and questions to evaluate fatalism (SFC—social fatalism scale), construal level (BIF) and their past and future risk behaviors (smoking cigarettes, smoking cannabis, unsafe sex, and alcohol consumption). Results: We identified that the poorest individuals who maintained a concrete style of thinking had the highest rates of past and future risk behaviors. This vulnerable group also reported the highest levels of fatalism, i.e., negative attitudes and feelings of helplessness. Encouragingly, the adolescents who were able to maintain an abstract mindset reported healthier past and future habits and lower fatalism, even when they belonged to the lowest social status. In the middle-low economic group, the construal level was not as relevant to maintaining healthy habits, as adolescents reported similar rates of past and future risk behavior at both construal levels. Conclusions: All these results support the importance of considering construal level when studying vulnerable populations and designing risk prevention programs.

People sometimes want attitudes that differ from the ones they currently possess. These desired attitudes appear to be psychologically meaningful, but little is known about the properties of these evaluations. Because desired attitudes are hypothetical constructs (i.e., attitudes that one does not yet possess) and are distant in time (i.e., attitudes one could have in the future), we argued, based on construal level theory, that they should be represented in a relatively abstract manner, and consequently, we examined the implications of this abstractness for the characteristics and impact of desired attitudes. Consistent with this, we demonstrate that people perceive desired attitudes as more invariant across time and context, that desired attitudes are less impacted by changes in low-level features related to the attitude object (Study 1a and 1b) and that desired attitudes have a greater impact on behavioral intentions when people are in an abstract rather than concrete mindset (Studies 2–3). Although we did not make specific predictions regarding actual attitudes, they better predicted behavioral intentions in the concrete mindset (Studies 2–3). This last result should be taken with caution, considering that the level of abstraction shown by actual attitudes in Study 1a was at or slightly above the midpoint of our abstraction indexThis work was supported by MINECO (PSI 2014-53321-P