Thomas W Schubert
Biographic Data
| ID | 130134 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas W Schubert |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas W |
| FAMILY NAME | Schubert |
| SIGNATURE | SCHUBERT T W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3797-4568 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 137 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Extending the reach of relational models theory: Measurement, model mixing, null relations, and mere dominance
Relational Models Theory (RMT) has provided a remarkably durable framework for understanding how humans coordinate social life through four elementary relational models. Yet despite its success, key issues at the periphery of the theory remain underdeveloped, misunderstood, or poorly operationalized. This article addresses several of these edge cases. First, I examine the available measurements and note that they support theory testing but bring …
Commensality constitutes communalism: Producing emergent bonds in experimental small groups by sharing food and drink
Relational models theory provides an alternative framework to study group and intergroup processes. One of four models people use to constitute groups is communal sharing (CS). Ethnographic and experimental evidence suggests that CS is produced by concrete and symbolic enactments of connections between bodies (cuddling, touching, synchronicity, commensality). We tested the effect of commensality on CS and ingroup favouritism in four Experiments w…
Valence, sensations and appraisals co-occurring with feeling moved: Evidence on kama muta theory from intra-individually cross-correlated time series
Emotional experiences typically labelled "being moved" or "feeling touched" may belong to one universal emotion. This emotion, which has been labelled "kama muta", is hypothesised to have a positive valence, be elicited by sudden intensifications of social closeness, and be accompanied by warmth, goosebumps and tears. Initial evidence on correlations among the kama muta components has been collected with self-reports after or during the emotion. …
Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries
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 …
Kama muta: Conceptualizing and measuring the experience often labelled being moved across 19 nations and 15 languages
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 studi…
Kama Muta: Similar Emotional Responses to Touching Videos Across the United States, Norway, China, Israel, and Portugal
Ethnographies, histories, and popular culture from many regions around the world suggest that marked moments of love, affection, solidarity, or identification everywhere evoke the same emotion. Based on these observations, we developed the kama muta model, in which we conceptualize what people in English often label being moved as a culturally implemented social-relational emotion responding to and regulating communal sharing relations. We hypoth…
The Best-Loved Story of All Time: Overcoming All Obstacles to Be Reunited, Evoking Kama Muta
Article The Best-Loved Story of All Time: Overcoming All Obstacles to Be Reunited, Evoking Kama Muta was published on April 1, 2017 in the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture (volume 1, issue 1)
Interpersonal closeness and morality predict feelings of being moved
We discovered that events of positive tears, rather than negative tears, were associated with self-reported being moved or touched, with goosebumps, with feelings of chest warmth, and with the appraisals of increased closeness and moral acts. These appraisals mediated the difference in being moved between positive and negative events. We further found that appraisal patterns for personally experienced events were similar to the patterns for obser…
The Sudden Devotion Emotion: Kama Muta and the Cultural Practices Whose Function Is to Evoke It
When communal sharing relationships (CSRs) suddenly intensify, people experience an emotion that English speakers may label, depending on context, "moved," "touched," "heart-warming," "nostalgia," "patriotism," or "rapture" (although sometimes people use each of these terms for other emotions). We call the emotion kama muta (Sanskrit, "moved by love"). Kama muta evokes adaptive motives to devote and commit to the CSRs that are fundamental to soci…
A short history of the weight-importance effect and a recommendation for pre-testing: Commentary on Ebersole et al. (2016)
Caring for Sharing: How Attachment Styles Modulate Communal Cues of Physical Warmth
Does physical warmth lead to caring and sharing? Research suggests that it does; physically warm versus cold conditions induce prosocial behaviors and cognitions. Importantly, previous research has not traced the developmental origins of the association between physical warmth and affection. The association between physical warmth and sharing may be captured in specific cognitive models of close social relations, often referred to as attachment s…
The Effect of Spatial Elevation on Respect Depends on Merit and Medium
Five experiments investigated the effects of spatial elevation on person perception in both a computer setup and actual encounters, determining the moderating role of additional verbal information about the target. In accordance with prior findings, spatial elevation increased respect in a computer setting, especially when the target was described as nonachieving. Liking toward the target was not affected. In an actual encounter the results were …
When different means bad or merely worse. How minimal and maximal goals affect ingroup projection and outgroup attitudes
Group members tend to perceive their ingroup relative to an outgroup as more prototypical for a common superordinate group because they project features of their ingroup onto the superordinate group. As a consequence, the ingroup is perceived as more positive than the outgroup (Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999). We extend the ingroup projection model by examining different types of ingroup goals: minimal and maximal goals as well as actual and ideal goal…
The contexts and structures of relating to others: How memberships in different types of groups shape the construction of interpersonal relationships
A study tested hypotheses derived from relational models theory on how four models - communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, and market pricing - are used to structure relationships in different types of social groupings. Portuguese participants rated 10 relationships on the Modes of Relationships Questionnaire and reported their shared group memberships. The four-factor structure of the models was confirmed, and a bottom-up appro…
Weight as an Embodiment of Importance
Four studies show that the abstract concept of importance is grounded in bodily experiences of weight. Participants provided judgments of importance while they held either a heavy or a light clipboard. Holding a heavy clipboard increased judgments of monetary value (Study 1) and made participants consider fair decision-making procedures to be more important (Study 2). It also caused more elaborate thinking, as indicated by higher consistency betw…
A New Conception of Spatial Presence: Once Again, with Feeling
Recent theories of telepresence or spatial presence in a virtual environment argue that it is a subjective experience of being in the virtual environment, and that it is the outcome of constructing a mental model of the self as being located in the virtual environment. However, current theories fail to explain how the subjective experience of spatial presence emerges from the unconscious spatial cognition processes. To fill this gap, spatial pres…
Embodiment as a unifying perspective for psychology
Adaptive action is the function of cognition. It is constrained by the properties of evolved brains and bodies. An embodied perspective on social psychology examines how biological constrains give expression to human function in socially situated contexts. Key contributions in social psychology have highlighted the interface between the body and cognition, but theoretical development in social psychology and embodiment research remain largely dis…
The embodied self: Making a fist enhances men’s power-related self-conceptions
In line with recent theories of embodied cognition, the authors propose that the self-concept may be embodied in sensory-motor representations. To test this notion, two studies investigated the effects of bodily feedback from a gesture associated with power (making a fist) on the self-concept. As expected, making a fist led male participants to perceive themselves as more assertive and esteemed (Study 1) and to display stronger associations betwe…
Feel the difference! The influence of ease experiences on the direction of social comparisons
The present work investigates if ease/difficulty experiences associated with social comparison information shape the direction of the comparison. In particular, we test the hypothesis that standards of comparison associated with experiences of ease lead to assimilation whereas standards processed under experiences of difficulty result in comparative contrast. In line with this hypothesis, we found in Experiment 1 that the easy processing of a sta…
Your Highness: Vertical Positions as Perceptual Symbols of Power
Metaphorically, power equals up. Drawing on embodied theories of cognition, the author argues that thinking about power involves mental simulation of space and can be interfered with by perception of vertical differences. Study 1 assessed image schemas for power and found a shared vertical difference metaphor. Studies 2, 3, and 4 showed that the judgment of a group's power is influenced by the group's vertical position in space and motor response…
Contrast from social stereotypes in automatic behavior
Overlap of Self, Ingroup, and Outgroup: Pictorial Measures of Self-Categorization
Everyday language suggests that spatial metaphors are used to describe one’s relation to a group and the relation between two groups. Building on previous work in the domain of interpersonal relations, three graphical items for the overlap of self and ingroup, self and outgroup, and ingroup and outgroup are proposed. Three survey studies with different types of groups show the convergent validity of these items. Assessments of subjective interpre…
The Experience of Presence: Factor Analytic Insights
Within an embodied cognition framework, it is argued that presence in a virtual environment (VE) develops from the construction of a spatial-functional mental model of the VE. Two cognitive processes lead to this model: the representation of bodily actions as possible actions in the VE, and the suppression of incompatible sensory input. It is hypothesized that the conscious sense of presence reflects these two components as spatial presence and i…
Your Highness: Vertical Positions as Perceptual Symbols of Power
Metaphorically, power equals up. Drawing on embodied theories of cognition, the author argues that thinking about power involves mental simulation of space and can be interfered with by perception of vertical differences. Study 1 assessed image schemas for power and found a shared vertical difference metaphor. Studies 2, 3, and 4 showed that the judgment of a group's power is influenced by the group's vertical position in space and motor response…
Contrast from social stereotypes in automatic behavior
The Sudden Devotion Emotion: Kama Muta and the Cultural Practices Whose Function Is to Evoke It
When communal sharing relationships (CSRs) suddenly intensify, people experience an emotion that English speakers may label, depending on context, "moved," "touched," "heart-warming," "nostalgia," "patriotism," or "rapture" (although sometimes people use each of these terms for other emotions). We call the emotion kama muta (Sanskrit, "moved by love"). Kama muta evokes adaptive motives to devote and commit to the CSRs that are fundamental to soci…
A New Conception of Spatial Presence: Once Again, with Feeling
Recent theories of telepresence or spatial presence in a virtual environment argue that it is a subjective experience of being in the virtual environment, and that it is the outcome of constructing a mental model of the self as being located in the virtual environment. However, current theories fail to explain how the subjective experience of spatial presence emerges from the unconscious spatial cognition processes. To fill this gap, spatial pres…
The embodied self: Making a fist enhances men’s power-related self-conceptions
In line with recent theories of embodied cognition, the authors propose that the self-concept may be embodied in sensory-motor representations. To test this notion, two studies investigated the effects of bodily feedback from a gesture associated with power (making a fist) on the self-concept. As expected, making a fist led male participants to perceive themselves as more assertive and esteemed (Study 1) and to display stronger associations betwe…
Caring for Sharing: How Attachment Styles Modulate Communal Cues of Physical Warmth
Does physical warmth lead to caring and sharing? Research suggests that it does; physically warm versus cold conditions induce prosocial behaviors and cognitions. Importantly, previous research has not traced the developmental origins of the association between physical warmth and affection. The association between physical warmth and sharing may be captured in specific cognitive models of close social relations, often referred to as attachment s…
Embodiment as a unifying perspective for psychology
Adaptive action is the function of cognition. It is constrained by the properties of evolved brains and bodies. An embodied perspective on social psychology examines how biological constrains give expression to human function in socially situated contexts. Key contributions in social psychology have highlighted the interface between the body and cognition, but theoretical development in social psychology and embodiment research remain largely dis…
Kama Muta: Similar Emotional Responses to Touching Videos Across the United States, Norway, China, Israel, and Portugal
Ethnographies, histories, and popular culture from many regions around the world suggest that marked moments of love, affection, solidarity, or identification everywhere evoke the same emotion. Based on these observations, we developed the kama muta model, in which we conceptualize what people in English often label being moved as a culturally implemented social-relational emotion responding to and regulating communal sharing relations. We hypoth…
When different means bad or merely worse. How minimal and maximal goals affect ingroup projection and outgroup attitudes
Group members tend to perceive their ingroup relative to an outgroup as more prototypical for a common superordinate group because they project features of their ingroup onto the superordinate group. As a consequence, the ingroup is perceived as more positive than the outgroup (Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999). We extend the ingroup projection model by examining different types of ingroup goals: minimal and maximal goals as well as actual and ideal goal…
Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries
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 …
The contexts and structures of relating to others: How memberships in different types of groups shape the construction of interpersonal relationships
A study tested hypotheses derived from relational models theory on how four models - communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, and market pricing - are used to structure relationships in different types of social groupings. Portuguese participants rated 10 relationships on the Modes of Relationships Questionnaire and reported their shared group memberships. The four-factor structure of the models was confirmed, and a bottom-up appro…
Feel the difference! The influence of ease experiences on the direction of social comparisons
The present work investigates if ease/difficulty experiences associated with social comparison information shape the direction of the comparison. In particular, we test the hypothesis that standards of comparison associated with experiences of ease lead to assimilation whereas standards processed under experiences of difficulty result in comparative contrast. In line with this hypothesis, we found in Experiment 1 that the easy processing of a sta…
The Effect of Spatial Elevation on Respect Depends on Merit and Medium
Five experiments investigated the effects of spatial elevation on person perception in both a computer setup and actual encounters, determining the moderating role of additional verbal information about the target. In accordance with prior findings, spatial elevation increased respect in a computer setting, especially when the target was described as nonachieving. Liking toward the target was not affected. In an actual encounter the results were …
The Experience of Presence: Factor Analytic Insights
Within an embodied cognition framework, it is argued that presence in a virtual environment (VE) develops from the construction of a spatial-functional mental model of the VE. Two cognitive processes lead to this model: the representation of bodily actions as possible actions in the VE, and the suppression of incompatible sensory input. It is hypothesized that the conscious sense of presence reflects these two components as spatial presence and i…
Overlap of Self, Ingroup, and Outgroup: Pictorial Measures of Self-Categorization
Everyday language suggests that spatial metaphors are used to describe one’s relation to a group and the relation between two groups. Building on previous work in the domain of interpersonal relations, three graphical items for the overlap of self and ingroup, self and outgroup, and ingroup and outgroup are proposed. Three survey studies with different types of groups show the convergent validity of these items. Assessments of subjective interpre…
Contrast from social stereotypes in automatic behavior
Your Highness: Vertical Positions as Perceptual Symbols of Power
Metaphorically, power equals up. Drawing on embodied theories of cognition, the author argues that thinking about power involves mental simulation of space and can be interfered with by perception of vertical differences. Study 1 assessed image schemas for power and found a shared vertical difference metaphor. Studies 2, 3, and 4 showed that the judgment of a group's power is influenced by the group's vertical position in space and motor response…
Feel the difference! The influence of ease experiences on the direction of social comparisons
The present work investigates if ease/difficulty experiences associated with social comparison information shape the direction of the comparison. In particular, we test the hypothesis that standards of comparison associated with experiences of ease lead to assimilation whereas standards processed under experiences of difficulty result in comparative contrast. In line with this hypothesis, we found in Experiment 1 that the easy processing of a sta…
Weight as an Embodiment of Importance
Four studies show that the abstract concept of importance is grounded in bodily experiences of weight. Participants provided judgments of importance while they held either a heavy or a light clipboard. Holding a heavy clipboard increased judgments of monetary value (Study 1) and made participants consider fair decision-making procedures to be more important (Study 2). It also caused more elaborate thinking, as indicated by higher consistency betw…
A New Conception of Spatial Presence: Once Again, with Feeling
Recent theories of telepresence or spatial presence in a virtual environment argue that it is a subjective experience of being in the virtual environment, and that it is the outcome of constructing a mental model of the self as being located in the virtual environment. However, current theories fail to explain how the subjective experience of spatial presence emerges from the unconscious spatial cognition processes. To fill this gap, spatial pres…
Embodiment as a unifying perspective for psychology
Adaptive action is the function of cognition. It is constrained by the properties of evolved brains and bodies. An embodied perspective on social psychology examines how biological constrains give expression to human function in socially situated contexts. Key contributions in social psychology have highlighted the interface between the body and cognition, but theoretical development in social psychology and embodiment research remain largely dis…
The embodied self: Making a fist enhances men’s power-related self-conceptions
In line with recent theories of embodied cognition, the authors propose that the self-concept may be embodied in sensory-motor representations. To test this notion, two studies investigated the effects of bodily feedback from a gesture associated with power (making a fist) on the self-concept. As expected, making a fist led male participants to perceive themselves as more assertive and esteemed (Study 1) and to display stronger associations betwe…
The contexts and structures of relating to others: How memberships in different types of groups shape the construction of interpersonal relationships
A study tested hypotheses derived from relational models theory on how four models - communal sharing, authority ranking, equality matching, and market pricing - are used to structure relationships in different types of social groupings. Portuguese participants rated 10 relationships on the Modes of Relationships Questionnaire and reported their shared group memberships. The four-factor structure of the models was confirmed, and a bottom-up appro…
The Effect of Spatial Elevation on Respect Depends on Merit and Medium
Five experiments investigated the effects of spatial elevation on person perception in both a computer setup and actual encounters, determining the moderating role of additional verbal information about the target. In accordance with prior findings, spatial elevation increased respect in a computer setting, especially when the target was described as nonachieving. Liking toward the target was not affected. In an actual encounter the results were …
When different means bad or merely worse. How minimal and maximal goals affect ingroup projection and outgroup attitudes
Group members tend to perceive their ingroup relative to an outgroup as more prototypical for a common superordinate group because they project features of their ingroup onto the superordinate group. As a consequence, the ingroup is perceived as more positive than the outgroup (Mummendey & Wenzel, 1999). We extend the ingroup projection model by examining different types of ingroup goals: minimal and maximal goals as well as actual and ideal goal…
Caring for Sharing: How Attachment Styles Modulate Communal Cues of Physical Warmth
Does physical warmth lead to caring and sharing? Research suggests that it does; physically warm versus cold conditions induce prosocial behaviors and cognitions. Importantly, previous research has not traced the developmental origins of the association between physical warmth and affection. The association between physical warmth and sharing may be captured in specific cognitive models of close social relations, often referred to as attachment s…
A short history of the weight-importance effect and a recommendation for pre-testing: Commentary on Ebersole et al. (2016)
The Best-Loved Story of All Time: Overcoming All Obstacles to Be Reunited, Evoking Kama Muta
Article The Best-Loved Story of All Time: Overcoming All Obstacles to Be Reunited, Evoking Kama Muta was published on April 1, 2017 in the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture (volume 1, issue 1)
Interpersonal closeness and morality predict feelings of being moved
We discovered that events of positive tears, rather than negative tears, were associated with self-reported being moved or touched, with goosebumps, with feelings of chest warmth, and with the appraisals of increased closeness and moral acts. These appraisals mediated the difference in being moved between positive and negative events. We further found that appraisal patterns for personally experienced events were similar to the patterns for obser…
The Sudden Devotion Emotion: Kama Muta and the Cultural Practices Whose Function Is to Evoke It
When communal sharing relationships (CSRs) suddenly intensify, people experience an emotion that English speakers may label, depending on context, "moved," "touched," "heart-warming," "nostalgia," "patriotism," or "rapture" (although sometimes people use each of these terms for other emotions). We call the emotion kama muta (Sanskrit, "moved by love"). Kama muta evokes adaptive motives to devote and commit to the CSRs that are fundamental to soci…
Kama muta: Conceptualizing and measuring the experience often labelled being moved across 19 nations and 15 languages
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 studi…
Kama Muta: Similar Emotional Responses to Touching Videos Across the United States, Norway, China, Israel, and Portugal
Ethnographies, histories, and popular culture from many regions around the world suggest that marked moments of love, affection, solidarity, or identification everywhere evoke the same emotion. Based on these observations, we developed the kama muta model, in which we conceptualize what people in English often label being moved as a culturally implemented social-relational emotion responding to and regulating communal sharing relations. We hypoth…
Tears evoke the intention to offer social support: A systematic investigation of the interpersonal effects of emotional crying across 41 countries
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 …
Valence, sensations and appraisals co-occurring with feeling moved: Evidence on kama muta theory from intra-individually cross-correlated time series
Emotional experiences typically labelled "being moved" or "feeling touched" may belong to one universal emotion. This emotion, which has been labelled "kama muta", is hypothesised to have a positive valence, be elicited by sudden intensifications of social closeness, and be accompanied by warmth, goosebumps and tears. Initial evidence on correlations among the kama muta components has been collected with self-reports after or during the emotion. …
Commensality constitutes communalism: Producing emergent bonds in experimental small groups by sharing food and drink
Relational models theory provides an alternative framework to study group and intergroup processes. One of four models people use to constitute groups is communal sharing (CS). Ethnographic and experimental evidence suggests that CS is produced by concrete and symbolic enactments of connections between bodies (cuddling, touching, synchronicity, commensality). We tested the effect of commensality on CS and ingroup favouritism in four Experiments w…
Extending the reach of relational models theory: Measurement, model mixing, null relations, and mere dominance
Relational Models Theory (RMT) has provided a remarkably durable framework for understanding how humans coordinate social life through four elementary relational models. Yet despite its success, key issues at the periphery of the theory remain underdeveloped, misunderstood, or poorly operationalized. This article addresses several of these edge cases. First, I examine the available measurements and note that they support theory testing but bring …
Psychology (18 works) · Social Psychology (16 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (10 works) · Cognitive psychology (9 works) · Cognition (8 works) · Developmental psychology (7 works) · Embodied cognition (7 works) · Action Observation and Synchronization (6 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (6 works)