Autonomous sensory Meridian response as a physically felt signature of positive and negative emotions

Introduction

Current research on Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) assumes that ASMR is always accompanied by contentment, and it is distinct from frisson due to positive emotions. Thus, research investigations tend to limit their scope to solely focusing on the sensation of relaxation that ASMR induces. This study explores whether it is possible to have a different emotional experience and still perceive ASMR, testing the theory of ASMR as an amplifier of pre-existing emotion instead of a determination of positive affect.

Methods

The emotional arousal and valence, and mood changes of 180 ASMR-capable and incapable individuals were analysed using questionnaires after altering the affective interpretation associated with auditory ASMR (tapping) with visual priming to examine whether the primed emotion (fearful, relaxing, or neutral) could be amplified.

Results

It was found that an ASMR response occurred in all priming conditions, including the fear priming group. No significant difference was found in the emotional outcome or mood of the neutral and relaxing priming groups. Upon comparison with ASMR-incapable individuals, both the relaxing and neutral priming groups demonstrated the same affect, but greater potent for ASMR-capable. Individuals who appraised ASMR after visual fear priming demonstrated a significant decrease in positive emotional valence and increased arousal.

Conclusion

The findings suggest that ASMR occurs in both positive and negative emotional situations, suppressing contentment induction if ASMR stimuli are interpreted negatively and amplifying contentment when interpreted positively. While more research is needed, the results highlight that ASMR and frisson might describe the same phenomenon, both a physically felt signature of emotion. Therapeutic usage of ASMR should carefully select appropriate stimuli that emphasise contentment to avoid potential health risks associated with negative emotions until a further understanding of ASMR's affective parameters has been established.

Proximal Binaural Sound Can Induce Subjective Frisson

Auditory frisson is the experience of feeling of cold or shivering related to sound in the absence of a physical cold stimulus. Multiple examples of frisson-inducing sounds have been reported, but the mechanism of auditory frisson remains elusive. Typical frisson-inducing sounds may contain a looming effect, in which a sound appears to approach the listener's peripersonal space. Previous studies on sound in peripersonal space have provided objective measurements of sound-inducing effects, but few have investigated the subjective experience of frisson-inducing sounds. Here we explored whether it is possible to produce subjective feelings of frisson by moving a noise sound (white noise, rolling beads noise, or frictional noise produced by rubbing a plastic bag) stimulus around a listener's head. Our results demonstrated that sound-induced frisson can be experienced stronger when auditory stimuli are rotated around the head (binaural moving sounds) than the one without the rotation (monaural static sounds), regardless of the source of the noise sound. Pearson's correlation analysis showed that several acoustic features of auditory stimuli, such as variance of interaural level difference (ILD), loudness, and sharpness, were correlated with the magnitude of subjective frisson. We had also observed that the subjective feelings of frisson by moving a musical sound had increased comparing with a static musical sound.