![]() The next step, ideally, is to start trying to pin down the physiological basis of the sensation. “We hope our work will provide a platform for more sophisticated work in the future, but we saw it as a starting point,” explains Davis. “I think the lack of evidence that ASMR was experienced by such a huge group of people may be why it was overlooked, or written off as an oddly described version of frisson (‘goosebumps’), in the past,” she adds.īarratt and Davis don’t see their study as a complete story rather, it’s a foot in the door for researchers interested in studying the phenomenon. “Before the online community existed, I’ve heard many people who experience ASMR say they thought they were the only ones that experienced it,” says Barratt. That, coupled with the fact that it’s a difficult sensation to explain to someone who doesn’t experience it, may go some way to explaining why there wasn’t even a term to describe it until 2010. For one, it’s an inherently personal, private experience, and perhaps one that hasn’t traditionally lent itself to cropping up in conversation all that often. Very few people reported a sexual motivation for ASMR, it really is about feeling relaxed or vulnerable with another person,” adds Davis.īut given its popularity, why has the psychological research community neglected the sensation until now? There could be lots of reasons. “The fact that a huge number of people are triggered by whispering voices suggests that the sensation is related to being intimate with someone in a non-sexual way. Our findings will hopefully dispel that idea,” explains Barratt. “There are a lot of people who latch onto some ASMR videos involving attractive women and dismiss what we found to be a very nuanced activity as exclusively sexual. Only 5% of participants reported that they used ASMR media for sexual stimulation, which is counter to a common perception of the videos found online. For the most part, participants reported that they watched ASMR videos for relaxation purposes, or to help them sleep or deal with stress. There was a remarkable consistency across participants in terms of triggering content – whispering worked for the majority of people, followed by videos involving some sort of personal attention, crisp sounds, and slow movements. The study asked a range of questions about where, when and why people watch ASMR videos, whether there was any consistency in ASMR-triggering content, as well as whether individuals felt it had any effect on their mood. The ASMR videos that give YouTube viewers ‘head orgasms’ Guardian So we wanted to know if everybody’s ASMR experience is the same, and of people tend to be triggered by the same sorts of things.” “The sensations people describe are quite hard to describe, and that’s odd because people are usually quite good at describing bodily sensation. “ASMR is interesting to me as a psychologist because it’s a bit ‘weird’” says Davis, now at Manchester Metropolitan University. In March last year, Emma Barratt, a graduate student at Swansea University, and Dr Nick Davis, then a lecturer at the same institution, published the results of a survey of some 500 ASMR enthusiasts. To date, only one research paper has been published on the phenomenon. The trouble is, there isn’t actually much research on ASMR out there. ![]() ![]() It’s well worth a watch, but I couldn’t help but feel it would have been a bit more interesting if there had been some scientific background in it. That stimulus could be anything, but over the past few years, a subculture has developed around YouTube videos, and their growing popularity was the focus of a video posted on the Guardian this last week. Those who experience it often characterise it as a tingling sensation in the back of the head or neck, or another part of the body, in response to some sort of sensory stimulus. Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, or ASMR, is a curious phenomenon.
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