Some aspects of this trait are inherently emotional (loving variety, appreciating beauty), and others are cognitive (imagination, intellectual curiosity). Studies have shown that people who possess this trait have unusually active imaginations, appreciate beauty and nature, seek out new experiences, often reflect deeply on their feelings, and love variety in life. Results from the personality test showed that the listeners who experienced frisson also scored high for a personality trait called Openness to Experience. This participant scored high on a personality trait called ‘Openness to Experience.’ Author provided The role of personality
In this case, each of these peaks of excitement coincided with the participant reporting experiencing frisson in reaction to the music.
The peaks of each line represent moments when the participant was particularly cognitively or emotionally aroused by the music. This graph shows the reactions of one listener in the lab. For example, in the Bach piece, the tension built up by the orchestra during the first 80 seconds is finally released by the entrance of the choir – a particularly charged moment that’s likely to elicit frisson.Īs participants listened to these pieces of music, lab assistants asked them to report their experiences of frisson by pressing a small button, which created a temporal log of each listening session.īy comparing these data to the physiological measures and to a personality test that the participants had completed, we were, for the first time, able to draw some unique conclusions about why frisson might be happening more often for some listeners than for others. The first two minutes of Hans Zimmer’s Oogway AscendsĮach of these pieces contains at least one thrilling moment that is known to cause frisson in listeners (several have been used in previous studies). The first three minutes and 21 seconds of Vangelis’ Mythodea: Movement 6 The first 53 seconds of Air Supply’s Making Love Out of Nothing At All The first two minutes and 18 seconds of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. John’s Passion: Part 1 – Herr, unser Herrscher The first two minutes and 11 seconds of J. Participants were then invited to listen to several pieces of music as lab assistants monitored their responses to the music in real time.Įxamples of pieces used in the study include:
#SKINS SPINE2D SKIN#
To test this hypothesis, participants were brought into the lab and wired up to an instrument that measures galvanic skin response, a measure of how the electrical resistance of people’s skin changes when they become physiologically aroused. And we suspected that whether or not someone would become cognitively immersed in a piece of music in the first place would be a result of his or her personality type. We predicted that if a person were more cognitively immersed in a piece of music, then he or she might be more likely to experience frisson as a result of paying closer attention to the stimuli. Monitoring how the skin responds to music Research regarding the prevalence of frisson has varied widely, with studies showing anywhere between 55 percent and 86 percent of the population being able to experience the effect. But the physiological structure is still in place, and it may have been rewired to produce aesthetic chills as a reaction to emotionally moving stimuli, like great beauty in art or nature. Since we invented clothing, humans have had less of a need for this endothermic layer of heat. Why do a song and a cool breeze produce the same physiological response? EverJean/flickr, CC BY