Survey

Participate in a research study about ASMR, intelligence, and personality traits

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Toloue Askarirad is a graduate student in the School of Psychology at The University of Adelaide in Australia.

Her research thesis is exploring an association between intelligence, personality traits, and ASMR, and is titled, “Do intelligence and personality traits influence ASMR perception?”

Toloue is looking for participants to take her online survey, which has been reviewed and approved by a Human Research Ethics Subcommittee.  The faculty supervisor of her project is Professor Nick Burns.

The survey is open to individuals who watch ASMR videos, is fully anonymous, will not take longer than 40 minutes, and the results will only be used for academic purposes.

The survey will remain open until 200 participants have participated (or until June 30th, 2019).

Below is a link to the survey and more information.

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Interesting data from an ASMR spa survey

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Would you be interested in an ASMR spa?

Amanda Rose Doherty is currently an Account Manager at a software company in Barcelona, Spain.  She received her Business Studies Degree in Marketing at Dublin City University.

Amanda was considering the idea of opening an ASMR spa.  She created a survey in 2016 to assess interest in this idea  and I wrote an article about her with a link to her survey.

The bad news is that Amanda has shifted her focus away from creating an ASMR spa, but the good news is that she has shared the results of her survey with me – and the data shows that there is a strong interest in ASMR spas.

She had over 600 responses and has given me permission to share her interesting data below.  Below are results from her survey, followed by a link if you would like to learn more about her.

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Participate in a research study about ASMR experiences

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Thomas Swart is a postgraduate student, pursuing his PhD in Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.

His research thesis is investigating the neurotransmitters, brain regions, and neural mechanisms that drive ASMR. In order to do this he aims to initially validate the presence of ASMR in individuals via an online questionnaire rather than solely relying on self-reported measures.

His thesis is titled: “Explaining Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response”, and his faculty advisor for the study is Dr. Michael Banissy, Professor of Psychology and Co-Head of Department at Goldsmiths University.  Dr Banissy has co-authored two prior published studies about ASMR.

Thomas is looking for participants to take his online survey, which has been reviewed and approved by an Ethics Committee.  The survey is open to everyone who is 18 or older, regardless if you do or don’t experience ASMR.  The survey is fully anonymous (GDPR-compliant), will take 30-40 minutes to complete, and the results will only be used for academic purposes.

The survey will remain open until sufficient responses enable a further revision of the questionnaire to more accurately validate the presence of ASMR in an individual.

Below is a link to the survey and more info.

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Participate in a research study about watching ASMR videos

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Anthony El-Chaar is a graduate student, pursuing an M.A. in media studies at Notre Dame University in Lebanon.

His research thesis is investigating the experiences and motivations of watching ASMR videos. The thesis is titled: “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response: What is the Phenomenon Behind the Tingling Sensation?”  His faculty advisor for the study is Dr. Jessica El-Khoury, Assistant Professor at Notre Dame University.

Anthony is looking for participants to take his online survey. The survey is open to individuals who watch ASMR videos. The survey is fully anonymous and the results will only be used for academic purposes. The survey will take 10 minutes maximum to complete.

The survey will remain open until 300 participants have participated.

Below is a link to the survey and more info.

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Graduate student completes research study about the role of ASMR in the service industry

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ASMR Autonomous Sensory Meridian ResponseI posted a prior article titled, “Participate in a research study about the role of ASMR in the service industry.”

Good news, the research study is completed and some results are now available.

The researcher was Vladimir Fedoseev, a graduate student pursuing his MBA at the Varna University of Management in Varna, Bulgaria (a partner university of Cardiff Metropolitan University in Wales).

His dissertation focused on the involvement of ASMR in the service industry and is titled, “Effect of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) on Service User Experience”

He investigated how ASMR triggers, like soft speech, gentle sounds, careful hand movements, light touch, personal attention, and kind personalities, might effect experiences with hairdressers, doctors, hotel clerks, and others in the service industry.

In this second interview with Vladimir he reviews the details of his methods and shares some results of his research project.

One curious observation I noticed in his results is that gentle sounds, soft speech, and personal attention were the top triggers perceived by participants to cause ASMR in services, but the services with increasing reliance of light touch (like a hairdresser) showed increasing likelihood of stimulating ASMR.  This could imply that light touch is a stronger contributor in service-mediated ASMR than the participants realized.

Below are my questions in bold, his replies in italics, and links to learn more about his research project.

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Published research study focuses on misophonia and ASMR

/ Dr. Richard / 1 Comment

ASMR Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response UniversityThis is the second ASMR research study published by Dr Agnieszka Janik McErlean (Bath Spa University, UK) and Dr Michael Banissy (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK).

Their prior study was titled, “Assessing individual variation in personality and empathy traits in self-reported ASMR” and was published March 30, 2017 in the journal Multisensory Research.

Their latest study is titled, “Increased misophonia in self-reported ASMR” and was published August 6, 2018 in the journal PeerJ.

Misophonia is common in discussions about ASMR because some people greatly enjoy ASMR trigger sounds like whispering, mouth sounds, and chewing but others will respond to those same sounds with annoyance, anger, or anxiety (misophonia).

Curiously, some people who report experiencing ASMR to some triggers also report experiencing misophonia to other triggers.  This hyper-sensitivity to sounds has people often wondering if people who experience ASMR are more likely to also experience misophonia.

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Published research study demonstrates physiological benefits of ASMR

/ Dr. Richard / 3 Comments

ASMR Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response UniversityA peer-reviewed research study is the first to report physiological changes while individuals experience ASMR.

The publication is titled, “More than a feeling: ASMR is characterized by reliable changes in affect and physiology” and is authored by Giulia Lara Poerio, Emma Blakey, and Theresa Veltri from the University of Sheffield (UK) and Thomas Hostler from the Manchester Metropolitan University (UK).  The research was published June 20, 2018 in the journal PLOS ONE.

The publication reported the results of two studies.  The first study involved about 1000 participants watching videos and reporting how they felt.  The second study involved about 100 participants watching videos, reporting how they felt, and having some physiological responses measured.

I will first summarize the methods and results of the first study, then summarize the methods and results of the second study.

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Participate in a research study about the role of ASMR in the service industry

/ Dr. Richard / 1 Comment

ASMR Autonomous Sensory Meridian ResponseVladimir Fedoseev is a graduate student pursuing his MBA at the Varna University of Management in Varna, Bulgaria (a partner university of Cardiff Metropolitan University in Wales).

His dissertation is investigating the involvement of ASMR in the service industry and is titled, “Effect of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) on Service User Experience”

This is an interesting topic.  How do the caring dispositions, light touches, hand movements, and personal attention from  hairdressers, servers, and hotel staff affect our experience (and perhaps the tips)?  Does being able to experience ASMR influence these interactions?

You can take his survey (link below) to share your experiences and perspectives.

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Research publication reports association between ASMR and misophonia

/ Dr. Richard / 1 Comment

ASMR Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response UniversityRomke Rouw of the University of Amsterdam and Mercede Erfanian of Maastricht University, both located in The Netherlands, have published a research paper on misophonia.

The paper is titled, “A large-scale study of misophonia” and was published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology as an epub in May 2017 and then as a journal article in March 2018.

The research study focuses mostly on misophonia but it does contain some data about ASMR.

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