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Suppressing the Chills: Effects of Musical Manipulation on the Chills Response

Bannister, S.C.; Eerola, T.

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Authors

S.C. Bannister



Abstract

Research on musical chills has linked the response to multiple musical features; however, there exists no study that has attempted to manipulate musical stimuli to enable causal inferences, meaning current understanding is based mainly on correlational evidence. In the current study, participants who regularly experience chills (N = 24) listened to an original and manipulated version of three pieces reported to elicit chills in a previous survey. Predefined chills sections were removed to create manipulated conditions. The effects of these manipulations on the chills response were assessed through continuous self-reports, and skin conductance measurements. Results show that chills were significantly less frequent following stimulus manipulation across all three pieces. Continuous measurements of chills intensity were significantly higher in the chills sections compared with control sections in the pieces; similar patterns were found for phasic skin conductance, although some differences emerged. Continuous measurements also correlated with psychoacoustic features such as loudness, brightness and roughness in two of the three pieces. Findings are discussed in terms of understanding structural and acoustic features and chills experiences within their local music contexts, the necessity of experimental approaches to musical chills, and the possibility of different features activating different underlying mechanisms.

Citation

Bannister, S., & Eerola, T. (2018). Suppressing the Chills: Effects of Musical Manipulation on the Chills Response. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, Article 2046. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02046

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Oct 4, 2018
Online Publication Date Oct 29, 2018
Publication Date Oct 29, 2018
Deposit Date Jun 12, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Frontiers in Psychology
Print ISSN 1664-1078
Publisher Frontiers Media
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 9
Article Number 2046
DOI https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02046

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Published Journal Article (2.1 Mb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Copyright: © 2018 Bannister and Eerola. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.




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