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psychology

ASMR: Don’t ask

A couple of years ago a nice man called Rhodri asked me about ASMR. I didn’t know anything about the phenomenon, but I was willing to comment as an experimental psychologist. The interesting thing to me was that this is a subjective experience that many people seemed to recognise, but it had no official name (until people started calling it ASMR and finding each other on the internet). “Could this be a real thing?” asked Rhodri. “Sure” I said, it’s perfectly possible that something could be real (common across people, not based on imaging or lies) and yet scientifically invisible. Maybe, I thought, now someone will look into this phenomenon and find ways of measuring it.

Since then, as far as I am aware, there hasn’t been any research on ASMR, but interest in the phenomenon grows and grows. I wrote a column about ASMR for the BBC. There’s even a wikipedia page, and yours truly is currently quoted near the top. Because of these I regularly have people with ASMR and assorted journalist types contacting me for my opinions on ASMR.

It makes me kind of sad to say, but I actually have no further opinions on ASMR. I don’t have anything extra to say than I said to Rhodri and in my column. I don’t follow the research on ASMR (if there is any now), and I have never done any research on ASMR. I only opened my big mouth in the first place because the thing that interests me is how subject experience is turned into social facts. As an experimental psychologist, that’s what I do and ASMR is an example of something that might be a real subjective experience that we can observe in the process of being turned into a socially accepted fact. That’s the thing that is interesting to me.

Regretfully, I have to refuse all opportunities to talk about ASMR itself because I literally have nothing more to say. Sorry.

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