Folding towels. Peeling fruit. Scratching microphones. Hearing sweet nothings whispered in your ear.
Those are the underpinnings of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, currently the biggest trend you've never heard of.
Coined in 2010, ASMR is a relaxing, often sedative sensation that begins on the scalp and moves down the body. It has been called "brain massage.” Hundreds of videos on YouTube are meant to stimulate the feeling — bars of soap being sliced into shreds, a woman playing with her hair, someone slowly and precisely unboxing an iPhone.
If you’re older than most “tingleheads,” PBS painting instructor Bob Ross — he of happy-clouds and pretty-little-trees fame — is ASMR from head to toe.
It’s going mainstream. Celebrities have recorded ASMR videos. Kentucky Fried Chicken has an ASMR-themed ad. (Asked about it, KFC executive Kevin Hochman told The Washington Post, "There's a lot of comfort that's associated with ASMR, and that's what our food delivers.")
Adherents say it helps them sleep and deal with stress. Some report feeling better after watching ASMR videos.
Researchers haven’t delved into how or why ASMR works (and the National Science Foundation is not exactly throwing money at it), but psychologists do have some ideas.
For a primer on what these videos are and why they may work, ASU Now talked to Ryan Stoll, a psychology researcher at Arizona State University, and interviewed a number of volunteers to gauge their reactions.
Video by Deanna Dent/ASU Now
More Science and technology
Indigenous geneticists build unprecedented research community at ASU
When Krystal Tsosie (Diné) was an undergraduate at Arizona State University, there were no Indigenous faculty she could look to in any science department. In 2022, after getting her PhD in genomics…
Pioneering professor of cultural evolution pens essays for leading academic journals
When Robert Boyd wrote his 1985 book “Culture and the Evolutionary Process,” cultural evolution was not considered a true scientific topic. But over the past half-century, human culture and cultural…
Lucy's lasting legacy: Donald Johanson reflects on the discovery of a lifetime
Fifty years ago, in the dusty hills of Hadar, Ethiopia, a young paleoanthropologist, Donald Johanson, discovered what would become one of the most famous fossil skeletons of our lifetime — the 3.2…