Tears Falling on Goosebumps: Co-occurrence of Emotional Lacrimation and Emotional Piloerection Indicates a Psychophysiological Climax in Emotional Arousal

Abstract

This psychophysiological study is the first to examine the relationship between emotional tears and emotional piloerection (i.e., goosebumps). Although both phenomena have been related to peak states of being moved, details about their temporal occurrence and the associated levels of physiological arousal have remained unknown. In our study, we used emotionally powerful film scenes that were self-selected by participants. Our findings show that even within peak moments of emotional arousal, a gradation of intensity is possible. The overlap of tears and goosebumps signifies a maximal climax within peak moments. On the side of the stimulus, we found that displays of prosocial behavior play a crucial role in the elicitation of tears and goosebumps. Finally, based on the results of a formal film analysis of the tears-eliciting clips provided by our participants, as compared to randomly extracted, equally long control clips from the same films, we show how the technical and artistic making of the clips was optimized for the display of social interaction and emotional expressions.

Space—A Virtual Frontier: How to Design and Evaluate a Virtual Reality Experience of the Overview Effect

“…Among those clues is the sensation of "chills" (also seen in literature as "shivers, " "frisson, " "tingles"), and often their concurrence with visual piloerection, or commonly known as goose bumps ("goose flesh") (Keltner and Haidt, 2003;Grewe et al, 2009;Benedek and Kaernbach, 2011;Nusbaum and Silvia, 2011;Stellar et al, 2017). Among the studies by Benedek and Kaernbach (2011), Quesnel and Riecke (2017), Sumpf et al (2015), and Wassiliwizky et al (2017), there is overall a 40% rate of goose bump elicitation in participants who watched moving/awe-inspiring videos or VR as stimuli. The consistency of this rate means goose bumps (with concurring chills or not) may be experienced by some people but not others, or that lab-induced stimuli may elicit less-intense awe experiences, theorized by Benedek and Kaernbach (2011), Silvia (2012), and Silvia et al (2015).…”

The neurobiology of human crying

“…Most recently, other researchers have focused on the physiology of the combination of tears and chills (goosebumps), both characteristic expressions of being moved, in response to participant-selected film clips [33,34]. Specifically, Wassiliwizky et al [33] observed increased sympathetic activity (e.g., increased skin conductance and heart rate) in periods of tearful crying, which always followed rather than preceded goosebumps. Mori and Iwagana [34] also showed that chills and tears developed during emotional music that elicited increases in arousal.…”

Kama Muta: Similar Emotional Responses to Touching Videos Across the United States, Norway, China, Israel, and Portugal

“…Research assessing moving or touching experiences has been conducted using U.S. American (Schubert, Zickfeld, Seibt, & Fiske, 2016;Thomson & Siegel, 2013), British (Schnall & Roper, 2012;Schnall et al, 2010), French-speaking Swiss (Cova & Deonna, 2014), German (Kuehnast et al, 2014;Menninghaus et al, 2015;Wassiliwizky, Jacobsen, Heinrich, Schneiderbauer, & Menninghaus, 2017), Japanese (Tokaji, 2003), Dutch (Strick et al, 2015), Norwegian (Seibt, Schubert, Zickfeld, & Fiske, 2017), and Finish (Vuoskoski & Eerola, 2017) participants. Yet each of these studies has used different elicitors and different methods, so, to date no study has systematically compared responses to moving stimuli with the same measures across a range of cultures.…”