Emotional and Aesthetic Antecedents and Consequences of Music-Induced Thrills

The significance of music-induced thrills or chills was explored in 3 experiments (N = 223). Specifically, the ability of antecedent (priming) stimuli in different modalities and aesthetic domains (national anthems, stories, architectural objects, paintings) to increase the participants’ thrills responsiveness to music by Rachmaninoff and Haydn was examined. In addition, the differential effects of having or not having experienced thrills on the participants’ subsequent willingness to donate blood, and on their mood and self-concept, were tested. It was found that while the antecedent stimuli in different modalities could themselves induce thrills in a predictable manner, these priming stimuli, and the thrills they elicited, had relatively weak effects on the thrills subsequently induced by the Rachmaninoff and Haydn pieces. The measures of altruism, self-concept, and mood were not affected by either the antecedent variables or the thrills experience. Thrills may often accompany profound aesthetic experiences and provide their physiological underpinning, yet themselves be of limited psychological significance.