Scientific Data (May 2023)

ChillsDB: A Gold Standard for Aesthetic Chills Stimuli

  • Felix Schoeller,
  • Abhinandan Jain,
  • Adam Haar Horowitz,
  • Grace Yan,
  • Xiaoxiao Hu,
  • Pattie Maes,
  • Roy Salomon

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02064-8
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 5

Abstract

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Abstract We introduce ChillsDB the first validated database of audiovisual stimuli eliciting aesthetic chills (goosebumps, psychogenic shivers) in a US population. To discover chills stimuli “in the wild”, we devised a bottom-up, ecologically-valid method consisting in searching for mentions of the emotion’ somatic markers in user comments throughout social media platforms (YouTube and Reddit). We successfully captured 204 chills-eliciting videos of three categories: music, film, and speech. We then tested the top 50 videos in the database on 600+ participants and validated a gold standard of 10 stimuli with a 0.9 probability of generating chills. All ChillsDB tools and data are fully available on GitHub for researchers to be able to contribute and perform further analysis.