Aesthetic Chills Cause an Emotional Drift in Valence and Arousal

Aesthetic Chills Cause an Emotional Drift in Valence and Arousal is a work by Abhinandan Jain (2023).

Core claims

• Jain and colleagues demonstrate that aesthetic chills produce a measurable drift in the emotional state of the perceiver — shifting both valence (toward greater positivity) and arousal (toward a distinctive mixed state of heightened activation and calm) that persists beyond the chill event itself.
• The emotional drift is not a simple intensification of pre-existing mood but a qualitative shift: chills move the perceiver into a distinct affective region that combines features of both high arousal (alertness, engagement) and low arousal (calm, openness) — a state the authors describe as ‘alert tranquility.’
• This finding challenges dimensional models of emotion that treat valence and arousal as independent axes, suggesting that aesthetic chills access an emotional state that transcends ordinary affective geometry — a state that depth psychology would recognize as the ego’s encounter with the numinous.

Related questions

• Does ‘alert tranquility’ correspond to what contemplative traditions describe as samadhi or what Jung called the transcendent function — a state in which opposites (activation and calm, engagement and surrender) are held in dynamic tension rather than resolved?
• If aesthetic chills produce an emotional state that exceeds ordinary affective dimensions, does this support the depth psychological claim that beauty gives access to a mode of consciousness that cannot be captured by standard psychological measurement?

See also

• Library page: /library/the-body/jain-aesthetic-chills-emotional-drift/

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