Individual Differences in Aesthetic Experience Point to the Role of Bodily Awareness in Political Orientation

Aesthetic chills are a peak emotion characterized by shivers down the spine and goosebumps in response to salient stimuli such as music, speech, or films. In a previous study exposing a large number of Southern California participants (n=2947) to pre-validated audiovisual stimuli, we observed a strong correlation between the intensity of self-reported chills and political orientation, with more conservative participants reporting more intense chills, although not having more chills overall. We performed this current, pre-registered, follow-up study to examine whether this correlation was due to religiosity (which frequently accompanies conservatism, particularly in the USA), and/or being among a cultural minority (conservative within a largely progressive/liberal context), by assaying demographically matched politically diverse populations in California (n=620) and Texas (n=262) with identical stimuli. We also tested for differences in self-reported interoceptive awareness via the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) scale, based on evidence for a link between conservatism and disgust sensitivity. We found that the originally observed positive correlation between the intensity of chills and political conservatism was replicated, did not show an effect of location, and appears to be strongly mediated by religiosity and mood before stimulus exposure. Post-hoc analyses of nonlinear trends in the data suggest that interoceptive awareness and chills covary most with distance from the political center, rather than conservatism per se. This study lends novel nuance to our understanding of the relationship between political orientations, religiosity, interoceptive awareness, and engagement with emotional stimuli.