The Bizarre Psychology of Medical ASMR Videos

Experts say there’s a reason so many of the 146 million ASMR videos on YouTube involve role-play. For one, many people experience ASMR in scenarios that involve a professional, such as getting a haircut, being measured for a suit, or getting a facial, which is why a large number of ASMR videos fall into the category of roleplay. Medical scenarios may be particularly popular because, in real life, the doctor’s office may be the origin of people’s first brain tingles.

This is true for Dr. Craig Richard, a professor of biopharmaceutical sciences at Shenandoah University and founder of ASMR University, a collective dedicated to ASMR research, who says eye exams triggered that tingling feeling in his head. “It was the click, click, click of the machine, the doctor’s soft voice,” he says. “Sometimes I lie and I say, ‘I don’t know, just keep clicking.’”

Hornbaker, the ASMRtist, also felt the tingles on the physician’s table. “One of my very first experiences of ASMR would have been when I was in elementary school, and the school nurse would do lice checks on us,” she says. “Or we would go to get a yearly physical before grade school, and just the gentle nature of pediatric doctors was one of the first experiences of that feeling. I wanted to pretend I was sick more often just so I could get the attention.”

Another reason medical scenarios are particularly ripe for ASMR is that a typical clinical interaction involves a large number and a diverse range of triggers, including a soft voice, personal attention, care, the tap of a pen on a clipboard, turning pages, the sound of latex gloves, hand movements around the face, and more. While ASMRtists may enhance these triggers for the benefit of the viewer, the fact that these stimuli exist in real doctor-patient scenarios may help people fall deeper into the role-play.

“Out of all the other role plays everyone was doing, clinical ones felt the most real and the most personal,” says Shannon Borawski, an ASMRtist whose channel, ASMR Shanny, has 40,300 subscribers. “And there are so many different things that can go on in that. They’re going to ask you questions, they’re going to check your heart rate, they’re going to check your blood pressure. It keeps my interest.”

Like Hornbaker, Borawski’s most popular videos are her clinical role-plays. Now around half her videos have her playing doctor out of sheer popularity. “It’s what everyone likes,” she says. “If you look in the comment section that’s all anyone will ever request.”

According to Richard, ASMR triggers appear more likely to be set off when a helpful and kind person is giving you calm, focused attention, whether they’re a clinician, teacher, hairdresser, parent, friend, or partner — or a video of a perfect stranger assuming one of these roles. It’s not that doctors are always the most calming, caring individuals; it’s that they have the potential to be, and ASMR can tap that to create an idealized check-up.

“I have people say they don’t like going to the doctor, but they like watching ASMR with medical role-plays,” says Hornbaker. “In a circumstance [like ASMR] where you know that you’re safe and you control the environment that you’re in, you get to experience the more enjoyable side of it. And that’s feeling like you’re being cared for.”

Richard believes that medical ASMR videos also remove the real stress of going to the doctor, including “worrying about your health, what this clinician is thinking about if they have a cold stethoscope.”

“All that is now gone, and now what you can focus on is absorbing the positive personal attention from this person who’s providing care for you,” he says.