Feelings of animacy and pleasantness from tactile stimulation: Effect of stimulus frequency and stimulated body part

We investigated how tactile stimuli induced feelings of animacy and pleasantness in human observers. First, we developed a new tactile display that enabled limp yet powerful tactile stimulations with a wide range of frequencies. Second, we examined the induced sensation by tactile stimulation as a function of stimulus frequency and body part. We found that the feeling of animacy was dependent upon stimulus frequency. The 12 Hz stimulation induced the strongest feeling of animacy. The frequency dependence was qualitatively similar but quantitatively different between finger and wrist stimulation. In addition, the modest feeling of animacy was associated with the strong feeling of pleasantness in finger stimulation. These results suggest that tactile stimulation can induce feelings of animacy in a frequency-dependent manner and that the frequency dependence and induced emotion of tactile stimulation may differ among different body parts.