100% Fun Tickle Quiz: How Ticklish Are You?

This tickle quiz reveals how ticklish you are and why. Find out more about your sensitive side and understand the reason behind laughing at others’ touch.

A Ridiculously Accurate Tickle Quiz

The test’s goal is to expose ticklish people. It relies on your reports and choices to finetune the results. And you can evaluate yourself through a self-report process. The idea is to help those who cannot figure out why they overreact to someone else’s touch on specific parts of their body.

Discover if you are a ticklish person or it’s a tic.

Just because you don’t like to be touched on specific parts of your body doesn’t mean you’re ticklish. You might be that way because of a tic or a general dislike. The tickle quiz helps you figure out the reason behind your behaviors and reactions.

Understand your ticklish type.

There are two types of tickling sensations, knismesis, and gargalesis. Each one refers to a different feeling on the skin leading to separate reactions. The quiz helps you determine which one affects you and causes a more significant response.

• Knismesis is the itchy feeling you get when something is crawling on your skin—or you think so. It’s a self-defense mechanism to alert you when a potentially hazardous creature gets close to you. Knismesis doesn’t cause any laughter. But it forces you to run your hand on the itchy area and ensure there’s nothing on your skin.
• Gargalesis is the actual tickling sensation that causes laughter and spontaneous movements. It happens on specific body parts, such as the neck, belly, armpits, ribs, and thighs.

Here’s Why You Are So Ticklish

You’re touchy as a result of an evolutionary process to learn self-defense. Humans are ticklish around the sensitive areas of their bodies. That’s because they need to know how to protect those areas if someone or something attacks them. The laughter is an encouraging factor to invite other humans to touch you in the same places, allowing you to practice self-defense in a safe environment.

The Dark Side of Tickling Others

While human evolution has led to the current situation, you cannot assume tickling is good for us. Tickling can cause traumatic experiences and emotional damage in some cases, especially with kids. (In ancient times, some countries used tickling as torture, and it’s believed to be one of the most successful methods yet thanks to its unbearable nature).

It can lead to distrust issues in kids.

Dominating a child and forcing them to laugh would harm them in the long run. Such behaviors cause trust issues, significantly when you physically restrict the child’s movement and tickle them despite their wish.

It may cause panic.

Studies show that tickling can activate the same parts of the brain that react to pain. So, when you forcefully tickle a person, especially a child, they might panic. It’s a pretty unpleasant feeling because they’ll not be able to tell you what’s going on due to unstoppable laughter.

It’s not real laughter anyway.

Multiple studies have proved that ticklish people’s reaction to your touch is not actual laughter. It’s a similar involuntary response that roots in our self-defense mechanisms. So, you cannot expect someone to feel good after tickling them, assuming they’re laughing and having fun.

How the Tickle Quiz Works

The test is a set of simple questions about your experiences as a ticklish or non-ticklish person.

Evaluating your reactions

The first part of the questionnaire focuses on how you respond to being touched. People have different ways of reacting to such behaviors, and not all of them include laughter. It’s essential to know how you deal with stimuli before declaring yourself a ticklish person.

Analyzing your memories

Your childhood memories and experiences with the whole idea of being tickled to help us achieve accurate results. The test includes questions to analyze your relationship with the phenomenon and its effect on your behaviors and physical responses.

Can You Stop Being a Ticklish Person? Kind Of

If you want to become a less ticklish person, place your hand on top of the hand of the person who’s tickling you. It will allow your brain to predict their movement and become less sensitive to the outcome. The same thing happens when you try to tickle yourself. Since your brain can predict the outcome of your touch, you can never successfully make yourself laugh through tickling.

Questions of the quiz

• 1
  What part of your body is most sensitive to being touched?
  

  • I’m not sensitive at all

  • Around ribs and armpits

  • Most parts of my body are sensitive

• 2
  How do you react when someone touches the sensitive parts of your body?
  

  • I don’t do anything specific

  • I start laughing or giggling

  • I might jump or move suddenly

• 3
  How easy is it for you to sense someone’s touch?
  

  • It’s not that easy

  • It’s very easy

  • I feel the slightest touches

• 4
  Do you feel like you’re less ticklish when you’re not in the mood?
  

  • I think I’m not ticklish at all

  • Yes, that’s true

  • No, I can’t stop reacting to it no matter what

• 5
  How would you feel if someone gently touched your armpit?
  

  • I wouldn’t like it

  • I would burst into a laugh

  • I’d start spasming

• 6
  Some people think that tickling can be a sensual act. What do you think?
  

  • Yes, maybe

  • No, that’s a torture

  • It sounds impossible to me

• 7
  Why don’t you want to be touched on certain parts of your body?
  

  • I don’t think I have any problems with that

  • It makes me giggle or laugh unwantedly

  • It makes me spasm

• 8
  Do you have any childhood memories and being forcefully tickled by an adult?
  

  • No, not really

  • Yes, I do

  • Yes, but I’d spasm instead of laughing

• 9
  How would you describe the feeling of being tickled?
  

  • Kind of funny

  • Unbearable and irritating

  • Scary and embarrassing

• 10
  Do you enjoy tickling others?
  

  • Maybe

  • No

  • I hate doing that

• 11
  How do you react to any sort of movement on your skin?
  

  • It depends

  • I freak out

  • I start spasming

• 12
  Do you think that it’s okay to tickle kids?
  

  • Maybe

  • No, I don’t think so

  • It should be banned

• 13
  How would you react if someone used a feather to touch your skin slowly?
  

  • I wouldn’t do anything specific

  • I’d laugh or giggle

  • I’d spasm and jerk uncontrollably

• 14
  How do you feel when someone massages you?
  

  • I like it

  • I feel uneased

  • I can’t handle it

• 15
  Are you sensitive around uncommon areas of your body?
  

  • No

  • Maybe

  • Yes

• 16
  How would you feel if someone started breathing right next to your neck?
  

  • Nothing specific

  • I’d feel ticklish

  • I’d spasm so bad

• 17
  Does whispering near your ears make you feel ticklish?
  

  • I don’t think so

  • Yes, it does

  • It would make me spasm and jerk

• 18
  What do you think would happen if someone continued to tickle you for a couple of minutes?
  

  • I don’t think anything specific would happen

  • I’d probably faint of laughter

  • I’d freak out

• 19
  Some say that tickling used to be torture in the medieval period. What do you think about that?
  

  • I don’t think that’s true

  • I think it’s still a torture

  • It’s even worse than torture

• 20
  Final question; do you experience uncontrollable body movements when being tickled?
  

  • No, not at all

  • Sometimes

  • Yes, all the time