Getting musical goosebumps

Ever get so emotional while listening to a song that shivers run through your body? Goosebumps perhaps, a tingling sensation in your neck?

For some that happens during an aria of a favorite opera. For others, it’s Pink Floyd or Bohemian Rhapsody. Some people never experience it at all.

Which applies to you may have more to do with your personality and musical education than which genre makes your heart sing.

A 2010 study published in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science called, “Shivers and Timbres: Personality and the Experience of Chills from Music” found that a general openness to experience and how often people listen to music better predicted the chills than particular preferences. In fact, choice of music didn’t correlate at all.

Evaluating the results, psychologist and author Doctor Victoria Williamson wrote on Musicpsychology.uk that while in some studies only 25% of participants report musical chills, a 1991 study found that 62% of people reported experiencing them in the previous five years. Most people get a physical-emotional reaction from music at least sometimes, although some never do.

Another study published in the February 2007 issue of Motivation and Emotion (“Aesthetic Chills as a Universal Marker of Openness to Experience”) reported music chills are more frequent in people who are most open to new experiences, are more creative, and intellectually curious.

An enhanced appreciation of life’s beauty is an aspect of these “aesthetic chills.”

The 2010 study also found people who get musical chills most frequently go to more concerts and musical events and tend to score higher on their knowledge of the arts. They’re also more likely to play an instrument.

Particular taste in music – whether it’s classical, country, rap, hard rock or Japanese hogaku – apparently has nothing to do with it. It’s not what music we enjoy so much as how we experience it. The more broadly someone approaches musical experience, the more regularly, and the more deeply in terms of understanding it, the more likely they are to experience that frisson of emotional excitement.

“Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit and never dies.” Edward Bulwer Lytton

Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network who gets shivers during operas and Bohemian Rhapsody, but never could play an instrument. Email [email protected].