Jen: Welcome to the So That's Why podcast, where we unpack the
science behind everyday questions.
I'm Jen.
Chris: I'm Chris.
Jamie: And I'm Jamie.
Jen: Okay.
So here's something to introduce today's topic.
You step into a cold shower, or you get a fright walking into a dark room, or
you sit in the car and, while a song's playing, and it hits that one big
moment, and your body does the exact same thing in all three of those situations.
Tiny bumps come up on your arms, the hairs stand on end.
Three completely unrelated situations, one identical reaction.
So today we are talking about why do we get goosebumps?
Jamie: I do love that a freezing shower and the intro to your
favorite song get filed by your body under the exact same heading.
One of those is horrible, one is lovely, and your arms
genuinely cannot tell them apart.
Chris: And an, an interesting and maybe surprising bit from the research is that
the shivery feeling we get and a physical goosebump don't always go together.
You can have one without the other.
So I don't know about you, people used to say when they'd shiver that
someone's walked over their grave.
Did… I don't…
Do people still say that?
Is that still a saying?
No.
Jen: It is, yeah.
My parents do.
I, I don't know where that came from either.
Yeah.
But yeah, it is definitely a thing that's said.
There you go.
Okay.
So we'll get into the shiver versus the goosebumps in a bit because, well,
for you and I, Chris, it's interesting.
But some, some others might not find it that interesting, but hey.
But we'll start with how common this is, 'cause I suspect people
possibly assume goosebumps are more rare and just a more dramatic thing.
Chris: They, they do, I think you're right, but they're actually
m- far more routine than that.
So surveys suggest that about a third of adults have at least one notable,
let's call it a goosebump episode-
every single week, with a lot of people reporting goosebumps every day.
Jamie: So for a chunk of people, this is a daily event.
I'd assumed it was a less frequent thing than that, more like a standing
at a wedding sort of a thing- Mm … not a Tuesday standing in
the supermarket queue kind of thing.
Jen: Yeah.
No.
But, you know, on average, people get around six really significant
goosebump moments a year, like the proper full body ones.
But here's the bit I liked.
Roughly 95% of those big moments happen in real life, not from films or telly.
Jamie: So not a, not a great statistic for the entire entertainment industry.
All that effort, and the thing most likely to raise your hair, hairs on your
arms is just your own life happening.
Jen: Yeah.
Chris: So it's a decent argument against a box set, which, uh,
I know Matt would absolutely hate it when I say that, the Mr-
Jen: Yeah, he's our big-
king of the box sets … box
set fan.
Chris: And, um, there's a difference to point out here between males
and females in the data, too.
So women report monthly goosebump moments or events more than men.
So roughly, uh, 70% of women against just under 60% for men.
Although, as ever, there's a lot of individual variation in those averages.
Jen: I'm firmly in the gets them easily camp.
So the music I walked down the aisle to when I got married gets me every single
time, even though I've heard it 100 times, and I know precisely when the
moment I walk down the aisle's coming.
Chris: Go on, what is it?
What's the song?
Jen: It's Pachelbel's Canon.
Chris: Can you break into song for us now?
Jen: No, no, it's just a musical piece.
You would not want me singing anyway.
But yeah, so it's about a minute or so in gets me every time.
So how do, um… how does the actual goosebump reaction work?
Chris: Right.
So if
we look at the bump itself, almost every hair on your body has a tiny muscle
at the base of the follicle, and it's called the arrector pili muscle, and
it sits at a slight angle to the hair.
Jamie: So there's a dedicated little muscle for every single hair.
That's a level of complexity going on under my skin I was not aware of.
Yeah.
Chris: Yeah, and what happens, um, when that muscle contracts, it tugs
the hair upright, and it pulls the skin around it into, like, a little dome.
But if you do that across a, a, a whole patch of skin, and you get…
you end up getting that kind of pebbled look, which is affectionately
described as a goosebump.
Jamie: Goosebumps are named after the resemblance to a goose's skin.
Not exactly the most glamorous animal to human comparison, but there we are.
Jen: Yeah, that's… it's more or less it.
But the thing that is pulling those tiny triggers at once is your sympathetic
nervous system, and that's the side of you that runs that fight or
flight response that we talk about.
Jamie: And that's the thing I want to get straight because I've always thought of
fight or flight as the big heart-racing, something has gone wrong feeling.
How does a nice song end up causing the same reaction?
Chris: Yeah, I think in this case, if we picture it maybe less of,
um, like, an alarm and more like an orchestra following the same conductor.
So what happens is your, your heart speeds up, your, um, your pupils
widen, and the tiny muscles around your hair follicles tighten, and this
is all in response to the same signal.
Jen: So whether the cue is cold air, a sudden fright, or a powerful, powerful
piece of music, the whole section comes in together, that section of the orchestra,
and I guess goosebumps are simply the part of the performance that you actually see.
Jamie: Right.
So the hairs standing on end aren't about the hairs They're just a visible
note in a much bigger piece that's being played throughout the body.
Jen: Mm.
Chris: Yeah, that's
right, and the messenger doing all of this is noradrenaline.
So it's released from the nerve endings right at the muscle, and
for almost everyone, the whole thing is completely involuntary.
So your conscious brain isn't invited to the party here.
Jen: So the clearest place to, to see what this reflex is actually for
is in animals with a proper coat.
So in a cat or a fox, that same reflex raises the fur and traps a
layer of warm air against the skin.
So it works like pulling on an extra layer of insulation.
Jamie: And it's the same trick when a cat puffs up to twice its normal
size in front of next door's dog.
It isn't actually bigger, it's just stood all its fur on end to look bigger.
Jen: It's quite clever,
isn't it?
Chris: Yeah, I'm, I'm thinking of this, like, scary cat now.
Jen: Yeah.
Chris: Um, and l- let's look at it.
Honestly, we're responding
in exactly the same way as that kind of wily fox or pesky cat, but
of course, we've got, well, most of us have got very fine and sparse
hair rather than a big coat- Mm-hmm
unless something else is going on.
Uh, so we get the goosebumps without the extra warmth or looking particularly
scary to next door's dog, let's be honest.
Jamie: So we've got the same biological system, just with a different output.
Jen: Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
Um, but it's… Sorry, Chris, it's my turn to give the fact fans
something that's normally your part.
What?
So there was a study in 2020 that showed that the very nerves that
set goosebumps sit right next to stem cells in your hair follicle.
So under a brief period of cold, you get the goosebumps, but under prolonged
cold, those same nerves can actually nudge the hair follicle into growing
new hair, which is always a good thing.
Chris: It is, and let's be honest, it's a surprising second job, isn't it?
Jen: Mm-hmm.
Chris: Um, and it's worth saying that it's still fairly fresh research, this
whole area, but it does suggest that the
reflex is doing a bit more kind of quiet maintenance than people had assumed.
Jen: Yeah.
Jamie: Before we move on, you said
earlier, for almost everybody, the whole goosebump process
is completely involuntary.
Yeah, I thought I'd got away with that.
Are you saying there are people who can voluntarily bring on goosebumps?
Jen: There actually are people who can voluntarily- Oh … bring
on goosebumps, but it is rare.
So there was a small study that looked at people who can bring on goosebumps
at will, and actually, only a handful could genuinely do it on demand.
I don't know how they discovered it.
But anyway, most people describe, like, the feeling starting at the
back of their neck and then spreading down their arms, and they talked
about it being more like flexing a muscle, rather than a sad thought.
Jamie: So somewhere out there is a person who can simply decide to have goosebumps.
That's a deeply pointless superpower- … which I'd actually quite like to have.
Jen: Me too.
Be
a good party trick, that.
Chris: Yeah, definitely.
Off we go.
Yeah.
Um, so the far more common version of goosebumps that many
of us experience is the, uh, the musical one, and it's actually got
its own name, which is frisson.
And that's the chill that you get when there's a key change or a
voice cracking or a choir coming in when you didn't expect it.
Jen: It sounds so much more sophisticated than goosebumps, frisson, doesn't it?
Chris: It's the pronunciation, isn't it?
Jen: Yeah.
Frisson.
But the mechanism, um, there, it's actually really clever.
So your emotional brain hears that sudden swell, and for a split second flags
it as a big change that might need a response, so the control panel fires.
But then the rest of your brain catches up, confirms you're simply
sitting to music, safe, you know, you're safe and well, and rewards you
with like a little hit of dopamine.
Jamie: So it's basically a jump scare with a happy ending.
Your brain goes, "What was that?" Realizes it was just a brilliant chord of music-
Jen: Yeah
… Jamie: and then quietly slips you a treat for your troubles.
Chris: That's the one, but not everyone is fortunate enough
to actually experience this.
So estimates for, sorry, estimates for how many people get musical chills range
from anywhere from about 45% to 85%, which is quite a wide spread, isn't it?
Mm. So the honest answer is it varies a lot from person to person.
Jen: So what's interesting is what it predicts, I guess.
It's less about being a sensitive, emotional person, and more
about how actively your mind engages with what you're hearing.
So people who le- really like lean in, who are anticipating the
next note, picturing things, get more, get chills more reliably.
Um, and musicians tend to get them more than non-musicians.
Jamie: So it's the people leaning forward predicting the song, not the
people quietly welling up in the corner.
The chills are more of a thinking thing than a feeling thing.
Jen: Mm.
Chris: And that's actually a really good bridge to the surprise I flagged
at the start about the shivery feeling.
And you'll wanna think we planned this and actually structured-
these podcasts, wouldn't you?
Um, so when researchers actually strap people to skin sensors,
which sounds a bit harsh-
Jen: It sounds a bit barbaric, to be
honest
Chris: Yeah.
I'm pretty sure it's voluntary.
You know, they- … they did sign up to this, this kind of test.
Um, anyway, it picks up the real muscle response when they do this, and only
about a third of the goosebumps that people report feeling show up as an
actual physical reaction on the skin.
Jamie: Hang on.
So most of the time that I think I've got goosebumps, I
haven't actually got goosebumps.
It's my brain telling me I've got goosebumps.
Jen: Mm. Yeah, for a good chunk of time, yes.
So the shivery chill you feel and the literal muscle contraction seem to be
two separate events that often travel together, but they don't have to.
So you can clearly feel one- Mm … without measurably having the other.
Chris: Absolutely.
And there's another myth worth busting here.
We haven't bust many myths
today, have we?
Jen: No, you haven't.
So, yeah.
Chris: Um, so people assume that the chills you get, the kind of the,
the shivery chills, needed novelty-
Mm
… and that a song would kind of stop giving you them once it got familiar.
But the, there was a study in 2024 that tested that head on, and it found
that familiar music kept triggering the response, and it held up over repeated
listens, so it kinda didn't fade off.
Jen: Which matches Jamie's point about leading in, and honestly
matches my own experience, like the wedding song I talked about earlier.
Chris: And they still need to sing it for us- Yeah
… it's only fair.
Jen: Google it.
It's I'm Father of the
Bride.
Chris: Where, where's Matt?
Where's Matt?
Well, he, he'd definitely get involved and sing, wouldn't he?
Jen: Yeah, he would.
He'd play a, a violin, I'm sure.
Um, but we need to be straight here, uh, that the science isn't all settled.
So the popular idea that goosebumps are a clean readout of being deeply moved has
been complicated by recent work because the measured response doesn't reliably
track how moved people say they feel.
Jamie: I find that weird- weirdly freeing, actually.
Mm. There's nothing to fix here.
It's not a glitch you have to train out of your body.
Jen: No- True … not at all.
It's, it's really just like a readout of your nervous system doing
its thing, and there's, there's a gentle feelgood footnote to it.
And survey data that finds that, it's found that people who get goosebump
moments at least monthly are a little more likely to say they find life worth
living than people who rarely get them If you don't get them, though, don't panic.
Chris: Yeah,
definitely.
And the, the large caveat other than that one being that this is a
correlation, so it's not cause and effect.
So the more likely reading is that people with kind of rich, engaged,
emotional lives simply stumble into more kind of goosebump-worthy
episodes rather than the bumps themselves topping up your wellbeing.
Jen: Mm.
Jamie: Fair enough.
So is there ever a version of this that's worth actually paying attention to?
Chris: I'd say mostly no.
So goosebumps by and large are harmless in the v- majority of cases, but
I will do my Captain Sensible bit-
Jen: As always
… Chris: and say that, absolutely, someone has to do it- Mm-hmm … um,
that if goosebumps keep turning up persistently for no particular reason,
or they're down one side of the body or along with other symptoms that
don't feel quite right, that is worth a quick mention to the doctor, isn't it?
Um, because the reflex can occasionally tag along with other things
going on with the nervous system.
So it is a check, though, not a cause for panic.
Jen: Yeah.
Thank you, Captain Sensible.
So this brings us right back around to where we started.
Jamie: So go on then, cold shower, dark room, and the best bit of a song.
Why do we get goosebumps?
Jen: So we get goosebumps because your fight or flight system runs a
whole row of responses in one circuit, and tiny muscles tug each hair
upright whenever that circuit fires.
So whether the trigger is cold, fear, or a beautiful piece of music.
Um, and in a furry animal that traps warmth, puffs them up to be bigger.
In us, it's the visible edge of a much larger reaction.
Chris: And it's not the do-nothing reflex that people often assume.
It's wired in right next to the cells that grow your hair, and the chill
you feel and the bumps themselves are quietly separate events.
Jamie: So the next time a song sends the wave down your arms,
that isn't you being soft-
Jen: Mm-hmm
… Jamie: that's your brain leaning into what it's hearing, which turns out to
be the very thing that predicts who gets the chills in the first place.
Jen: Which is a rather nice thing to know about yourself
Chris: It is
Jen: So that's why we get goosebumps.
That's it for this week.
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