The Reason Music Gives You Chills

People who are very opened to new experiences are more likely to get chills from listening to music, concluded a study, carried out by researchers of University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Emily Nusbaum and Paul Silvia, carried out a study on students, asking them how often they felt chills down their spine, got goose bumps, or felt like their hair was standing on end, while they were listening to music.

The reason for this, was that most people feel chills and shivers when listening to music that thrills them, but there are also people who rarely experience these feelings and even some that hardly feel like this at all.

So the researchers also measured the students' experience with music, and five general traits of personality: extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience.

The results showed that out of all these dimensions, only openness to experience was related to feeling chills.

The authors said that “there are a lot of ways in which people are basically alike, but the experience of chills isn't one of them.

“Some people seem to have never experienced chills while listening to music—around 8% of people in our study—but other people experience chills basically every day.

“Findings like these are what make the study of personality and music interesting—music is a human universal, but some people get a lot more out of it.”

Normally, very opened people are creative, have an active imagination, are curious about many things and like to play with ideas.

The study also found that they felt chills in response to music, much more frequently than others, and the explanation is quite simple.

People high in openness get chills more often not because they listen to different kinds of music, but because they are more likely to play an instrument and so, they give music a much higher value in their lives, than people who are low in openness.

A logical consequence is also the fact that they spent more time listening to music, than others.

This study was published by SAGE, in the current Social Psychological and Personality Science.