LISTENING TO MUSIC AS A RE-CREATIVE PROCESS...

OLIVER GREWE, FREDERIK NAGEL, REINHARD

KOPIEZ, AND ECKART ALTENMÜLLER

Hanover University of Music and DramaHanover, Germany

ABSTRACT: FEELINGS IN RESPONSE TO music areoften accompanied by measurable bodily reactions suchas goose bumps or shivers down the spine, commonlycalled “chills.” In order to investigate distinct acousticaland musical structural elements related to chill reactions,reported chill reactions and bodily reactions weremeasured continuously. Chill reactions did not show asimple stimulus-response pattern or depend on person-ality traits, such as low sensation seeking and highreward dependence. Musical preferences and listeningsituations also played a role in chill reactions. Participantsseemed to react to musical patterns, not to mereacoustical triggers. The entry of a voice and changes involume were shown to be the most reactive patterns.These results were also confirmed by a retest experiment.

Key words: Emotion, Chills, Music, Physiology,Psychoacoustics

EMOTIONS INFLUENCE OUR DECISIONS in everydaylife, regulate our motivations for actions, andenhance memory formation (Juslin & Sloboda,

2001; Panksepp, 1998; Roth, 2003). Most people listento music to influence their emotions (Panksepp, 1995).But what power do aesthetic stimuli such as music trulypossess to influence and “designate” emotions? Can ourmoods be manipulated by the “right” music or do weactively construct our feelings using music as a kind oftool? Listening to music appears to be a passive pastime,but is it really that passive?

In 1980, Goldstein (1980) published a study based onquestionnaires, which for the first time used “thrills,” or“chills” as the phenomenon was called in later publica-tions, as a parameter for strong emotions in response to

music. Except in cases where a cited author used theterm “thrill,” from here on we will use the term “chills”according to Panksepp’s discussion of the terms(Panksepp, 1995). Chills are a subtle nervous tremorcaused by intense emotion. Goldstein used them as anindicator for strong emotional responses, allowing thecombination of psychological self-report with distinctbodily reactions such as “goose bumps” or shivers downthe spine. Goldstein applied music as a stimulus inorder to test the hypothesis that thrills (chills), as anexample of emotional reactions, are mediated byendorphins. He studied the effect of the opiate antago-nist naloxone on the frequency, duration, and intensityof thrills and found some evidence that thrills may beattenuated by naloxone. Interestingly, not all partici-pants were susceptible to thrills. Out of the three groupsof participants, 10% of the music students, 20% of themedical students, and 47% of the employees of anaddiction research center responded in the question-naire that they had never experienced thrills.

Chills can be a fascinating phenomenon to studystrong emotional reactions to aesthetic stimuli sincethey allow for verification of subjective reports withphysiological measurements. They are considered to bedistinct events, and therefore, their relationship to thestructure of the stimulus can be examined. Several ofthe following studies have taken advantage of chills asan objective indicator of strong emotions.

Sloboda (1991) used questionnaires to reveal the rela-tionship of thrills (chills) to the structural parts of themusic that elicit them. He found that there were distinctmusical features that aroused different bodily reactions.When he asked participants about thrills experienced inthe five years prior to the study, Sloboda found that up to90% of the people were susceptible to “shivers down thespine”and 62% to “goose pimples.”Many other phenom-ena, such as “tears”or “yawning”were summarized underthe term thrills, but in a more detailed analysis, only“shivers,” “tears,” and “racing heart” could be associatedwith distinct musical structures. Shivers were mainlyinduced by new or unprepared harmonies and sudden

LISTENING TO MUSIC AS A RE-CREATIVE PROCESS: PHYSIOLOGICAL,PSYCHOLOGICAL, AND PSYCHOACOUSTICAL CORRELATES OF CHILLS

AND STRONG EMOTIONS

Music Perception VOLUME 24, ISSUE 3, PP. 297–314, ISSN 0730-7829, ELECTRONIC ISSN 1533-8312 © 2007 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. ALL

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dynamic or textural changes. Altogether, Sloboda’swork demonstrated for the first time a relationshipbetween bodily reactions, such as shivers down thespine, and a conscious, aesthetic appreciation of anacoustic stimulus.

Panksepp (1995) studied the chills of undergraduatestudents by having them listen to 14 pieces of musicself-selected by the participants, and four additionalpieces chosen by the researcher. According to hisresults, sad pieces were more effective for arousingchills, and women seemed to be most susceptible tochill reactions. Panksepp’s analysis of chills in a timeseries experiment was novel. The students listened tothe three pieces that turned out to be the most effectiveones in another part of this study. They raised theirhands to indicate when they had perceived a chill. Usingthis procedure, he discovered that crescendos seemed tosomehow be effective, and that a solo instrumentemerging from a softer orchestral background wasespecially influential. In another article, Panksepp &Bernatzky (2002) developed a hypothesis regarding theevolutionary roots of chill reactions. The authors pro-posed that music might contain acoustic properties ofthe separation calls of young animals, which stimulatecaretakers to exhibit social care and attention. Thus,music may actually activate a separation-distress brainsystem that provides motivational urgency for socialreunion responses.

Gabrielsson and Lindström (1993, 2003) used anapproach to study “peak” emotional experiences inresponse to music that they termed “SEM’s (StrongExperiences with Music),” but they did not explicitlyconcentrate on chill reactions, although they belongedto one of the categories they found. They simply askedparticipants to describe their most intense experienceswhile listening to music, and categorized participants’statements. The authors found that all participantresponses could be categorized as physical responses,perception, cognition, emotion, transcendental, andexistential aspects. The emotion most commonly feltduring SEM’s was happiness; whereas negative feelingswere seldom evoked by SEM’s.

Blood and Zatorre (2001) used PET to reveal thebrain systems associated with chill reactions when lis-tening to music. They found structures such as thenucleus accumbens, the ventral tegmental area, thala-mus, insula, and anterior cingulate to be more activeduring a chill reaction, while activity in the amygdalaand ventral medial prefrontal cortex was reduced. Thispattern of activity typically has been observed in otherbrain studies inducing euphoria and/or pleasant emo-tions (Breiter et al., 1997).

More recent work on chills was done by Craig (2005),who combined physiological measurements of skin con-ductance level (Galvanic Skin Response, GSR) with thesubjective reports of chills made by his participants. Thestudy suggests that chills are associated with discretephysiological events, such that GSRs were significantlyhigher during chills than before or after chill events.Rickard (2004) found higher levels of both chills and skinconductance in response to music that elicited intenseemotions, compared to less emotion-inducing stimuli.Rickard used both chills and skin conductance as indica-tors of physiological arousal. For a review concerningemotions and physiological reactions, see Krumhansl(1997), Cacioppo, Klein, Berntson, & Hatfield (1993),and Stemmler (1998).

Despite these empirical efforts, limitations remain.First, all of these studies concentrated on singularaspects of chill experiences, such as the underlyingbrain region or physiological patterns (Blood &Zatorre, 2001; Craig, 2005). Second, the older litera-ture focused on the subjective experience of chills andtheir relation to musical patterns (Gabrielsson &Lindström, 1993; Panksepp, 1995; Sloboda, 1991).Third, most researchers investigated only a highlyselective social and educational group of participants,mostly students.

The purpose of the present experiment was to exam-ine the chill phenomenon through converging psycho-logical, physiological, and psychoacoustical methods,both through inter- and intra-individual comparisons.Since the study of the emotional effects of music ishandicapped by a lack of appropriate research para-digms (Scherer, 2004), we tried to overcome this handi-cap by combining available methods, and using thedifferent facets they reveal, to develop a preliminaryhypothesis of how chills may be triggered by music.

The main research questions were: (a) how frequentis the chill response; (b) what are the musical andacoustical features that have the power to arouse suchstrong emotional responses; and (c) are chills inresponse to music a general phenomenon or are therespecific chill responders that can be characterized bypersonality, musical education, experience, or prefer-ence? In sum, what is induced by music and how doesthe listener stimulate himself in order to elicit thestrong emotions that lead to chills?

Method

In the present experiment, we combined psychological,physiological, and psychoacoustic methods. While lis-tening to music, participants reported the presence of

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chills by pressing a button. The chills were assessed bymeasuring physiological responses and using question-naires. After the experiment, participants filled in ques-tionnaires regarding their musical experience, preference,memories connected to music, and so on. They alsoresponded to character inventories. The musical eventseliciting the strongest emotional reactions were analyzedpsychoacoustically.

Participants

Thirty-eight participants (mean age = 38, SD = 16,range = 11-72 years; 29 females and nine males; 33 righthanded persons and five left handed persons) took partin the experiment. The group included five professionalmusicians or music students, 20 amateur musicianswho still played or once played an instrument, and 13participants who had never played an instrument. Sincewe were interested in general reactions to music, weselected a rather heterogeneous group with regards tomusical experience and preferences. Three participantseven reported not being interested in music at all, andthat they only occasionally listened to music on theradio. The group was also heterogeneous pertaining toeducational and social backgrounds. To give someexamples, there were students, professors, retirees,housewives, veterinarians, and labourers who partici-pated in the experiment. Volunteers were not paid fortheir participation and were treated in accordance with

the “Ethical principles of psychologists and code ofconduct” (American Psychological Association, 1992).

Materials

AUDITORY STIMULI

We chose seven standard pieces for all of the partici-pants in order to be able to compare chill reactionsdirectly (see Table 1). These standard pieces each repre-sented different musical styles. Since strong emotionalreactions may depend on a broader context within themusic, we decided to play the whole pieces instead ofonly excerpts. Additionally, every participant brought 5to 10 pieces that he or she expected would arouse strongemotions. All kinds of musical styles were accepted;participants brought a wide spectrum of musical styles,such as classical, pop, rock, soundtracks, and dance music.

QUESTIONNAIRES

Participants completed three standardized personalityinventories: (1) Temperament and Character InventoryTCI (Cloninger, Przybeck, Svravkic, & Wetzel, 1999); (2)Sensation Seeking Scale-V SSS-V (Litle & Zuckerman,1986); and (3) Affective Neuroscience Personality ScaleANPS (Davis, Panksepp & Normansell, 2003; Reuteret al., 2005). The TCI represents a complete characterinventory on 30 scales. The values on the 30 scalesrange between 0 and 100. Higher values represent astronger molding of the character quality. The SSS-Vtests for sensation seeking personalities, and the ANPS,


TABLE 1. Musical stimuli and their features.

Musical piece Features

“Tuba mirum”—Requiem KV 626 An example of classical vocal music in which all solo voices from bass to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Karajan, 1989) soprano as well as a choir enter sequentially without any overlap, enabling Duration: 251s study of the effect of different voice registers.

“Toccata BWV 540” An example of (solo-) instrumental classical music (organ) in which different Johann Sebastian Bach (Walcha, 1997) themes are repeated and developed in a highly ordered manner, enablingDuration: 496s study of the effect of repeated parts compared to their first appearance.

“Making love out of nothing” An example of pop music previously shown to elicit strong emotional Air Supply (Air Supply, 1997) reactions (Panksepp, 1995).Duration: 340s

“Main title”—Soundtrack of “Chocolat” An example of film music, with orchestral instrumentation and a simple Rachel Portman (Portman, 2000) structure. Duration: 186s

“Coma” An example of rock music, played by the Cello-Rockband Apocalyptika. Apocalyptica (Apocalyptica, 2004) “Coma” is a piece that uses “classical” instruments for rock music.

Duration: 405s“Skull full of maggots” An example of “death metal” music. Even if the piece seems to be nothing

Cannibal Corpse (Barnes, 2002) but chaotic shouting and crying at the first glance, it has a clear and simple Duration: 125s structure.

“Bossa nova” An example of dance music. The “Bossa nova” expected to elicit strong Quincy Jones (Jones, 1997) positive emotions with high activation.Duration: 161s


evaluate the trait status of individuals for basic emotionaltendencies. The ANPS and SSS-V tests result in sevenfive scales, respectively, both ranging from 1 to 5.Higher values represent a stronger molding of thecharacter quality.

Additionally, we used two self-developed questionnairesregarding musical preferences, habits, and education.These questionnaires included 7-point Likert scales andopen questions.

Apparatus and Procedure

Auditory stimuli were presented using closed head-phones (Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro) in combinationwith a USB soundcard (Audiophile, M-Audio). For thephysiological measurements, we used ARBO Ag/AgCl-electrodes with a diameter of 15 mm. Skin ConductanceResponses (SCRs) were measured on the middle seg-ments of the index and middle fingers of the nonactivehand. Signals were amplified 100 times with a biosignalamplifier developed by IED (Institut für explorativeDatenanalyse) Hamburg. Music, physiological data,and signals from the mouse button were synchronizedby the researcher-developed software (Nagel, 2005)based on DT Measure Foundry Data translation. Forevaluation and presentation of data, we used Matlab(Version 7.0.4), SPSS (Version 13.0), dBSonic (Version4.13), and Adobe Audition (Version 1.0).

During the experiment, participants sat in a comfort-able armchair, in a room in which the participant andexperimenter were separated by a room divider. Thereby,the contact between participant and researcher waspossible when desired, but the researcher could notwatch the participant during the experimental session.The experiment was explained in a standardized man-ner during the placing of the electrodes. Participantscould regulate the volume/sound to a pleasant level withthe help of a test-tone prior to testing.

Before the experiment began, a 30 s physiologicalbaseline measurement was taken while participants satin a relaxed manner in the armchair. The experimentthen began. Standard pieces four through seven (seeTable 1) were presented in order, followed by standardpieces one through three mixed randomly with eachparticipant’s “personal” pieces. Throughout the presen-tation of these stimuli, participants were asked to pressa mouse button whenever they perceived a chill (goosebumps reaction [“Gänsehaut”] or shivers down thespine [“Schauer über den Rücken”]), and to continue topress the button for the duration of the chill. Partici-pants were free to choose the hand with which to maketheir responses.

After listening to each piece, participants completed aquestionnaire regarding their knowledge, liking, andthe perceived pleasantness of the piece, as well as bodilyreactions to the music such as goose bumps or shiversdown the spine. Participants also were asked to describethe musical characteristics of excerpts they perceived asparticularly pleasant. When finished, they gave a sign tocontinue. Following the presentation of auditory stimuli,participants filled in the three character inventories andthe questionnaire regarding music preferences, listeninghabits, and musical education and experience.

To evaluate intra-individual stability of responses, werepeated this experiment seven times with a 24 year-old, right-handed female musician. The experimentwas done at the same time (10:30 a.m.) on seven subse-quent days with a two-day break for the weekend. Weused the same pieces (seven standard pieces plus threepersonal pieces) in the same order every day.

Chill Criteria

Two criteria were required for chill events to be includedin analysis. First, since chills are mediated by the sym-pathetic system (Boucsein, 2001), they also shouldshow an effect on Skin Conductance Response (SCR),the measurements of which are mostly based on sweatingreactions and blood flow to the fingers (Boucsein,2001). These physiological reactions also are mediatedby the sympathetic nervous system. Thereby, a reportedchill only was included in analysis when a reaction inSCR could be seen during the onset of the chill (i.e.,moment when participants pressed the mouse buttonto report presence of a chill). Second, in the question-naire administered after each piece, participants indicatedtheir perceived bodily reactions to the music. Only chillevents for which participants reported experiencing“goose bumps” and/or “shivers down the spine” wereincluded in analysis.

It should be noted that a chill may also be understoodas a mere subjective feeling that does not necessarilyoccur together with a physiological response; however,in order to have objective control for the reported chills,we defined chills as a reported feeling combined with ameasurable physiological response. Chills in reaction tostandard pieces could be used for direct comparisonsince all participants listened to these pieces under thesame conditions. Thus, the analysis of character invento-ries, music questionnaires, and the musicological analy-sis was based on the seven standard pieces. Chills frompersonal pieces were used to perform a more detailedanalysis of the chill phenomena. We compared partici-pants’ statements regarding pleasant musical events for



chill and nonchill pieces. Additionally, excerpts from thepersonal pieces were analyses psycho-acoustically.

Analysis of Standard Pieces

CHARACTER INVENTORIES AND MUSIC QUESTIONNAIRES

To check for differences in character and musical expe-rience between chill responders and nonchill respon-ders, we divided the two groups according to thenumber off chills they perceived in response to the stan-dard pieces. Here the conditions for all listeners werethe same. We divided the participants into two cate-gories: the upper quarter (25%), i.e., participants whoperceived up to 17 chills in response to the standardpieces, and the lower quarter (25%), i.e., participantswho perceived no chills at all. Both groups consisted ofthree men and seven women. Since we found a similardistribution between genders in both groups, whichalso reflects the distribution of the whole group, wecould not detect any gender difference in chill response.Since we were working with volunteer participants thegender bias reflects the gender distribution that charac-terizes volunteers. Mann-Whitney U tests were used tocalculate the differences between these two categories.

COMPARISON OF CHILL ONSETS IN TIME

The relationship between music and chill onsets wasstudied via musicological structural analysis. This wasdone for the seven standard pieces.

Analysis of Personal Pieces

PARTICIPANTS’ STATEMENTS REGARDING THE CHILL PIECES

Since chills were expected to be pleasant emotional reac-tions, we asked two questions regarding pleasantness inthe questionnaire after each piece: “How would yourate the piece of music according to pleasantness?”(“Als wie angenehm haben Sie das Stück empfun-den?”), and, as an open question: “If you find a sectionof the piece particularly pleasant, could you pleasedescribe its characteristics?” (“Falls es einen Abschnittim Stück gibt, den Sie als besonders angenehm empfun-den haben, können Sie die Merkmale dieses Abschnittsbeschreiben?”).

The first question was used to control whether therereally is a relationship between chills and pleasantness,assessed using a Spearman correlation between thenumber of reported chills and the rating of pleasant-ness for the “personal” pieces. If this was the case, thesecond question was used to reveal, in an indirect man-ner, what structural part of the music was perceivedconsciously and attentively as pleasant, thereby reveal-ing possible structural parts of the personal pieces that

show a relationship to the chill experiences. We decidednot to ask directly “what do you think triggered thechill” in order to avoid confusion of the participants’chill hypotheses and opinions of the actual structuralparts to which they reacted. Asking directly for thecause of chill could have resulted in participants con-centrating on the previously named structural parts inthe subsequent pieces, to see whether or not they trig-gered chills again that could have led to self-fulfillingprophecies regarding the causes of chills. We used themusicological analysis of the standard pieces for a directanalysis of the musical structural parts, to which theparticipants had chill reactions.

The analysis of chill-reaction patterns to the standardpieces revealed a set of basic musical structures thatseem to be related to chills. We used these results to cat-egorize the statements of the participants according tothe following musical structures: (a) beginning of apiece; (b) entry of instrumental or human voice(s); (b)volume or changes in volume (e.g., fortissimo, pianis-simo, crescendo, diminuendo); (c) melody, theme ormotive; (d) tempo, rhythm; (e) contrast of two voices;(f) harmony; and (g) others.

We compared the number of statements (all state-ments and statements in different categories) for threegroups: (a) chill responders regarding chill pieces; (b)chillresponders regarding nonchill pieces; and (c)chill non-responders regarding nonchill pieces.

MEANS OF PSYCHOACOUSTICAL TIME-SERIES

The chills from the personal pieces were analyzed psy-choacoustically. The hypothesis was that chills occur inresponse to distinct acoustical patterns in a reflex-likemanner. We collected 190 musical excerpts 20 secondsin length, each beginning 10 seconds before a chill onsetand ending 10 seconds after. The excerpts were analysedpsychoacoustically using dBSonic software, focussingon loudness, sharpness, roughness, and fluctuation foreach excerpt (Zwicker & Fastl, 1999). The measure forloudness was “sone,” where “The level of 40 dB of a 1-kHztone was proposed to give the reference for loudnesssensation, i.e., 1 sone” (p. 205). Sharpness was measuredin “acum,” where “The reference sound producing 1acum is a narrow band noise one critical-band wide at acentre frequency of 1 kHz having a level of 60 dB”(p. 239). “Asper” was the measure for roughness, whereone asper is defined as “the 60-dB, 1kHz tone that is100% modulated in amplitude at a modulation fre-quency of 70 Hz” (p. 257). Finally, fluctuation isdescribed in “vacil,” where “a fixed point is thereforedefined for a 60-dB, 1 kHz 100% amplitude-modulatedat 4 Hz, as producing 1 vacil” (p. 247).



In order to check for a general common pattern in allchill excerpts, the means of all the time series werecalculated separately for each parameter. We wereespecially interested in peaks in relation to chills. As acriterion for the significant peaks in means of the psy-choacoustical time series, we decided on the meanupper 10% (percentile) of all individual time series, i.e.,the value of the 90th percentile of the 190 individualtime series was calculated. The mean of the resulting190 values was used as the level of significance.

Additionally excerpts were categorized according to:(1) individual participants, i.e., the chill-excerpts ofevery individual were summarized in one category totest for differences between participants; (2) musicalexperts (5), musical amateurs (20), nonmusicians (13);(3) whether the chill consisted of goose bumps andshivers down the spine, or just goose bumps, or justshivers; (4) whether positive, negative, or no memorieswere associated with the piece of music that aroused thechills; and (5)whether the piece was rated as veryintense or not very intense. Means and medians of thecategories were calculated.

FREQUENCY OF PEAKS IN PSYCHOACOUSTICAL PARAMETERSRELATED TO CHILLS

We collected and counted excerpts that showed a signif-icant peak in loudness, sharpness, roughness, or fluctu-ation at the chill onset. A peak was rated as significantwhen it was higher than 90% of the entire curve (see

Figure 1 for an example of a peak rated significant). Inthe same way, we collected and counted excerpts thatshowed significant peaks one, two, three, and four sec-onds before the chill onset, since the chill can occurwith a delay.

Additionally, we calculated the differentiation of allvalues in one-second intervals. The absolute values ofthe differentiation show changes in the psychoacousti-cal parameters. A high value in the differentiationreveals a strong change in the parameters independentof direction. We repeated the peak analysis for the dif-ferentiation of all named parameters.

Then we compared the results to 190 excerpts ana-lyzed in the same manner that were collected from:

1. The same chill pieces, i.e., musical pieces that arousedchills, but from points in time that showed no chillreaction (nonchill excerpts from chill pieces). Whenpossible, the same numbers of nonchill and chillexcerpts were collected from the same piece.

2. An additional 190 excerpts were collected from piecesthat chill-responders listened to without perceivingany chills (nonchill excerpts from nonchill pieces).

Finally, we compared the number of collected peaksin loudness, sharpness, roughness, and fluctuation aswell as in their differentiation for chill excerpts, non-chill excerpts from chill pieces, and nonchill excerptsfrom nonchill pieces, by performing chi-square tests.


FIGURE 1. Example of a significant peak in loudness related to reported chill onset. Threshold of significance is 90% (percentile) of the individualcurve (horizontal dashed line). The onset of the chill is marked by a vertical dotted line.


Results

Only 21 of the 38 participants reported chills during theexperiment. Chill responders had a mean age of 40years (range = 11-72), and included two professionalmusicians, eleven amateur musicians, and eight non-musicians. The 17 chill nonresponders had a mean ageof 35 years (range = 19-64) and included three profes-sional musicians, nine amateur musicians, and fivenonmusicians. Each group included academics as wellas nonacademics.

Of the 21 chill responders a total of 399 chill eventswere reported. Of these 399 reported chills, 108 did notcorrespond to a visible SCR and thus were excludedfrom the analysis. Of the remaining 291 chill events, 79occurred in reaction to the standard pieces, 212 duringthe personal pieces.

Case study: Bach “Toccata BWV 540”

Figure 2 illustrates the results of the chill analysis forJ.S. Bach’s “Toccata BWV 540.” This music is an inter-esting example of chill reactions to music, because itconsists of six general structural parts that are repeatedand varied several times throughout the piece. The topsection of Figure 2 shows the acoustic envelope of thepiece with the six excerpts within the score marked(along the top of the waveform) and then shown innotation below (along with structural element descrip-tion and chill response data). The chill responses of thefour participants (P27, P12, P05, P11) who reportedchills in response to the Toccata are indicated below thewaveform. Although of the seven standard pieces the“Tuba mirum” elicited the most chills (a total of 40chills from 8 participants), the “Toccata BWV 540”(which elicited the second highest number of chills; atotal of 22 chills from 4 participants) is presented forcase study because chills are more equally distributedbetween participants and the six structural excerpts arerepeated several times within the piece.

The top section of Figure 2 illustrates that chills donot show a simple stimulus-response pattern; there isno point in time where all four participants react simul-taneously in response to the toccata. The only exampleof participants reacting relatively closely in time can befound at 8:01 min (participant 12) and 8:03 min (par-ticipant 11) at the end of the toccata.

However, the data appear to cluster when categoriz-ing the chills based on the structural parts. The maintheme (part 4) elicited chills from all four participants;nine of the total 22 chills (41%) occurred when this

main theme was played. Part 5, a chord sequence com-bined with an ascending figure, elicited the secondhighest number of chills; from three participants eightof the total 22 chills (36%) occurred during this part.None of the four remaining parts (1, 2, 3, 6) elicitedchills in more than one participant, resulting in just oneor two chills during the piece. Thus, sections 4 and 5,which made up 36% of the duration of the “Toccata,”elicited 77% of chills for this piece.

Retest Experiment

To evaluate response reliability, we repeated this experi-ment seven times with a 24 year-old, right-handedfemale musician. Here we present two examples: Fig-ures 3 and 4 illustrate chill responses to the “Tubamirum” (standard piece) and Strauss’ “Breit über meinHaupt” (personal piece) across the seven days of testing.

As for all other participants, of the seven standardpieces the “Tuba mirum” elicited the largest number ofchills from this participant. Across days 1 through 5, attwo points in time, chill responses were the most stableat 2:12 min (days 1 through 5), at which point the altovoice enters, and at 2:35 min (days 1 through 4), atwhich point the soprano voice enters. It is noteworthyto mention that the participant in this retest experi-ment is a singer (soprano). On days 6 and 7 no chillswere elicited.

On four days (days 4 through 7), the participant com-mented on what was particularly pleasant about thispiece. On days 4, 5, and 7 she named the “entry of thealto,”which occurs at 2:35 min; on days 3 and 7 she namedthe “entry of the quartet,” which occurs at 3:20 min.

Figure 4 shows one point in time where chill responsewas stable for the personal piece “Breit über mein Haupt.”At 1:00 min, a chill occurred within a range of four sec-onds on six of seven days (days 1 through 6). The psy-choacoustical analysis showed that the piece reached itsclimax in loudness at this time. Another peak in loudnessat 0:50 min could be associated with a chill occurring ontwo days. Another peak at 0:28 min may be associatedwith a chill occurring on three days. It must also be men-tioned though that in this case the participant pressed thebutton before the peak of loudness was reached.

When asked what was particularly pleasant about thispiece, the participant named the text passages “Nacht”on day 1, “nur deiner Locken Nacht” on day 4, and“deiner Locken Nacht” on day 5. Those were the onlystatements regarding this piece throughout the experi-ment. The passage “nur deiner Locken Nacht” lastsfrom 0:56 min to 1:07 min.




FIGURE 2. Case study of Bach’s “Toccata BWV 540.” The top section shows the acoustic envelope of the piece with the six excerpts within the scoremarked (along the top of the waveform) and then shown in notation below (along with structural element description and chill response data). The chillresponses of four participants (P27, P12, P05, P11) are indicated below the waveform.


Frequency of Chills

Figure 5 shows the frequency of chill responses for allparticipants for the standard pieces. It is apparent thatchills are relatively rare events and are not regularly dis-tributed between participants or pieces. While someparticipants perceive up to 15 chills in one piece, othersdo not perceive any chills at all. Further, while Mozart’s“Tuba mirum” and the Bach “Toccata” aroused manychills, “Skull full of maggots” and the “Bossa nova” didnot result in chill responses.

Questionnaires

Participants completed three character inventories: theTemperament and Character Inventory TCI (Cloninger,Przybeck, Svrakic, & Wetzel, 1999), the Sensation Seeking

Scale SSS-V (Litle & Zuckerman, 1986) and the Affec-tive Neuroscience Personality Scales ANPS (Davis,Panksepp, & Normansell, 2003; Reuter et al., 2005). Wecompared responses from chill nonresponders and chillresponders using a Mann-Whitney U test; two signifi-cant differences between the two groups were revealed.First, chill responders were less thrill and adventureseeking (SSS-V). On a 7-point Likert scale, chill respon-ders rated 3.3 on average (SD = 1.6), whereas chill non-responders rated 6.0 (SD = 2.0; one missing value). Thisdifference was significant, U = 12.5, p < .01, two-tailed.Second, chill responders were more reward dependent(TCI). On a 0-100 scale, chill responders rated 57.5 onaverage (SD = 4.9; two missing values), whereas chillnonresponders rated 49.1 (SD = 9.4; two missingvalues). The difference was significant, U = 13.0, p < .05,two-tailed.


FIGURE 3. Chill response data for one participant across seven days in response to the “Tuba mirum” from Mozart’s Requiem KV 626. Chill responseconsistency is evident at 2:12 min and 2:35 min.



FIGURE 4. Chill response data (top panel) for one participant across seven days in response to Strauss’ “Breit über mein Haupt” with accompanyingpsychoacoustic analysis presented in the bottom panel. Chill response consistency is evident at 1:00 min. The psychoacoustic parameters loudness,roughness, and fluctuation show peaks at this point in time.

0:10 0:20 0:30 0:40 0:50 1:00 1:10 1:20 1:30 1:40 1:50

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Psycho acoustic analysis of "Breit über mein Haupt"

Chill reactions to "Breit über mein Haupt"zz

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The musical experience and habit questionnairesrevealed that chill responders differed from chill nonre-sponders in several ways. First, chill responders indicatedhigher familiarity with classical music (M = 5.2, SD = 1.4vs. M = 3.2; SD = 1.4; one missing value, U = 14.0, p < .01,two-tailed). Second, chill responders rated music as moreimportant in their lives (M = 6.9, SD = 0.4; two missingvalues vs. M = 6.0, SD = 1.0; one missing value, U = 15.5,p < .05, two-tailed). Third, chill responders identifiedmore with the music they preferred (M = 6.5, SD = 0.7 vs.M = 5.0, SD = 1.2; one missing value, U = 10.0, p < .01,two-tailed). Fourth, chill responders more readily lis-tened to music in every day life in a situation similar tothe experimental setting (M = 5.0, SD = 1.9 vs. M = 3.0,SD = 1.6; one missing value, U = 18.0, p < .05, two-tailed).

Psychoacoustic Analysis

From the personal pieces, we collected 190 chill-elicit-ing excerpts, 20 seconds in length beginning 10 secondsbefore the chill onset. We analysed the psychoacousticloudness, sharpness, roughness, and fluctuation param-eters of each excerpt.

We first calculated the means of all chill excerpts for allfour psychoacoustic parameters using the 90th percentilevalue as the level of significance. Overall mean curvesshowed no significant peaks at the chill onset. However, a

small elevation in loudness was an indication that build-ing pre-categorized groups of excerpts for further analy-sis might reveal peaks at the chill onset in sub-categories.Sub-categories were arranged according to: (1) individ-ual participants; (2) music training (i.e., musical experts,musical amateurs, or nonmusicians); (3) type of chill(i.e., goose bumps, shivers, or both goose bumps andshivers down the spine); (4) memory type associatedwith the chill-eliciting music (i.e., positive, negative, orno memories); and (5) whether the piece was rated asvery intense or not very intense. Comparison of resultingmean curves revealed no clear psychoacoustic character-istics of groups related to the chill onset.

We next compared loudness, sharpness, roughness,and fluctuation peak frequency data—as well as in theirdifferentiation one to four seconds before chill onset—for chill excerpts, nonchill excerpts from chill pieces,and nonchill excerpts from nonchill pieces using chi-square tests. Figure 6 shows the percentage of excerptsthat showed a peak at the chill-onset, and at the fourone-second intervals preceding chill onset for chillexcerpts, and nonchill excerpts within pieces that didand did not elicit chills at other points. For two nonchillcomparisons, the onset was a randomly chosen point intime within the piece of music.

As illustrated in Figure 6, significant chill frequencieswere evident for each psychoacoustic parameter, although


FIGURE 5. Number of chill responses (y-axis) per minute for all 38 participants (x-axis) and 7 standard pieces (z-axis).

•9•


not always at chill onset. Nineteen percent of all chillexcerpts showed peaks in loudness at chill onset, com-pared to 9% at random points within nonchill excerpts,χ2(2, N = 570) = 11.0, p < .01. Fourteen percent of all chillexcerpts showed a peak in sharpness one second beforeonset, compared to 7-8% at random points within non-chill excerpts, χ2(2, N = 570) = 6.2, p < .05. For the rough-ness parameter, there was a difference at the onset, but inthis case, nonchill pieces showed a higher number ofpeaks (27% of the cases) than chill pieces, χ2(2, N = 570)= 19.9, p < .01. Finally, differences in fluctuation betweenchill and nonchill excerpts were evident at one and fourseconds before onset. At -1 seconds, 13% of chill excerptsshowed a peak in fluctuation, compared to 8% and 5% inthe nonchill excerpts,χ2(2, N = 570) = 7.7, p < .05.At -4 sec-onds 15% of chill excerpts showed a peak in fluctuation,

compared to 6% and 11% in nonchill excerpts, χ2(2, N =570) = 7.2, p < .05. No other significant differencesbetween chill and nonchill excerpts were evident.

Chills and Pleasantness

Our overall evaluation of chills and pleasantnessrevealed that chills were significantly correlated withperceived pleasantness of the pieces, r(51) = .45, p < .01.We asked the participants to describe what element ofthe music they perceived as being particularly pleas-urable, in an attempt to identify potential chill trig-gers. The individual statements could be classifiedinto seven categories of musical events: (1) beginningof a piece; (2) entry of instrumental or human voice(s);(3) volume or changes in volume (e.g., fortissimo,


FIGURE 6. Peak frequency data for each of the four psychoacoustic parameters for chill excerpts, non-chill excerpts within chill pieces, and non-chillexcerpts within non-chill pieces. Frequency data are presented at chill onset and 1–4 seconds before chill onset. ** p < .01; * p < .05


pianissimo, crescendo, diminuendo); (4) melody,theme or motive; (5) tempo, rhythm; (6) contrast oftwo voices; and (7) harmony. Using a chi-square test wecompared prevalence per category for the statementsof: (a) chill responders regarding pieces that arousedchills (chill pieces); (b) chill responders regardingpieces that did not arouse chills (nonchill pieces of chillresponders); and (c) chill nonresponders’ pieces (non-chill pieces of chill nonresponders).

As shown in Figure 7, chill responders gave signifi-cantly more statements regarding chill pieces (77%)compared to nonchill pieces (58%). Chill nonrespon-ders gave even fewer statements (48%), χ2(2, N = 216) =26.4, p < .01. The three groups differed regarding howmany statements fit into the seven categories of musi-cal events: the comments of chill nonresponders couldbe categorized in about half of the cases (25% catego-rized statements vs. 24% noncategorized statements),while chill responder statements fit into the categories45% (nonchill pieces) and 69% (chill pieces) of thetime. Thus, for chill pieces, 90% of statements couldbe categorized, whereas only 51% of chill nonrespon-der statements could be categorized, χ2(2, N = 216) =7.0, p < .05.

We found significant differences between partici-pants’ statements for most of the single categories ofmusical events: entry of a voice and increase in orchange in volume showed the most pronounced differ-ences. In almost one third of the chill pieces (29%), theentry of a voice was perceived as particularly pleasura-ble. This was independent of whether it was a humanvoice or instrument. For nonchill pieces, an entry of avoice was mentioned for 11% (chill responders) and7% (chill nonresponders) of the pieces, χ2(2, N = 216) =13.5, p < .01. Volume (i.e., extraordinarily loud or quietpassages; fortissimo, pianissimo) or a change in vol-ume (crescendo, diminuendo) was shown in 25% ofthe chill pieces as being most pleasurable. In nonchillpieces, volume was mentioned for just 9% (chillresponders) and 4% (chill nonresponders) of thepieces, χ2(2, N = 216) = 16.0, p < .01. The contrast oftwo voices was named for 10% of the chill pieces asbeing a pleasurable element, but for just 3% of nonchillpieces listened to by chill responders and 1% of pieceslistened to by chill nonresponders, χ2(2, N = 216) = 6.9,p < .05. “Melody” summarizes statements discussingmelodies, motives or themes as being extraordinarypleasurable. This category showed a difference betweenstatements of chill responders and chill nonresponders(4%), but not between chill pieces (15%) and nonchill(14%) pieces listened to by chill responders, χ2(2, N =216) = 8.2, p < .05.

Discussion

What can we conclude from the various data collectedin this interdisciplinary and exploratory study? Sum-marizing our findings, it can be stated that chills are rel-atively rare peak experiences. Not all people perceivechills in response to music, and responders and nonre-sponders can be characterized by personality factors,and according to their experience with musical styles.They differ in statements concerning how importantmusic is in their lives, how much they identify with theirpreferred musical style, and in which situations theyenjoy music. Chill responders react more to distinctmusical structures such as the entrance of a voice,whereas nonresponders seem to listen to music in a lessdiscriminating way. Mere acoustical features like peaksin loudness, sharpness, or fluctuation are of secondaryimportance. Inter-individually, chills do not occur at adistinct point in time in response to a certain acousticalpattern, but in response to musical structural parts.Intra-individually, some chill-events are relatively stableresponses to musical structures, such as the entrance ofa voice, and show habituation after a few days. Themusical structures that are associated with chills aremostly perceived consciously and are felt as beinghighly pleasant.

One important question concerned the frequency ofchills. While Panksepp (1995) found a mean of up to 4.4chills/minute for “Making love out of nothing at all” byAir Supply in a group of 14 students, we found chillreactions in response to the same piece in less than 10%of our participants. Those listeners who had reportedchills had a “chill rate” of 1.1 per minute. There arethree possible explanations for this difference. First,Panksepp used a group of participants that was muchmore homogeneous than our group. Second, the AirSupply song was much better known in 1995 thantoday, and it seems to be more familiar to the Americanstudents than to the German participants. Panksepphighlighted that both familiarity and liking were strongvariables that were positively related to the number ofchills. Finally, the participants in Panksepp’s study filledin the questionnaires in a group situation, whereas ourparticipants performed the experiment in individualsettings. It cannot be disregarded that chill reactions,and emotions in general, are influenced by a groupsituation.

A similar “pre-selection” of listeners took place in Slo-boda’s (1991) experiment. As in Panksepp’s study, thehomogeneity of the participant group was notintended; about 500 people were given the question-naires, but only 83 participants answered them. Even if




FIGURE 7. Categorization of participant descriptions of perceived pleasantness for chill excerpts, non-chill excerpts within chill pieces, and non-chillexcerpts within non-chill pieces. p < .01; * p < .05


this group was still relatively heterogeneous, the musi-cal analysis of emotion provoking segments was basedon the statements of musical performers (12 profes-sionals and 13 amateurs). Only two respondents werenonperformers. In our experiment, participants coulddirectly report a chill in response to the music, withoutexplicitly naming or describing the musical passage. Inpart, we found the same structural elements such as “asudden dynamic change,” and according to our results,we can confirm the principle behind the two factors,“new or unprepared harmony” and “sudden dynamicor textural change” as the occurrence of somethingnew, or an unexpected event in music. Interestingly thisseems to be a general principle for emotional reactionsto music evident in further work from our laboratory(Grewe, Nagel, Kopiez, & Altenmüller, 2006).

Corresponding to Goldstein (1980), we found thatthere were chill responders and nonresponders, andthat it was possible to characterize chill respondersaccording to their personality, musical experience, andpreferences. Chill responders showed a preference forless intensive stimuli, they are not “thrill and adventureseekers” (the word thrill has a different connotation inthe context of the SSS-V), and they are more rewarddependent, i.e., they especially like approval and posi-tive emotional input from their environment. Music asa stimulus fits these needs perfectly. Compared withbungee jumping or skydiving, it is a rather “soft” stimu-lus, and it seems to “transmit” emotions in some way.The need to clarify in which way music transmits emo-tions remains. As a very important result, we found thatchill responders are more familiar with classical music.Most chills occurred in classical music, in the standardpieces as well as the personal pieces. That does notmean that it’s necessarily classical music that arouseschills, but it is a hint that familiarity with certain musi-cal styles is of importance in order to respond to it withstrong emotions. This finding also corresponds to theresults of Panksepp’s study (1995) that the most chillswere found among individuals who were familiar withthe music selection. However, it should be noted thatduring pilot testing, we were able to trigger numerouschills in one participant with a piece of electronic jazzthat was completely unknown to the participant. Theparticipant reported being very familiar with, and fondof, electronic jazz, thus suggesting that explicit knowl-edge of the musical structure is not as important asimplicit knowledge.

Further experience from pilot testing contributed tothe decision not to ask for the musical structures con-nected to chills in a direct way, as Sloboda (1991) did inhis study. Only the musical performers were able to name

musical events properly. Since chills are perceived ashighly pleasant, we asked in an open question what wasparticularly pleasant within each piece. As the responsesshowed, nonexperts also reported that distinct musicalstructures were pleasant, even if they were unable to useproper music terminology (e.g., “strings became louder,more strings entered” instead of “crescendo”).

It is also crucial to weigh the importance of a stimu-lus for perceiving chills. Music was neither equallyimportant to chill responders and nonresponders, nordid the two groups equally identify with their preferredmusical style, as the results of the questionnairesshowed. Giving importance to music and identifyingwith a certain style seems to be an active decision thatmay be based on social experiences. Every musical stylehas its social context and social groups seem to identifyrather strongly with “their” style. Hip hop, techno, clas-sical music, and death metal are examples, even if post-modernism has broken down many barriers.

Additionally, chill responders reported listening tomusic in everyday life in a situation similar to the exper-iment. One of the most characteristic features of the lis-tening situation in our experiment was that listenerswere alone and separated from their surroundings viaheadphones. Many listening situations in everyday lifeare much more social, e.g., clubs, parades, or concerts.This is important when we regard the communicationalaspect of music. Music has often been called “the lan-guage of emotions” (Gabrielsson & Lindström, 1993).Many studies have shown that identification of basicemotions in music works reliably in experts as well as innonexperts (Cunningham & Sterling, 1988; Hevner,1936; Terwogt & van Grinswen, 1991). This is signifi-cant, because even if a listener enjoys music via head-phones and alone, this may still be a communicative actthat includes active interpretation. Music may be a“communicational offering” (in analogy to Bach’s“Musical Offering”), but it’s the listener who decideswhether he is interested in this offering. This fits thefinding that the entry of a voice is perceived as beingespecially pleasurable, and was mentioned mostly inchill-pieces. There is one of Panksepp’s (1995) findingsthat also can be used as an argument for this hypothe-sis: he found that “the piercing simplicity of certain solopieces that emerge from a richer orchestral back-ground” can intensify emotional feelings.

It is even possible that the listener identifies with andimitates the music. This occurs when listeners sing along,when they start to “conduct” the music on a CD (as oneof our participants reported in the questionnaires), orwhen they dance to the music (reported by another par-ticipant as being her main response to music).



This shows that it would be a misunderstanding tointerpret listening to music as a passive act. Musicarouses different emotional processes in people; it setsthem to (e-)motion.

There is an interesting finding from Blood and Zatorre(2001) showing that during chills, the activity of thethalamus and the anterior cinguli is elevated. Bothbrain systems are involved in attention. Sloboda foundthat “new or unprepared harmony” or “sudden dynamicor textural change” is associated with chill reactions.Meyer (1956, 2001) described unexpectedness as themost important aspect for evoking emotionalprocesses. When we look at what chill responders andchill nonresponders perceived as being especially pleas-ant in chill pieces and nonchill pieces, we find an inter-esting parallel: the entry of a solo voice, special qualitiesin loudness, the entrance of a motive or theme, and thecontrast of two voices seem to raise the attention of par-ticipants. Obviously, it is not so much the distinct musi-cal feature, but the focus of attention on the music thatis important for arousing chills. Results from the psy-choacoustical analysis give further evidence for thishypothesis. Peaks in loudness, sharpness, and fluctua-tion can be found in a small number of chill pieces, butno overall acoustical pattern that triggers a chill couldbe determined. This hypothesis is supported by tworesults. First, chills of different responders within onepiece did not occur at the same point in time, but inresponse to the same musical structures as evident

from the case study of Bach’s “Toccata BWV540.” Sec-ond, in one individual some chills occurred regularlyin response to musical structures (results from controlexperiment), suggesting that a conscious but not nec-essarily explicit evaluation of music is crucial for per-ceiving a chill. Chills do not seem to be an automatic,reflex-like response to any acoustical pattern. Our find-ings suggest that the question of whether chills induceemotional feelings, or emotional feeling induce chills(Panksepp, 1995), should be answered by the latteralternative. A cognitive, implicit evaluation triggeredby attention-raising structures leads to an emotionalprocess, and a chill occurs in the context of thisprocess.

We summarized the evidence from this experiment ina model (Figure 8). Whether or not a chill is triggereddepends on the relationship of the music to the listener:chill-eliciting music may contain some structural ele-ments, like the entry of a voice or special qualities inloudness, but these are basic structures that can befound in almost all musical styles. Thus, several listener-dependent factors may be important. First, that the lis-tener’s personality involves appreciation of a moredelicate stimulus such as music (i.e., general reactivity);and second, that the listener is familiar with the style ofthe music that is presented, and that they are in anappropriate listening context and are willing to listenattentively (i.e., special reactivity). Third, in some cases,like the example of the “Barrabam-call” from Johann


FIGURE 8. Model of chills in response to music.


Sebastian Bach’s “Matthäus-Passion” BWV 244 (Sloboda,1991), there may be a shortcut to attention. A choir thatenters with a fortissimo call may arouse the attention ofeven nonexperienced listeners who normally needstronger stimuli than music.

If these factors are evident, the structural elements ofthe presented musical stimulus are capable of defyingexpectations and thereby focusing the attention of thelistener on the music as well as on his bodily reactions.This emotional process works like positive feedback; themore attentively the listener follows the music and feelshis own reaction to the stimulus, the stronger thisprocess becomes. The chill can ultimately be inter-preted as the consequence of a strong stimulation of thewhole nervous system.

When thinking about the evolutionary bases of pleas-ure and chills in reaction to music, one should considerthe possibility that it is not the phenomena such as thepilerection or shivers that make chills evolutionarilyimportant, but the emotional process that takes place inresponse to a stimulus that contains information. Insocial groups, it is not only important to communicatefacts, but also one’s emotional status. Music can beunderstood as an emotional communication system,and it is essential to learn to understand the communica-tion of the social group to which one belongs. It has beensaid that most social groups have a certain style of music.If we want to belong to a group, we need to understandtheir emotional communication, which is partly foundin music. This may be one reason why a certain musicalstyle becomes important to us, and why we begin toidentify with this style. It’s not the music, but the feelingsof the people we hear playing that are important to us.When our implications and expectations regarding such“important”music are violated we become attentive; andwe start to learn the new pattern. This learning process is

accompanied by an emotional process, on the one handby motivation, on the other hand by compassion. Beingable to sympathize with the feelings of others may be thebest way to understand them. When our level of concen-tration is especially high, when the emotional process isvery strong, and/or when our senses are completelyfocussed on the music, a chill may result.

Coming back to the opening question, we proposethat it is not the music as a physical stimulus thatmanipulates our moods, but it is we using the music asa communicative offering to influence our feelings in are-creative process. There may be some strong effectsin music, such as the “Barrabam-call,” which triggerchills directly. But even in this example, it seems to be aprocess mainly based on the heightened attention ofthe listener. The reason why we largely are not awarethat we actively influence our feelings by listening tomusic is because this process is mostly implicit, basedon associations, memories, and expectancies. Our ownmind seems to react automatically to music. We senseno effort; music is recreation, but yet it is the listener’sre-creation.

Author Note

This work was supported by the DFG (Al 269-6) andthe Centre for Systemic Neurosciences, Hanover.EMuJoy-software can be tested at: http://musicweb.hmt- hannover.de/emujoy/

Correspondence concerning this article should beaddressed to Oliver Grewe, Institute for Music Physiologyand Musicians’ Medicine, Hanover University of Musicand Drama.

Hohenzollernstr. 47, 30161 Hannover, E-MAIL:[email protected]


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