The biological roots behind the chills you get from music and art

New research reveals that the tendency to feel a shiver down the spine when listening to a beautiful song or looking at a striking painting is partly tied to a person’s DNA. The findings suggest that the intense physical and emotional responses people have to different forms of art share a common biological foundation. The study was published in the journal PLOS Genetics.

For centuries, writers and philosophers have described the intense physical reactions that art can produce. Charles Darwin wrote about shivering from pleasure while listening to a choir in a grand chapel. Other thinkers have described a telltale tingle that signals a work of genius. These physical reactions are commonly known as aesthetic chills.

A chill in this context refers to a sudden wave of strong emotion that often triggers physical changes. People describe these moments as feeling a shiver along the back or suddenly developing goosebumps. In biological terms, this response involves the brain’s reward centers. This brain activation parallels the processes seen when humans encounter basic biological needs like food, but here it is triggered by abstract cultural creations.

Experiencing chills offers a distinct and measurable way to study human emotional responses. They connect a subjective feeling of pleasure to an automatic physical reaction. Not everyone experiences these sensations in the same way or with the same intensity.

Past research involving families and twins suggested that the tendency to feel chills from art is partly inherited. Studies comparing identical and fraternal twins indicated a genetic component to these reactions. Yet those earlier projects relied on mathematical models of family inheritance rather than actual molecular data.

Relying purely on family trees leaves lingering questions about the exact biological mechanisms at play. Family members share childhood environments alongside their genes. This shared environment can make it difficult to determine whether similarities stem from biological inheritance or from growing up in the same household.

Twin designs also rely on assumptions about how families share their environments. These models generally assume that identical twins experience the same level of environmental similarity as fraternal twins. If this assumption is incorrect, the models might overestimate the role of genetics.

To investigate the biological roots of these responses directly, a research team set out to analyze actual variations in human DNA. The investigators wanted to see if specific genetic markers could explain why some people are more prone to these intense reactions. They also aimed to determine if the genetic roots of music induced chills overlap with those triggered by visual art or poetry.

Giacomo Bignardi, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, led the study. He collaborated with colleagues Danielle Admiraal, Else Eising, and Simon E. Fisher. The team sought to bridge the gap between subjective cultural experiences and modern genomic science.

The researchers utilized data from a large health and genetics project in the Netherlands called Lifelines. This project collects medical, genetic, and lifestyle information from generations of families living in the northern region of the country. For this specific analysis, the team gathered self-reported survey data from more than 15,000 adult participants.

Participants answered questions about their emotional reactions to different types of media. They rated how often they felt waves of excitement or chills when reading poetry, looking at visual art, or listening to music. The researchers then paired these survey responses with genetic information extracted from the participants’ biological samples.

To hunt for genetic patterns, the team looked at common variations in the participants’ genetic code. These variations are small differences in the building blocks of DNA that occur naturally across populations. By comparing the complete genetic profiles of the participants, the researchers could measure how genetically similar any two people in the study were.

The team employed a statistical method to compare genetic similarity with trait similarity. If people who share more DNA variations also share similar tendencies to experience art induced chills, it indicates a distinct genetic association with the trait. They applied this method across a mix of closely related family members, distant relatives, and completely unrelated individuals.

The researchers estimated that up to 29 percent of the variation in how frequently people experience chills is linked to family relatedness. When looking specifically at the common DNA variations tracked by standard genetic testing, they found that these specific markers accounted for about a quarter of that family effect. This shows that measurable differences in DNA are directly linked to how intensely people react to art.

The scientists noted that the specific DNA markers they tracked explained only a portion of the total genetic effect seen within families. This gap is common in genetic research and happens for a variety of reasons. The laboratory equipment used to scan DNA primarily picks up common genetic differences, potentially missing rare mutations that might influence subjective traits.

Next, the team investigated whether the genetic factors involving musical chills are the same as those involving visual art and poetry chills. They calculated a metric called a genetic correlation to see how much the biological bases of these traits overlap. The analysis revealed a moderate overlap between the two categories.

This moderate correlation means that many of the genetic variations associated with a sensitivity to painted or written art also increase the likelihood of responding strongly to music. The correlation was not absolute, which indicates that some genetic factors are unique to a specific art form. The biological machinery that makes someone respond strongly to a painting is related to, but distinct from, the machinery that makes them shiver at a symphony.

The researchers also explored whether the genetic tendency to feel chills is part of a broader psychological framework. They turned to the concept of openness to experience, a dimension of personality that includes having a highly active imagination and a general interest in the arts. Taking data from a completely separate study of over 200,000 people, they created a genetic index representing this personality trait.

The team applied this genetic index back to their current study participants in the Netherlands. They found that individuals with genetic profiles linked to high openness were more likely to report experiencing chills from music, art, and poetry. The genetic index only accounted for a fraction of a percent of the total variation, but the association was clear.

These findings suggest that a general biological predisposition toward certain personality types shapes our momentary bodily reactions to cultural products. The tendency to seek out and appreciate art seems to share biological pathways with the physical thrill of experiencing it. Our personalities and our physical reflexes are intertwined down to the cellular level.

To ensure the accuracy of their models, the team checked for a phenomenon where people choose partners with similar traits. If people who get chills from art tend to form relationships with one another, it can skew the mathematical models and make a trait appear more strictly governed by genetics than it actually is. Examining data from more than three thousand romantic partners in the biobank, they found only a very weak correlation. This gave them confidence that their genetic estimates were not heavily biased.

The study relies entirely on self-reported survey answers, which introduces a margin of error. People may interpret questions about their own feelings differently from day to day or year to year. This subjective variation likely causes the mathematical models to underestimate the true extent of genetic influence.

Another limitation is that the genetic analysis focused exclusively on participants of European descent. Genetic variation differs broadly across global populations, and cultural attitudes toward music and art also vary widely. Future research will need to include more diverse demographics to see if these biological patterns hold true across different cultures.

The current data cannot reveal exactly how DNA variations change a person’s physical biology to produce a chill. The physical mechanism of goosebumps, which involves tiny muscles contracting near hair follicles, often accompanies emotional chills but can occur independently. More research is needed to trace the path from genetic code to brain activity and physical skin reactions.

Future investigations might utilize larger genetic databases and more advanced physiological measurements. Comparing these physical responses across different age groups and geographic regions could show how human biology varies naturally over time. For now, the research provides a new way to think about why a favorite song or painting can feel physically moving.

The study, “Genetic underpinnings of chills from art and music,” was authored by Giacomo Bignardi, Danielle Admiraal, Else Eising, and Simon E. Fisher.