Goosebumps and Spiritual Experiences

"Goosebumps" (or more technically "pilo-erection" - raising of hair) refers to a sensation that often occurs when people are either cold or overcome with emotion. Directed by the sympathetic nervous system, the piloerector muscles, tiny muscles attached to individual hair follicles, contract, causing a temporary raising of the hairs on the surface of the skin.  In connection with this, people often experience "chills" or a shivering down their spine or tingling in the skin known as transient paresthesia, pins and needles or frisson.

Getting goosebumps when cold may have served an evolutionary purpose of keeping us warm by extending the reach of hair on our bodies.  This may have been more effective in our evolutionary ancestors who had more hair and is still very effective in other animals, but does little to actually keep us warm today.

But why do we experience this sensation when we have an emotional experience such as reading a moving novel, listening to a piece of music, a sermon, or watching a movie?

Why do we get emotional goosebumps on occasions such as listening to music or watching movies?

The leading theory is that the primal emotional part of the brain (amygdala) very quickly reacts to something unexpected, a surprise that signals a fight-or-flight response, an automatic physiological reaction that can manifest as goosebumps or chills. This surprise could be a sudden change in volume, pitch, or key of music, unexpected visual stimuli, or an unexpected turn of events in a story such as strong displays of heroism, courage, loyalty, or patriotism. Moments later, the thinking or analytical part of the brain (pre-frontal cortex) re-interprets this surprise as good or beautiful which releases the tension in the body and shuts down the initial emotional response. The goosebumps quickly fade and are replaced with a flood of dopamine, a hormone associated with pleasure and reward, to the brain.  This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as a "skin orgasm" as it results in a release of tension in the body followed by the same flood of dopamine that can cause a feeling of euphoria following orgasm.  

Perhaps the opposite feeling of a "good" surprise may be the "heebie jeebies," goosebumps casued by a surprise reaction in the amygdala followed by a negative interpretation resulting in the restriction of dopamine or release of stress hormones such as cortisol. Maybe this is why some people find some weird pleasure in horror movies - intense surprises that can illicit goosebumps which their brain interprets as new and exciting, while my brain interprets such events... differently. Or perhaps this theory is wrong and I will never truly understand why anyone in their right mind would willingly watch a horror movie.

How prevalent are emotional goosebumps?

Interestingly, while the experience of goosebumps when cold is fairly universal, only about two-thirds of the population seems to experience pleasurable goosebumps resulting from emotional experiences.  There seems to be a correlation between those that experience pleasurable goosebumps and a personality trait for openness to experience, presumably because they are more likely to experience a deeply emotional reaction to surprising new experiences.

Spiritual confirmations though emotional goosebumps

Why am I interested in goosebumps? This framework of "surprise" being a necessary condition for such goosebumps makes a lot of sense in the context of my own experiences with emotional goosebumps (chills followed by a dopamine reaction leading to feelings of peace or euphoria) that I often associated in a religious context as "feeling the spirit." Of course, there are multiple "fruits of the spirit" listed in Galatians: love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, but since all of these are basic human emotions, the strongest sensation I felt that encompassed most of these was this feeling of emotional goosebumps - and so to me it was the strongest manifestation of the spirit.

One of the quintessential aspects of Mormonism is seeking a confirmation by the "spirit" of the truthfulness of various aspects of church, most commonly whether the Book of Mormon is “true.” Often after the first visit, LDS missionaries given investigators the challenge to read select passages from the Book of Mormon and pray to receive an emotional response to confirm it's true. And yet, for my own experience as a teenager, the more I tried to feel such feelings at a specific point, the more I failed to summon such a response on command. No amount of increased prayer, scripture study or intensification of religious scrupulosity ever resulted in any direct discernible answer. Like many Mormons around me, despite intense and prolonged efforts of reading the Book of Mormon and praying after each time reading, I felt nothing by way of spiritual confirmation. And then, I felt guilty that I felt nothing - like something must have been wrong with me. I was asking and receiving nothing, knocking and no One answered. 

However, in the context of surprise being a prerequisite for such emotional goosebumps, how could I have expected an emotional response dependent on surprise by praying to know something I already believed - an unsurprising surprise? This, I believe, is why so many pray and receive no such confirmation or answer at all - precisely because they already believe it to be true since they were taught it since birth and so there is not much to trigger a surprise. I was encouraged by talks about how if someone failed to obtain a powerful, emotional spiritual experience (which seemed to be a very common occurrence), they must have just knew all along it was true and that in and of itself was the confirmation. I now see this as problematic as receiving a response is a spiritual confirmation and not receiving a response is somehow equally a confirmation because it means you just knew all along. 

And yet, I did at some point feel these strong emotional chills and interpreted them to mean the Book of Mormon was true, at a completely unexpected, surprising moment.  After a long period of intense study and prayers and no discernible answer, I remember watching at a theater on Temple Square a highly emotional depiction in a film put on by the Church called "The Testaments” of Jesus being beaten and forced to carry his own cross to his own ultimate death. With the dramatic music and emotional depiction of the brutal inhumane torture of a human being, I felt such the goosebumps followed by the euphoric dopamine rush and thought to myself that that was my confirmation that the Book of Mormon must actually be true after all. As the film got to the depiction of a resurrected Jesus visiting the Lamanites in some unknown location in the Americas - the part of the story that was actually based on the Book of Mormon - I remember thinking that I felt nothing anymore. The emotional moment had passed, yet I had already come to associate my previous powerful emotional response as a confirmation of truth.

Of course, now I don't look at any of that as confirmation of any sort of truth at all, but a natural human reaction to surprising and emotional events.

Can ye feel so now?

As I've left Mormonism, many of the scriptural passages I loved and memorized still remain with me and I still reflect occasionally on some of them.  One of these is a passage in Alma asks, "if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, can ye feel so now?"

How have my emotional reactions changed as my worldview and identify has been forced to change and leave Mormonism?  Can I now feel those "feelings of the spirit" as strongly as I once did those go away as a result of my unbelief?  What I've found is that I feel the same beautiful emotional chills followed by euphoria (as well as other emotions that are labeled as “fruits of the spirit”) just as strongly but in circumstances that are completely different and at times at odds with my previous religious beliefs.  I have felt such feelings in the context of reading story from an individual who came out as gay to their loved ones and was fully loved and embraced wholeheartedly by their families and religious communities. I have experienced much greater peace through meditation than I remember experiencing in a religious context through praying to a deity. I also remember having a powerful "spiritual" experience while watching the Book of Mormon musical as one of the characters expressed her despair, anguish and frustration with God and her broken dreams.

Of course, having a physiological explanation for spiritual experiences doesn’t prove or disprove that such experiences come from a God, nor are emotional goosebumps an explanation for every positive feeling that has been attributed the spirit (elevation emotion, the illusory truth effect and other psychological phenomena likely are also interrelated). Whether such experiences come from a God or are driven by our evolutionary biology or some other explanation, such experiences seem to be a true part of the human experience - we deeply feel connections to others through shared experiences of intense joy, intense suffering and everything in between.  These experiences can tell us something about what surprises we interpret as deeply meaningful to our lives in some way. And so I'm trying to come to terms with treasuring those moments, even the ones I initially interpreted in a religious context, as an important part of my life experience and spiritual journey. 

Sources:

https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/goosebumps.htm

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301051111000093

https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/music-gives-goosebumps/

https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/11/6/884/2223400?login=false

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-chills-goosebumps_l_5c48ad93e4b0b669367642f7/amp

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevation_(emotion)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8116821/#Sec1title