From the archive: The puzzle of piloerection

From the archive: The puzzle of piloerection

Author: Kensy Cooperrider – Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute November 15, 2023 Duration: 13:15

Hi friends, we're on hiatus for the fall. To tide you over, we're putting up some favorite episodes from our archives. This week's episode is in our audio essay format. Enjoy!

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[originally aired May 26, 2021]

Welcome back folks! We've got an audio essay for you this week. It touches on art, music, the skin, the spine, individual differences, vestigial responses, tiny muscles. There's even some Darwin thrown in there. It's a fun one. Hope you enjoy it!

A text version of this essay is available on Medium.

 

Notes and links

1:30 – The novel that very recently gave me goosebumps.

2:00 – A brief discussion of Nabokov and his ideas about the tell-tale tingle.  

2:45 – Some terms for goosebumps in other languages.

3:00 – A primer on skin anatomy.

4:00 – A paper on the thermoregulatory function of piloerection in primates and other animals.

4:25 – Read Darwin's Expression here.

5:00 – A paper about "nails on chalkboard chills." A paper that discusses claims that piloerection attends awe (but which fails to find evidence for this association in a lab setting). A paper on goosebumps in religious experiences. A paper that references mathematicians getting goosebumps when seeing proofs.

5:30 – The 1980 paper by Goldstein on "thrills."

6:45 – The Darwin passage is quoted in McCrae 2007.

7:00 – A 1995 paper by Panskepp, as well as his 2002 study with a co-author.

7:40 – A recent paper on chills in response to films; another on poetry.

9:15 – The paper by McCrae reporting the association between "openness to experience" and chills.

10:00 – A paper by Fiske and colleagues on kama muta, the "sudden devotion emotion."

11:10 – Panskepp's "separation call" hypothesis is perhaps best described in his 2002 study.

 

Many Minds is a project of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which is made possible by a generous grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation to UCLA. It is hosted and produced by Kensy Cooperrider, with help from Assistant Producer Urte Laukaityte and with creative support from DISI Directors Erica Cartmill and Jacob Foster. Our artwork is by Ben Oldroyd. Our transcripts are created by Sarah Dopierala.

Subscribe to Many Minds on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also now subscribe to the Many Minds newsletter here!

We welcome your comments, questions, and suggestions. Feel free to email us at: manymindspodcast@gmail.com. 

For updates about the show, visit our website or follow us on Twitter: @ManyMindsPod.

 


There's a quiet revolution happening in how we understand intelligence, and it's not just about humans. Many Minds, hosted by Kensy Cooperrider of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, digs into this expansive idea. Each episode is a journey into the inner worlds of creatures and creations we share the planet with. You'll hear from researchers who decode the complex social minds of crows, who map the sensory universe of an octopus, or who grapple with the emerging cognition of artificial systems. This isn't a dry lecture series; it's a collection of thoughtful conversations that feel like pulling up a chair with experts who are genuinely redefining what it means to think, feel, and learn. The Many Minds podcast operates from a simple but profound premise: to grasp our own human experience, we need to listen to the many other kinds of minds around us. Tune in every other week for explorations that are as much about philosophy and wonder as they are about science and education, all grounded in rigorous research and a deep curiosity about the beings-animal, human, and artificial-that fill our world.
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