Summary: Aesthetic chills—those goosebumps or shivers people get from music, speech, or other powerful artworks—are more than fleeting physical reactions. A large-scale online study of over 8,000 participants shows these peak emotional responses connect with psychological insight, feelings of self-transcendence, and even indicators of political orientation. The pattern is complex: while conservatives initially reported stronger chills on average, a deeper analysis reveals that political extremes on both left and right experience the most intense aesthetic responses. These findings highlight a possible link between bodily awareness and political intensity, offering a fresh angle on political polarization.
Aesthetic chills are being studied as markers of peak experience and transformative states. In our recent work, chills were robustly associated with elements commonly described in mystical or peak experiences—sudden psychological insight, emotional breakthroughs, and moments of self-transcendence. Beyond these associations, we discovered an unexpected and potentially important relationship between aesthetic sensitivity and political psychology.
Key Facts:
- Conservatives & Chills: In initial analyses, self-identified conservatives reported stronger chills on average than political moderates.
- U-Shaped Effect: When examining distance from the political center, people at both extremes—left and right—reported the most intense chills, consistent with a horseshoe-like pattern of similarity between extremes.
- Interoception Link: Greater interoceptive awareness—heightened sensitivity to internal bodily sensations—covaries with both chills intensity and political extremism, suggesting visceral experience may help explain intense ideological commitment.
Our primary dataset included more than 8,000 online participants across a wide range of ages, backgrounds, and beliefs. Participants reported their experience of chills in response to validated audiovisual stimuli and completed measures related to personality, religiosity, mood, and interoceptive awareness—how attuned they are to internal bodily sensations such as heart rate, breath, and visceral feeling.
At first glance, the most straightforward result was a positive correlation between conservatism and reported chills intensity. Curious about alternative explanations, we tested three plausible accounts: (1) whether being a political minority in a given cultural context elevated emotional reactivity; (2) whether the link reflected a correlation between conservatism and religiosity; and (3) whether individual differences in interoceptive awareness accounted for the observed effects.
To address these possibilities, we collected an additional sample of 900 participants from two politically distinct U.S. states—California and Texas—chosen because they differ politically but are both diverse across other demographic dimensions. This design let us test whether location or minority status explained the conservatism–chills relationship and allowed more careful measurement of religiosity and interoceptive traits.
We replicated the earlier positive correlation between conservatism and chills intensity. This correlation did not differ systematically by location, indicating it was not simply an artifact of being a political minority in a given region. Further analysis showed the conservatism effect was substantially mediated by trait absorption (a tendency to become deeply immersed in experiences), levels of religiosity, and prestimulus mood—factors that heighten emotional immersion.
However, post hoc nonlinear analyses revealed a more nuanced picture: interoceptive awareness and chills intensity were better predicted by distance from the political center—political extremism—than by conservatism per se. In other words, people who describe themselves as politically extreme, whether on the left or the right, tend to report stronger bodily reactions and greater interoceptive sensitivity. This U-shaped relationship aligns with long-discussed ideas that extremes across the political spectrum may share psychological and physiological features.
These results fit with prior research linking political ideology to emotional and physiological sensitivity. Past studies have found conservatives show stronger bodily reactions to threat, disgust, and negative stimuli, and some work has suggested conservatives may report greater reliance on gut feelings. Our findings extend this literature by showing that heightened visceral experience relates not only to conservatism but to ideological extremity generally—and that intense aesthetic experiences are a useful lens for exploring these links.
What are the implications? If intense bodily experiences and heightened interoception help underpin extreme political commitments, then efforts to reduce polarization may benefit from approaches that address both narrative and somatic dimensions of persuasion and empathy. Interventions that cultivate complexity, self-awareness, and shared aesthetic or embodied experiences might help bridge divides. At minimum, these findings argue for treating political orientation as multidimensional and for attending to how visceral experience interacts with belief.
About this musical chills and political neuroscience research news
Author: Leonardo Christov-Moore
Source: Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies
Contact: Leonardo Christov-Moore – Institute for Advanced Consciousness Studies
Image: Image credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access. “Individual differences in aesthetic experience point to the role of bodily awareness in political orientation” by Leonardo Christov-Moore et al., published in Political Psychology.
Abstract
Individual differences in aesthetic experience point to the role of bodily awareness in political orientation
Aesthetic chills refer to peak responses—shivers and goosebumps—triggered by music, speech, or other emotionally potent stimuli. In an earlier study of nearly 3,000 participants from California, conservatives and liberals reported chills at similar frequencies in response to validated audiovisual material, but conservatism was associated with greater reported intensity of chills. The present preregistered study tested whether that correlation could be explained by religiosity or by being a cultural minority, by sampling matched politically diverse participants in California (n = 620) and Texas (n = 262), while measuring religiosity and interoceptive awareness.
We replicated the positive correlation between chills intensity and conservatism, found no reliable location effect, and identified mediation by trait absorption, religiosity, and prestimulus mood. Post hoc nonlinear analyses suggested that interoceptive awareness and chills intensity covary with distance from the political center—extremism—rather than with conservatism alone. These results suggest heightened visceral intensity of experience may partly underlie political extremism and support the use of aesthetic responses as a tool to explore and potentially influence belief structures, including political worldviews.