SCRUTINISING PANKSEPP’S (1995) SEPARATION CALL HYPOTHESIS OF PILOERECTION AND CHILLS: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Abstract

The present research acts as a comprehensive test of the separation call hypothesis of piloerection (colloquially known as goosebumps) and chills (Panksepp, 1995, 2009). This theory claims that: (1) piloerection and chills are triggered by musical features that resemble infant cries; (2) these cry-like sounds induce feelings of separation distress; (3) these social feelings are connected to piloerection and chills as part of a social thermoregulatory response. Panksepp also directly analogises cry sounds to high pitched crescendos, suggesting that high frequencies may be an important auditory feature for separation call elicited chills. In the present study, these claims were tested by measuring piloerection, chills, separation distress and bodily temperature in response to a range of audio excerpts. This included audio of infant cries and music excerpts with cry-like features (reflecting separation calls) and audio of infant babbles and music excerpts with cry-dissimilar features (not reflecting separation calls). Versions of each excerpt with the auditory frequencies manipulated either 25% higher or lower were also presented to test the relevance of pitch. The findings contradicted each claim of the hypothesis: the only measure to differ between the cry/cry-like and babble/cry-dissimilar stimuli was chills, and in this case chills were more common in response to the music excerpts than actual audio of infant cries. This is opposite to the expected relation. These findings call the separation call hypothesis into question. In light of this, alternate priorities for future research are discussed.