There are certain sounds that drive us batty. For many people, it’s nails on a chalkboard. That has never bothered me. However, the squeaking sound of styrofoam will drive me batty, send chills up and down my spine, and cause my hair to stand on end.
What is is about certain sounds that causes this reaction? Why is the particular sound different for different people?
The only explanation I’ve ever heard is that sounds like nails on a chalkboard is similar to an ancient sound our evolutionary ancestors used thousands of years ago as a warning, which would explain our left-over reaction we have to it today. No idea how true the explanation was/is, but it sure sounds good doesn’t it? 
I remember hearing that theory also. It’s similar to monkeys’ warning cries.
Cecil mentions this in an article:
What makes me dubious about that explanation is that, at least to me, it’s not the sound that causes the reaction, but the thought of scraping a blackboard and the resulting friction vibrating up my fingernails. In fact just typing that has sent a shiver up my spine. Even just imagining scraping my nails down a blackboard makes me cringe, but if you played me a tape of the sound out of context, I don’t think I’d be too bothered.
I think it’s a “friction” thing. The sound (or even just the thought) of bare feet scuffing on carpet has the same effect on me, even though if I deliberately scuff my own feet it’s not too bad.
I agree with this when I read the title thread I thought, I don’t even need to hear the sound.
To be OT, I am like this with blood. I read books by Robin Cook (who writes medical thrillers) and every so often his descriptions make me sick and faint feeling. I don’t even need to see the blood
I brought this up in this thread, although it was about feeling a texture as opposed to hearing it. I think the principle would be the same.
Am I the only person who read the Three Investigators books? In an early volume, they use the idea that low-frequency sounds cause goose bumps and fear.
And the styrofoam thing is caused by low-frequency sounds.
No, I’m not basing my life’s knowledge on childrens’ books. I may be wrong.
Joe
What about pleasant sounds, such as certain pieces of music or inspirational words from a gifted orator that causes a similar feeling? Is this completely different? I honestly can’t differentiate between cringeworthy goose bumps and awefilled goose bumps.
Just reading about the sound that Styrofoam makes, gives me goosebumps and a gagging reflex. I thought I was alone… so glad that I am not!
Since we’re going with the zombie here, I’ve got no idea. But it freaks me out. I’ll get goosebumps and tears from styles of music I abhor, and I’ve no idea why. Similarly, I’ve also fallen kind of instantly asleep at concerts I really wanted to enjoy, but somehow triggered my narcolepsy…I guess from overstimulation. The human mind is an odd thing.
When I hear the sound of a plastic water bottle being crumpled or squished I get a weird sensation in my front lower teeth.
The thought of biting aluminum foil will bring on “goosebumps” as a result of having done so as a child before frozen dinners had plastic covers.
Like others above (and 8 years ago) have said, I think it’s more or less a deep visceral reaction to the sound, in that you can imagine doing it yourself, and just that unpleasantly visceral thought alone makes you squeamish.
Responding to Brepark’s OP of nearly nine years ago, Unca Cece delves further into this topic with the October 20, 2017 column, What’s so awful about nails on a chalkboard?, concluding that: “The key frequencies for auditory unpleasantness, the data indicated, weren’t the high-end ones (and this lines up with the study I looked at in '86) but those between 2,000 and 4,000 hertz — right in the middle of the range found in human speech. The researchers took this to suggest that the problem may indeed be inbred, if not exactly instinctual: the shape of our ear canals amplifies sounds in that range, meaning we might naturally experience nails-on-chalkboard as more intense than sounds at higher or lower frequencies.”
Cecil also notes that: “this study’s subjects actually rated the styrofoam noise as even more unpleasant”.
FWIW, and interesting then to me and still: Some 25 years ago I was researching an article on sonic non-lethal technologies, and interviewed a professor at U Penn, I think, working off a nice fat DARPA grant on sound and inducing an incapacitating adrenal overload using the fight or flight response (Wiki) one step-over-the-line. He was an electrical engineer and bio guy.
“Unpleasant” crazy-making loud non-lethal tech has nothing on that, and is common now. Hell, which music did the play against Noriega?
I read recently that getting goosebumps from music (or not) is genetic. What blew my mind is that I asked many of the musicians I know if music ever gave them goosebumps, and all of them said no. I can’t imagine NOT getting emotional over a piece of music.
Wet denim rubbing against itself. Shivers up the spine, weakening in the knees, an insane feeling of the need to yawn, and as Claude Remains pointed out, a weird sensation in the lower teeth.