I can read about something scary, or watch a video where someone does something great for someone else, and immediately get chills up and down my arm. Why?
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When we’re scared, the tiny muscles attached to our body hairs contract so that the hairs stand up. That’s what gives you those chill bumps on your skin. For animals, this has the purpose of making them appear bigger, thus more capable of driving away whatever threat made them scared in the first place. But in humans, body hair has become shorter and shorter during evolution, so we don’t actually appear bigger, we just get the chills.
You can thank your body’s endocrine system for that sudden, heightened sense of awareness. When triggered by your brain, your adrenal gland produces a hormone called adrenaline in response to unexpected feelings of fear, excitement, or anything that may thrill you in general (both in the positive and negative sense). This is your body’s cue to “bristle,” as your muscles contract in preparation to either fight or flee the source of your sudden thrill. Some people can’t seem to get enough of that feeling, and that’s why we call them adrenaline junkies.
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