Why do we get goosebumps?
The Short Answer
Your body is trying to make you look bigger to scare off a predator. This would be a perfectly reasonable response if you were a porcupine, or a cat, or literally any mammal with fur. You are not. You are a largely hairless ape whose skin is attempting an intimidation display that hasn't worked in about five million years. The predator is not intimidated. The predator, if it existed, would be confused.
Biological Insight
When a cat gets frightened, its fur stands on end. This is called piloerection, which is exactly as undignified as it sounds, and it serves a genuine purpose: the cat appears larger, the predator thinks twice, everyone goes home alive. The muscles that pull each hair upright are called arrector pili, and you have them too. All of them. Roughly five million of them, in fact, each one faithfully attached to a hair follicle that is either empty or contains a hair so fine and short that its erection (there's really no better word, apologies) accomplishes nothing whatsoever. And yet: you hear a creepy sound in a dark house, and your skin erupts in tiny bumps. A song hits an emotional note, and your arms prickle. You step out of a warm shower into cold air, and your body immediately attempts to fluff up fur you do not have, to trap warm air in a coat that does not exist, to frighten off a threat that is, in this case, a mild temperature differential. This is what evolutionary biologists call a 'vestigial response,' which is a polite way of saying your body is running software that hasn't been updated since the Pliocene. The business insight here is subtler than it appears. Organizations are full of vestigial responses - reflexive reactions that made sense in a previous environment but now fire uselessly. The meeting that gets scheduled because something feels important. The report that gets generated because something feels risky. The defensive crouch that activates when someone questions a decision. The question isn't whether your organization has these phantom reflexes. It's whether you've noticed them long enough to ask: what predator are we trying to look bigger for? And is it still out there?
Key Questions to Ask Yourself
- What reflexive responses does your organization have that made sense in a previous era?
- Are you 'puffing up' in response to threats that no longer exist?
- What would it look like to update your defensive instincts for current reality?
- Which of your fear responses are protecting you, and which are just... happening?
Common Mistakes
- Assuming reflexive responses are rational just because they're automatic
- Not questioning defensive behaviors that 'feel' necessary
- Keeping threat-response systems calibrated for extinct threats
- Mistaking the feeling of being protected for actually being protected