Expression of Affection Through Touch Across Cultures

Do people all over the world kiss their partners and hug their friends? Is it common to stroke children? Presumably, culture influences our touch behaviors but how? And if there are differences between cultures, why do these exist?

It has been hard to answer all these questions based on scarce and sometimes contrasting evidence. Aiming to explore the global differences and similarities in the expression of affection through interpersonal touch, we asked over 14,000 adults from 45 countries whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and youngest child (if they had children) during the preceding week.

We found that all over the world, embracing, stroking, kissing, and hugging were reported most often in relationships with partners and children—strikingly, we observed this pattern in countries that are as diverse and distant from one another as Spain, Sweden, Australia, Russia, and South Korea, among others. Although friends were often hugged and embraced, they were rather seldom stroked or kissed. Simply speaking, diverse and intimate touch seems to be universally more important in the closest, personal relationships. This comes as no surprise when one thinks about all the benefits of positive touch—it promotes well-being, strengthens romantic relationships, increases bonding between parents and offspring, and can even enhance the growth of an infant's brain! Still, we were impressed that people use these kinds of touch to foster partnership and parenting all over the world.

This universality of affectionate touch strongly points to a biological or evolutionary foundation for its importance in establishing and maintaining close relationships.

Nevertheless, the amount of affectionate touch did differ in interesting ways between countries. For example, in Italy, Estonia, Romania, Spain, and Mexico only about 2% of the participants declared not touching their partner at all during the week preceding our study, while in the U.S. it was almost 16%, in Uganda more than 20%, and in China 43% of all people who took part in our research! Many of our outcomes fit with the classical “contact vs. non-contact culture” distinction proposed by the anthropologist E. T. Hall and previous research suggesting differences in preferred interpersonal physical distance between cultures.

The next challenge was to explore the many other individual and cultural factors that we measured, hoping some might explain some of this cross-cultural diversity. To grasp the touch diversity for each individual we counted how many touch types every person used—no touch at all? one, two, three, or four types of affectionate touch? Further, we averaged the responses within cultures/countries so that we could make a statement about whole groups, not just the individual people.

Where is the Diversity of Touch Greatest? And Why?

People used more types of affectionate touch in warmer, less conservative, and less religious countries, and among younger, female, and liberal people. Can we explain why touch can be less restricted in some places?

Explaining cultural differences has to be speculative, but we can make some good guesses. The positive link between temperature and touch diversity may be because warmer climate and pleasant weather lead to increased frequency of interpersonal interactions, promote interpersonal trust, and thereby facilitate the formation of closer social networks.

We can also speculate on our findings associating conservatism and religiosity with decreased expression of affection with the use of touch. People, or groups, must adapt to environmental challenges in order to survive and reproduce. One example would be how much a society is burdened with the likelihood of different infectious diseases. Research has consistently shown that high, local risk of infections predicts higher conservatism, religiosity, and disgust sensitivity. Consequently, it is likely that in our evolutionary past also a more careful approach to bodily contact between individuals emerged in places burdened with high infection risk. Transfer of these values from our ancestors has probably happened through imprinting, inheritance, and adherence to stricter family values in such cultures.

As for the individual factors shaping touch diversity, our data again confirmed that touch is crucial for creating and strengthening social bonds. Therefore, its behavioral expression can be the richest among people for whom bonding and physical contact are the most important, namely young women and people with smaller interpersonal distance preferences.

In conclusion, cultural values affect our general inclination to use or avoid affectionate touch and modify the diversity of touch behaviors in a range of social relationships. However, individual factors may greatly enhance the expression or restriction of touch behaviors.


For Further Reading

Gallace, A., & Spence, C. (2010). The science of interpersonal touch: An overview. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 34, 246–259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2008.10.004

Sorokowska, A., Saluja, S., Sorokowski, P., Frąckowiak, T., Karwowski, M., Aavik, T., ... & Croy, I. (2021). Affective interpersonal touch in close relationships: A cross-cultural perspective. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220988373

Suvilehto, J. T., Glerean, E., Dunbar, R. I., Hari, R., & Nummenmaa, L. (2015). Topography of social touching depends on emotional bonds between humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(45), 13811-13816. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1519231112


Agnieszka Sorokowska is an Associate Professor at the University of Wroclaw, Poland. Her research interests include cross-cultural, sensory, and social psychology.

Even the People Most Reluctant to Touch Others Benefit From It

In the current pandemic times, we are all particularly aware of how important interpersonal touch (or its lack) is. But do all people equally benefit from touch? Our studies seek to better understand whether the people who claim not to like touch and physical proximity to others (those high in attachment avoidance) actually benefit less from touch. Attachment avoidance is one way of approaching close relationships, whereby a person tends to highly value their independence and autonomy, as well as to dislike or undervalue psychological intimacy. Often because of relational experiences in childhood, they see others as unreliable, unavailable, and uncaring.

Touch is an inherent experience of human relationships. More and more research is showing how touch that is meant to be affectionate in close relationships is associated with important benefits: higher well-being, more positive emotions, and reduced physiological stress (like blood pressure or heart rate), to name only a few.

However, we still have little knowledge about whether touch equally benefits everyone. We suspected it wouldn’t. In particular, as relationship researchers, we know that not all people equally enjoy proximity (physical and psychological). People with a so-called avoidant attachment style have reported in previous research that they like touch less and engage in it much less than the average. Thus, they were the perfect candidates to investigate people who could benefit from less touch. However, recent research has shown that despite their claimed aversion to interpersonal proximity, these people can benefit from and even appreciate several positive relationship experiences (like receiving support or sharing daily positive activities). Given these newer results, we thought that, in contrast to our original speculation, avoidantly attached people could actually benefit from touch, but as a result of engaging in it less, their well-being would be negatively affected.

So, we studied these questions. In a first study, we asked people to report on their typical level of touch in their relationship, their attachment style, and their well-being. In a second study, we observed couples having conversations about emotionally laden topics and measured how much they touched each other during this time. Finally, we asked other couples to complete online diaries for a month and to report how much they touched each other and how happy they felt each day.

In all three studies, like in previous research, we found that touch was associated with higher psychological well-being and with the experience of more positive emotions. We also replicated the result that more avoidantly attached people report lower well-being (except in the second study) and less touch. Most importantly, in none of the studies did the more avoidant people report a lower link between touch and well-being; that is, they benefit as much as any other people from the very touch they claim to dislike. This underlines how physical proximity and affection are important aspects of close relationships and how both can benefit people, independently from their personal preferences (note that this was touch occurring within a romantic relationship and was most probably consented to).

Finally, the fact that people higher in attachment avoidance do engage in less touch with their partner helps explain why they report lower well-being and less positive emotions. This shows us how important interpersonal closeness is for well-being. It might indeed even be considered a basic human need, because, even if one values distance and autonomy as well as dislikes affectionate touch (like avoidantly attached people do), disengaging from the universal need to be close to others undermines one’s well-being.

In the current pandemic crisis and the associated distancing measures taken around the globe, the present results underline that nobody might be immune to being kept physically distant from others. 


For Further Reading

Debrot, A., Stellar, J. E., MacDonald, G., Keltner, D., & Impett, E. A. (2020). Is touch in romantic relationships universally beneficial for psychological well-being? The role of attachment avoidance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220977709

Chopik, W. J., Edelstein, R. S., van Anders, Sari M., Wardecker, B. M., Shipman, E. L., & Samples-Steele, C. R. (2014). Too close for comfort? Adult attachment and cuddling in romantic and parent–child relationships. Personality and Individual Differences, 69, 212–216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.05.035

Stanton, S. C. E., Campbell, L., & Pink, J. C. (2017). Benefits of positive relationship experiences for avoidantly attached individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(4), 568–588. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000098
 

Anik Debrot is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She studies close relationships with a focus on affectionate behaviors. She is also a psychotherapist and develops and evaluates internet interventions.

Your Hands Show Your Anxiety

Have you noticed and speculated why some people are more likely to rub their hands, touch their hair, or manipulate their adornments while speaking?

Self-touch—also called "self-adaptors" and "body-focused movements"—refers to rubbing, scratching, or grooming one's body or adornments without an obvious connection to the meaning of the speech or the ongoing task. Traditionally, self-touch was thought to relieve sensory stimulation such as itchy skin, or readjusting adornments to satisfy personal needs. However, researchers have long known it relates to negative affect, particularly anxiety.

For example, a study showed that people self-touched more after listening to and discussing texts about leeches than canaries, with the assumption that leeches would induce a higher level of anxiety than canaries. In addition, people self-touch more when doing a stressful test. But studies are very incomplete. For example, they did not measure people's actual anxiety levels or included only one gender in the study. Furthermore, we needed research on the phenomenon in more naturalistic conversations.

Therefore, we videotaped people's hand movements during face-to-face conversations about daily topics and then measured their momentary anxiety level induced by the conversations (such as "I feel frightened") and their general and stable trait anxiety level (for example "I worry too much over something that really doesn't matter").

In addition to anxiety, we also examined neuroticism and agreeableness to see if they are connected to self-touch during conversations. Neuroticism is a personality trait that predisposes individuals to experience negative affect such as anxiety, depression, worry, and fear. Given that neuroticism is closely associated with anxiety and the observation that people high in neuroticism appear to have difficulty in monitoring emotion and interpret ordinary situations as threatening, it is not surprising that self-touch has been observed to associate with neuroticism. We asked, what matters more in predicting self-touching—anxiety in particular or the more general trait of neuroticism?

Agreeableness is a personality trait associated with sympathy, warmth, consideration, and cooperation during social interaction. As self-touch has been found to relate to negative impressions, people with lower agreeableness may perform more self-touch during conversations as they are less likely to care about interpersonal relationships or maintain harmony with others. Yet, previous studies only examined the relationship between self-touch and agreeableness in people with skin diseases that are accompanied by intense itchiness. Hence, we examined whether the same phenomenon happens more generally.

Accordingly, we recruited 127 ordinary English speakers to have a conversation under fairly standardized conditions. They watched two 1-2 minute cartoon clips and described them to the experimenter, and they were presented with social dilemma stories and described their solutions—for example, what to say to a character who found it hard to allocate her time to her old friends and her new friend who did not get along with her old friends. After completing the tasks, the participants reported on their anxiety and personality.

The Key Finding: Anxiety in the Moment

In fact, momentary anxiety rather than general anxiety, neuroticism, or agreeableness was the main contributor to self-touch during these face-to-face conversations. This finding strongly suggests that in daily life, people who experience a higher level of momentary anxiety also perform more self-touch.

Nonetheless, it is important to note that the findings only demonstrate an association between momentary anxiety and self-touch during conversations. We don't know that anxiety actually causes the touching. And, the "why" of this association is still a question. Does self-touching reduce anxiety?


For Further Reading

Pang, H. T., Canarslan, F., & Chu, M. (2022). Individual differences in conversational self-touch frequency correlate with state anxiety. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 46, 299–319. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-022-00402-9

Heaven, L., McBrayer, D., & Prince, B. (2002). Role of sex in externally motivated self-touching gestures. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 95(1), 289–294. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.2002.95.1.289

Mohiyeddini, C., Bauer, S., & Semple, S. (2015). Neuroticism and stress: The role of displacement behaviour. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 28(4), 391–407. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2014.1000878

Schut, C., Muhl, S., Reinisch, K., Claßen, A., Jäger, R., Gieler, U., & Kupfer, J. (2015). Agreeableness and self-consciousness as predictors of induced scratching and itch in patients with psoriasis. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 22(6), 726–734. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-015-9471-5


Mingyuan Chu is a Lecturer at the School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen. He is interested in understanding the role of nonverbal behaviors in communication and problem-solving.

Hio Tong Pang is a graduate of the University of Aberdeen and studying an MSc at the University of Edinburgh. She is interested in the fields of interpersonal interaction and emotional regulation.

Is Hugging Someone a Chore?

Most of us like being hugged or cuddled. When we're feeling down, another's embrace offers comfort and when we're feeling up, it escalates our joy. But what about the other person who's touching us? Is their act incumbent and simply born out of kindness or does it make them feel good also?

Traditionally, friendly touching in the context of social interactions was seen as an evolutionary remnant related to body hygiene and considered of secondary importance relative to the touching we do when interacting with the physical world. However, early discoveries of a relationship between affectionate touch on the one hand and the blossoming of children or the recovery of patients, on the other hand, have revised such notions. What's more, results like this have prompted an inquiry into how gentle physical contact shapes the biological and psychological processes that support mental and physical well-being.

A Nerve Fiber Tuned to Human Touch

While this inquiry has delivered many findings, one of the most exciting ones has been the discovery of a special sensory nerve fiber that seems particularly "interested" in human touch. Touch that activates this fiber is best characterized as gentle caress and feels more pleasant than other touch. Although research continues, what scientists believe so far is that this human touch fiber (its scientific name is C-tactile afferent) could be the key to how physical contact produces positive feelings, reduces stress, and enables individuals, of all shapes and sizes, to thrive.

The Need to Touch

One fun fact is that the special human touch fiber exists only in hairy skin, meaning it is absent from the palms of the hands, which we usually use for touching. Perhaps because of this, or because the field started off exploring the role of touch in human development and health care, it has focused on what touch does to a recipient. Touch's role for those who give the touch has been largely ignored, and if considered at all has been likened to a chore or something we do for potential non-tactile pay-offs.

Flying in the face of this is that touching comes so naturally, and is often like an urge even in situations where there is no obvious need to comfort or cheer another. When interacting with a child, friend, or pet it simply feels good to reach out and stroke, poke, or ruffle. Indeed, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the adoption of cats and dogs, who arguably cannot return the petting they receive, has increased dramatically, possibly because people were deprived of their typical human touch interactions and in need of a substitute. Thus, one may ask whether, like touch receiving, touch giving confers direct, tactile pay-offs and to what extent receiving and giving preferences may align to mutually benefit the touching individuals.

Together with students and colleagues in Germany and Hong Kong, we tackled this question by surveying young men and women in these two locations. Each individual completed two online surveys—one in the role of giving and one in the role of receiving touch. In both surveys, individuals described a typical situation that prompted tickling, stroking, or, for example, hugging; named the kind of persons with whom such touching felt comfortable; and painted on a body outline where touch comfort would be greatest.

The Touch Giver Benefits Too

The survey results showed that touch giving and receiving occur mostly in positive situations and that associated positive feelings were, perhaps surprisingly, even stronger for those who give than those who receive. Indeed, typical words offered were affection, love, joy, and fun. Also, irrespective of an individual's role in touch, comfort was reported as greater with closely bonded than with distantly bonded or unfamiliar individuals. Likewise, where on the body touch feels comfortable was similar for giving and receiving. In general the shoulders, upper back, and arms emerged as prime comfort zones and this was true irrespective of a person's sex or culture.

Thus, we speculate that there is a natural correspondence between touchers and touchees, which prompts both to engage in a behavior that is mutually pleasant and beneficial.


For Further Reading

Dunbar, R. I. M. (2010). The social role of touch in humans and primates: Behavioural function and neurobiological mechanisms. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 34(2), 260–268. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2008.07.001

McGlone, F., Wessberg, J., & Olausson, H. (2014). Discriminative and affective touch: Sensing and feeling. Neuron, 82(4), 737–755. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2014.05.001

Schirmer, A., Cham, C., Zhao, Z., & Croy, I. (2022). What makes touch comfortable? An examination of touch giving and receiving in two cultures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221105966

von Mohr, M., Kirsch, L. P., & Fotopoulou, A. (2021). Social touch deprivation during COVID-19: Effects on psychological wellbeing and craving interpersonal touch. Royal Society Open Science, 8(9), 210287. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210287
 

Annett Schirmer is a Full Professor at Innsbruck University in Austria. She studies emotions in human social interactions using a range of behavioral, psychophysiological, and brain measures.