Effects of sex and sex roles on avoidance of same- and opposite-sex touch

Touch Avoidance with Close People and Strangers: Effects of Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Relationship Status

Human contact through physical touch is a core element in social bonding, which facilitates psychosocial well-being. Touch avoidance is an individual disposition that may prevent individuals from engaging in or benefiting from physical touch. The present study recruited 450 Italian participants (51.1% female) with a mean age of 32.2 ± 13.5 to complete a battery of demographic questionnaires and the Touch Avoidance Questionnaire (TAQ). Individuals who were single and reporting same-sex attraction avoided touch with family more often than their coupled counterparts or those reporting opposite-sex attraction. Moreover, males reporting same-sex attraction avoided touch with a potential partner more frequently. When comparing sex differences, women reported greater touch avoidance with opposite-sex friends more frequently, while males avoided touch with same-sex friends more frequently. Individuals reporting opposite-sex attraction reported greater touch amongst same-sex friends. Single males avoided touch with same-sex friends more frequently than those in a relationship. Overall, this contribution reflects the individual differences related to social touch avoidance with respect to sex, relationship status, and sexual orientation in an Italian sample.

An Exploration of the Interaction Between Touch Avoidance and the Pleasant Touch (C-Tactile Afferent) System

C-tactile (CT) afferent fibers are optimally stimulated by slow gentle stroking, and an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between stroking velocity and pleasantness ratings of this type of touch. This study investigated whether an additional and potentially important variable, touch avoidance, interacts with this relationship. While a typical U-shaped velocity–pleasantness relationship was expected, those high in touch avoidance were expected to rate CT-targeted touch (1–10 cm/s) as less pleasant than those low in touch avoidance. Thirty-five participants rated the pleasantness of a brush stroked across their forearm at five velocities (0.3, 1, 3, 10, 30 cm/s) administered by a custom-built touch stimulator (“the touch device”). Participants also completed two self-report measures of touch avoidance. There was an inverted U-shaped relationship between velocity and pleasantness ratings, and high touch avoidance resulted in a downward shift of this curve. The downward shift was across all velocities, including those that do not maximally engage CT afferents. It appears that touch avoidance reduces the pleasantness of all kinds of touch in a similar way, and it is unlikely to be specifically related to CT afferent functioning. Other potential mechanisms leading to touch avoidance are discussed.

Primary somatosensory cortex discriminates affective significance in social touch

Another person's caress is one of the most powerful of all emotional social signals. How much the primary somatosensory cortices (SIs) participate in processing the pleasantness of such social touch remains unclear. Although ample empirical evidence supports the role of the insula in affective processing of touch, here we argue that SI might be more involved in affective processing than previously thought by showing that the response in SI to a sensual caress is modified by the perceived sex of the caresser. In a functional MRI study, we manipulated the perceived affective quality of a caress independently of the sensory properties at the skin: heterosexual males believed they were sensually caressed by either a man or woman, although the caress was in fact invariantly delivered by a female blind to condition type. Independent analyses showed that SI encoded, and was modulated by, the visual sex of the caress, and that this effect is unlikely to originate from the insula. This suggests that current models may underestimate the role played by SI in the affective processing of social touch.

[Identification of the types of touching during nursing care in an outpatient service]

This study was realized in the outpatient ward of bone marrow transplantation. The sample consisted of 17 adult patients and six workers. The data was collected from October to December, 1996, being obtained through filming, decodification of the films, a questionnaire and interview with the workers. The purposes were to identify in what situations the different types occurred, and which regions of the body were involved. It was found that most of the touching was of the instrumental type. The regions touched were the thorax and upper limbs.