Gender and Culture Differences in Touching Behavior

Virtually simulated interpersonal touch negatively affects perceived closeness and social affiliation to an avatar partner

Interpersonal touch is an essential component of human non-verbal communication, facilitating social affiliation and bonding. With the widespread use of digital interfaces and online platforms in all realms of human interactions, there are fewer opportunities for communicating through touch. Popular online platforms that virtually simulate human interactions rely primarily on visual and auditory modalities, providing limited or no capacity for the exchange of tactile cues. Previous studies of virtual interactions have explored the simulation of social touch using haptic devices, but little is known about how the visual representation of interpersonal touch is perceived and integrated into a virtual social experience. In two studies we examined how the exchange of virtual touch mediated by simulated 3-dimensional human characters, or avatars, within an online virtual environment influenced affiliation towards an unfamiliar interaction partner. Surprisingly, the exchange of virtual touch negatively affected the perceived closeness and affiliation to the partner and the social evaluation of the interaction but did not affect the level of physiological arousal during the interaction. These results indicate that the visual representation of social touch is sufficient to virtually communicate touch-related cues that impact social affiliation, but the influence of touch may be dependent on the interaction context.

Topography and relationship-specific social touching in individuals displaying body image disturbances

Interpersonal touch is intimately related to the emotional bond between the touch giver and the touch receiver. Which bodily regions we touch in those individuals in our social network is relationship specific. Perception of interpersonal touch is altered in psychiatric disorders characterised by body image disturbances (BIDs). Here, we examined whether the 'imagined' experience of social touch in individuals with BIDs is body topography- and relationship-specific. By using an interactive media mobile App, the Virtual Touch Toolkit, high versus low levels of BIDs participants completed heatmaps of full-body virtual avatars, to indicate the body regions they find soothing/unpleasant to be touched by a loved one versus an acquaintance. Self-reports of interoceptive awareness and dysmorphic concerns were also measured. Overall, imagined touch was rated as the most soothing when received from a loved one, and also when this was delivered to 'social' body regions. The importance of the social relationship for the imagined tactile interactions was particularly evident for the high levels of BIDs group, with greater problems with interoceptive awareness predicting higher soothing touch ratings when this was received by a loved one. Despite the evidence that imagined bodily contacts between meaningful people is the most pleasant for socially acceptable bodily regions, our findings may suggest a greater sensitivity to relation-specific bodily patterns of social touch particularly in the high level of BIDs group. Heightened interoceptive awareness may also play a key role in this experience of bodily affective contacts. Future research for body-oriented therapy for BIDs is encouraged to systematically probe the efficacy of imagined social touch interaction protocols which use more plausible, ecological, scenarios where touch is delivered by loved ones and to socially acceptable bodily regions.

Affective Touch and Regulation of Stress Responses

Much has been documented on the association between stress and health. Both direct and indirect pathways have been identified and explored extensively, helping us understand trajectories from healthy individuals to reductions in well-being, and development of preclinical and disease states. Some of these pathways are well established within the field; physiology, affect regulation, and social relationships. The purpose of this review is to push beyond what is known separately about these pathways and provide a means to integrate them using one common mechanism. We propose that social touch, specifically affective touch, may be the missing active ingredient fundamental to our understanding of how close relationships contribute to stress and health. We provide empirical evidence detailing how affective touch is fundamental to the development of our stress systems, critical to the development of attachment bonds and subsequent social relationships across the life course. We will also explore how we can use this in applied contexts and incorporate it into existing interventions.

Changes in Touch Avoidance, Stress, and Anxiety During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy

In the present study we analyzed how attitudes toward touch have changed during the COVID-19 pandemic in an Italian sample, through two different studies: in the first we contacted participants of the Italian validation study of the Touch Avoidance Questionnaire, asking them to take part in a follow-up study (N = 31, 64.5% women, age 42.58 ± 15.15); in the second we recruited a new sample of 717 people (73.92% women, age 34.25 ± 13.11), comparing it to the full validation sample of the Touch Avoidance Questionnaire (N = 335, 64.48% women, age = 35.82 ± 14.32) to further investigate the relationship between the pandemic, stress responses, fear of contagion, anxiety, and attitudes toward touch. Overall, we found higher post-pandemic scores for touch avoidance toward strangers and family members and lower scores in touch avoidance toward friends of either gender, along with a slight increase in anxiety and stress. Touch avoidance was also positively related to anxiety and/or stress levels except for touch avoidance toward same-sex friends, for which the relationship with anxiety was negative. Surprisingly, we found that young people were the most anxious, despite older people being more at-risk of dying from COVID-19. Women were slightly more stressed out. COVID-19-related fears were significant predictors of touch avoidance toward partners, friends and strangers, but not of touch avoidance toward family. The results suggest that touch avoidance increased during the pandemic (except toward same-sex friends), together with anxiety and stress levels, but the change was relatively small.

Assessing individual differences in attitudes towards touch in treatment settings: Introducing the touch & health scale

Individuals commonly receive touch in treatment settings, but there is limited research on how they perceive it. The current project sought to address this gap by: 1) developing the Touch & Health Scale (THS) - a novel instrument to measure attitudes to touch in treatment settings 2) assessing inter-individual differences in THS scores, and 3) examining the association between individuals’ THS scores and wellbeing. Data of a large U.K. adults sample ( N > 12,000) were used. THS showed Cronbach’s α between 0.636 and 0.816 and significant correlations ( p < 0.001) with day-to-day attitudes to touch. THS scores differed as a function of extraversion and avoidant attachment style. Participants with more positive attitudes to touch in treatment settings showed greater wellbeing. Overall, the study highlights the importance of a personalised approach to touch in treatment settings and provides a new scale that may act as a screening tool for this purpose.

Perceived Partner Responsiveness Forecasts Behavioral Intimacy as Measured by Affectionate Touch

Affectionate touch is an important behavior in close relationships throughout the lifespan. Research has investigated the relational and individual psychological and physical benefits of affectionate touch, but the situational factors that give rise to it have been overlooked. Theorizing from the interpersonal process model of intimacy, the current studies tested whether perceived partner responsiveness forecasts affectionate touch in romantic couples. Following a preliminary integrative data analysis (N = 842), three prospective studies use ecologically valid behavioral (Studies 1 and 2) and daily (Studies 2 and 3) data, showing a positive association between perceived partner responsiveness and affectionate touch. Furthermore, in Study 3, we tested a theoretical extension of the interpersonal process of intimacy, finding that affectionate touch forecasts the partner's perception of the touch-giver's responsiveness the next day. Findings suggest affectionate touch may be an untested mechanism at the heart of the interpersonal process of intimacy.

Keeping "In Touch": Demographic Patterns of Interpersonal Touch in Later Life

Touch is an important element of human social interaction linked to various dimensions of well-being, but we know little of how it is distributed among older adults. This study considers whether greeting/affectionate touch is a function of characteristics such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status. Data come from Wave 1 (2005-2006) of the NSHAP study from the United States. Results reveal that women experienced more frequent touch relative to men, net of several features of the interpersonal environment. Mediation analyses revealed that gender differences in associations with touch were partially explained by women's greater participation in formal and informal social activity. No patterns were detected related to race, education, or wealth. This study situates greeting/affectionate touch as a form of corporeal non-verbal interaction that offers a unique lens into patterns of social connection. We close by considering what this form of interaction means in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Italian Validation of the Touch Avoidance Measure and the Touch Avoidance Questionnaire

Social touch is essential in relationships and well-being, but the unique personal experience of touch is not assessed and taken into account in health and social care services. The pleasantness of gentle stroking is influenced by gender, toucher genre, toucher familiarity, culture, and age. Moreover, pleasantness is influenced by touch avoidance, the attitude toward interpersonal touch. The aim of this article is to present the translation, adaptation, and validation in Italian of two scales to measure touch avoidance. For translation and validation, we selected the most used scale, the Touch Avoidance Measure (TAM) and a more recent scale, the Touch Avoidance Questionnaire (TAQ). Confirmatory factor analyses reported good model fit for the TAM [comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.947, Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) = 0.940, root-mean-square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.065] and excellent model fit for the TAQ (CFI = 0.954, TLI = 0.950, RMSEA = 0.058). Internal consistency was high for all subscales, except the TAQ "Stranger" subscale. One-month test-retest reliability ranged from 0.67 to 0.90 for each subscale. Lastly, convergent validity between the TAM and TAQ was also found to be high. We conclude that the TAM and TAQ can be used to assess touch avoidance with Italian samples. The instrument can be used to support healthcare professionals and to assess attitudes toward touch in individuals with interpersonal difficulties.

Cross-cultural similarity in relationship-specific social touching

Many species use touching for reinforcing social structures, and particularly, non-human primates use social grooming for managing their social networks. However, it is still unclear how social touch contributes to the maintenance and reinforcement of human social networks. Human studies in Western cultures suggest that the body locations where touch is allowed are associated with the strength of the emotional bond between the person touched and the toucher. However, it is unknown to what extent this relationship is culturally universal and generalizes to non-Western cultures. Here, we compared relationship-specific, bodily touch allowance maps across one Western (N = 386, UK) and one East Asian (N = 255, Japan) country. In both cultures, the strength of the emotional bond was linearly associated with permissible touch area. However, Western participants experienced social touching as more pleasurable than Asian participants. These results indicate a similarity of emotional bonding via social touch between East Asian and Western cultures.

Conveying Emotions by Touch to the Nao Robot: A User Experience Perspective

Social robots are expected gradually to be used by more and more people in a wider range of settings, domestic as well as professional. As a consequence, the features and quality requirements on human–robot interaction will increase, comprising possibilities to communicate emotions, establishing a positive user experience, e.g., using touch. In this paper, the focus is on depicting how humans, as the users of robots, experience tactile emotional communication with the Nao Robot, as well as identifying aspects affecting the experience and touch behavior. A qualitative investigation was conducted as part of a larger experiment. The major findings consist of 15 different aspects that vary along one or more dimensions and how those influence the four dimensions of user experience that are present in the study, as well as the different parts of touch behavior of conveying emotions.

Social Contact Enhances Bodily Self-Awareness

Human self-awareness is arguably the most important and revealing question of modern sciences. Converging theoretical perspectives link self-awareness and social abilities in human beings. In particular, mutual engagement during social interactions-or social contact-would boost self-awareness. Yet, empirical evidence for this effect is scarce. We recently showed that the perception of eye contact induces enhanced bodily self-awareness. Here, we aimed at extending these findings by testing the influence of social contact in auditory and tactile modalities, in order to demonstrate that social contact enhances bodily self-awareness irrespective of sensory modality. In a first experiment, participants were exposed to hearing their own first name (as compared to another unfamiliar name and noise). In a second experiment, human touch (as compared to brush touch and no-touch) was used as the social contact cue. In both experiments, participants demonstrated more accurate rating of their bodily reactions in response to emotional pictures following the social contact condition-a proxy of bodily self-awareness. Further analyses indicated that the effect of social contact was comparable across tactile, auditory and visual modalities. These results provide the first direct empirical evidence in support of the essential social nature of human self-awareness.

The role of empathy in the neural responses to observed human social touch

One of the ways in which individuals convey feelings and thoughts to one another is through touch. Although the neural responses to felt and observed tactile stimuli between an inanimate object and a part of the human body have been vastly explored, the neural responses to observed human interaction involving touch are not well understood. Considering that the observation of social touch involves vicarious sharing of emotions, we hypothesized that levels of empathic traits modulate the neural responses to observed touch and focused on the attenuation in the mu\alpha rhythm (8-13Hz), a neural marker that has been related to sensorimotor resonance. Fifty-four participants observed photos depicting social touch, nonsocial touch, or no touch while their electroencephalography (EEG) activity was recorded. Results showed that interindividual differences in levels of empathic traits modulated both behavioral and electrophysiological responses to human social touch, such that highly empathic participants evaluated human social touch as inducing more pleasant emotions and exhibited greater mu suppression upon observation of human social touch compared to less empathic participants. Specifically, both the behavioral and the electrophysiological responses to observed social touch were predicted by levels of personal distress, a measure of emotional contagion. These findings indicate that the behavioral and electrophysiological responses to observed social touch are modulated by levels of empathy.

Parent-Child Positive Touch: Gender, Age, and Task Differences

This study examined gender, age, and task differences in positive touch and physical proximity during mother-child and father-child conversations. Sixty-five Spanish mothers and fathers and their 4- (M = 53.50 months, SD = 3.54) and 6-year-old (M = 77.07 months, SD = 3.94) children participated in this study. Positive touch was examined during a play-related storytelling task and a reminiscence task (conversation about past emotions). Fathers touched their children positively more frequently during the play-related storytelling task than did mothers. Both mothers and fathers were in closer proximity to their 6-year-olds than their 4-year-olds. Mothers and fathers touched their children positively more frequently when reminiscing than when playing. Finally, 6-year-olds remained closer to their parents than did 4-year-olds. Implications of these findings for future research on children's socioemotional development are discussed.

Affectionate Touch to Promote Relational, Psychological, and Physical Well-Being in Adulthood: A Theoretical Model and Review of the Research

Throughout the life span, individuals engage in affectionate touch with close others. Touch receipt promotes well-being in infancy, but the impacts of touch in adult close relationships have been largely unexplored. In this article, we propose that affectionate touch receipt promotes relational, psychological, and physical well-being in adulthood, and we present a theoretical mechanistic model to explain why affectionate touch may promote these outcomes. The model includes pathways through which touch could affect well-being by reducing stress and by promoting well-being independent of stress. Specifically, two immediate outcomes of affectionate touch receipt—relational-cognitive changes and neurobiological changes—are described as important mechanisms underlying the effects of affectionate touch on well-being. We also review and evaluate the existing research linking affectionate touch to well-being in adulthood and propose an agenda to advance research in this area. This theoretical perspective provides a foundation for future work on touch in adult close relationships.

Topography of social touching depends on emotional bonds between humans

Nonhuman primates use social touch for maintenance and reinforcement of social structures, yet the role of social touch in human bonding in different reproductive, affiliative, and kinship-based relationships remains unresolved. Here we reveal quantified, relationship-specific maps of bodily regions where social touch is allowed in a large cross-cultural dataset (N = 1,368 from Finland, France, Italy, Russia, and the United Kingdom). Participants were shown front and back silhouettes of human bodies with a word denoting one member of their social network. They were asked to color, on separate trials, the bodily regions where each individual in their social network would be allowed to touch them. Across all tested cultures, the total bodily area where touching was allowed was linearly dependent (mean r(2) = 0.54) on the emotional bond with the toucher, but independent of when that person was last encountered. Close acquaintances and family members were touched for more reasons than less familiar individuals. The bodily area others are allowed to touch thus represented, in a parametric fashion, the strength of the relationship-specific emotional bond. We propose that the spatial patterns of human social touch reflect an important mechanism supporting the maintenance of social bonds.

Signatures of positive selection in the cis-regulatory sequences of the human oxytocin receptor (OXTR) and arginine vasopressin receptor 1a (AVPR1A) genes

BACKGROUND

The evolutionary highly conserved neurohypophyseal hormones oxytocin and arginine vasopressin play key roles in regulating social cognition and behaviours. The effects of these two peptides are meditated by their specific receptors, which are encoded by the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) and arginine vasopressin receptor 1a genes (AVPR1A), respectively. In several species, polymorphisms in these genes have been linked to various behavioural traits. Little, however, is known about whether positive selection acts on sequence variants in genes influencing variation in human behaviours.

RESULTS

We identified, in both neuroreceptor genes, signatures of balancing selection in the cis-regulative acting sequences such as transcription factor binding and enhancer sequences, as well as in a transcriptional repressor sequence motif. Additionally, in the intron 3 of the OXTR gene, the SNP rs59190448 appears to be under positive directional selection. For rs59190448, only one phenotypical association is known so far, but it is in high LD' (>0.8) with loci of known association; i.e., variants associated with key pro-social behaviours and mental disorders in humans.

CONCLUSIONS

Only for one SNP on the OXTR gene (rs59190448) was a sign of positive directional selection detected with all three methods of selection detection. For rs59190448, however, only one phenotypical association is known, but rs59190448 is in high LD' (>0.8), with variants associated with important pro-social behaviours and mental disorders in humans. We also detected various signatures of balancing selection on both neuroreceptor genes.

Highly conductive, flexible, and compressible all-graphene passive electronic skin for sensing human touch

A facile and passive multiply flexible thin-film sensor is demonstrated based on thermoelectric effects in graphene. The sensor is highly conductive, free-standing, flexible, and elastic. It senses heat and cold, and measures heated/cooled areas; it also discerns human touch from other pressures, locates human touch, and measures pressure levels. All of these sensing abilities are demonstrated without any internal/external power supply.

Touching moments: desire modulates the neural anticipation of active romantic caress

A romantic caress is a basic expression of affiliative behavior and a primary reinforcer. Given its inherent affective valence, its performance also would imply the prediction of reward values. For example, touching a person for whom one has strong passionate feelings likely is motivated by a strong desire for physical contact and associated with the anticipation of hedonic experiences. The present study aims at investigating how the anticipatory neural processes of active romantic caress are modulated by the intensity of the desire for affective contact as reflected by passionate feelings for the other. Functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning was performed in romantically involved partners using a paradigm that allowed to isolate the specific anticipatory representations of active romantic caress, compared with control caress, while testing for the relationship between neural activity and measures of feelings of passionate love for the other. The results demonstrated that right posterior insula activity in anticipation of romantic caress significantly co-varied with the intensity of desire for union with the other. This effect was independent of the sensory-affective properties of the performed touch, like its pleasantness. Furthermore, functional connectivity analysis showed that the same posterior insula cluster interacted with brain regions related to sensory-motor functions as well as to the processing and anticipation of reward. The findings provide insight on the neural substrate mediating between the desire for and the performance of romantic caress. In particular, we propose that anticipatory activity patterns in posterior insula may modulate subsequent sensory-affective processing of skin-to-skin contact.

Spanish parents' emotion talk and their children's understanding of emotion

Relations between parent-child emotion talk and children's emotion understanding were examined in 63 Spanish mothers and fathers and their 4- (M = 53.35 months, SD = 3.86) and 6-year-old (M = 76.62 months, SD = 3.91) children. Parent-child emotion talk was analyzed during two storytelling tasks: a play-related storytelling task and a reminiscence task (conversation about past experiences). Children's emotion understanding was assessed twice through a standardized test of emotion comprehension (TEC; Pons et al., 2004), once before one of the two parent-child storytelling sessions and again 6 months later. Mothers' use of emotion labels during the play-related storytelling task predicted children's emotion understanding after controlling for children's previous emotion understanding. Whereas fathers' use of emotion labels during the play-related storytelling task was correlated with children's emotion understanding, it did not predict children's emotion understanding after controlling for previous emotion understanding. Implications of these findings for future research on children's socioemotional development are discussed.

The influence of political jurisdiction, age, and sex on handholding in public by same-sex couples

Three hundred-forty lesbians and 62 gay males, largely from North America and in partnered relationships, completed online surveys that explored what handholding means to same-sex couples. The data suggest that lesbians in the United States are more likely now than ¼ century ago to hold hands in public spaces. Younger lesbians are more likely to hold hands in public than older lesbians, and Canadian lesbians hold hands more often in public than American lesbians. In response to the question, "What does handholding mean to you?," 26% of the female respondents from North America overtly referred to public handholding as either a political act or a risky behavior. The number of comments of that nature was similar, regardless of whether the lesbians resided in the United States or Canada. Data suggest that full acceptance of same-sex couples in public spaces has not yet occurred, even in jurisdictions where same-sex couples have the same legal rights as heterosexual couples. Although the sample size for males was too small to analyze the influence of age or political jurisdiction on public handholding, males, in general, were significantly less likely than females to view handholding as a means of staying "connected" with their partners.

The Power of Touch: Nonverbal Communication Within Married Dyads

Researchers have suggested that one function of touch in mixed-sex interactions is to exert influence over another person. Yet theories offer different explanations as to when women and men will use touch as an influence strategy. The gender politics hypothesis proposes that men touch more as a way to maintain inequalities present in society. In turn, the dyadic power theory proposes that both women and men will touch more depending on their goals in a given situation. The person initiating a topic of disagreement is more likely to touch in order to try and influence the other person to agree with his or her position. However, researchers have rarely examined the different assertions of these theories within intimate relationships. The present study, with 67 married heterosexual couples, was designed to provide an initial test of these theories. The authors focused on four types of touch across two problem-solving topics: one chosen by each spouse. Consistent with the dyadic power theory, results indicated that when couples discussed topics chosen by wives, wives exhibited more touches. However, no differences in these forms of touch emerged when couples discussed topics chosen by husbands. Implications for marital counseling and research are discussed.

The skin as a social organ

In general, social neuroscience research tends to focus on visual and auditory channels as routes for social information. However, because the skin is the site of events and processes crucial to the way we think about, feel about, and interact with one another, touch can mediate social perceptions in various ways. This review situates cutaneous perception within a social neuroscience framework by discussing evidence for considering touch (and to some extent pain) as a channel for social information. Social information conveys features of individuals or their interactions that have potential bearing on future interactions, and attendant mental and emotional states. Here, we discuss evidence for an affective dimension of touch and explore its wider implications for the exchange of social information. We consider three important roles for this affective dimension of the cutaneous senses in the transmission and processing of social information: first, through affiliative behavior and communication; second, via affective processing in skin-brain pathways; and third, as a basis for intersubjective representation.

The communicative functions of touch in humans, nonhuman primates, and rats: a review and synthesis of the empirical research

Although touch is one of the most neglected modalities of communication, several lines of research bear on the important communicative functions served by the modality. The authors highlighted the importance of touch by reviewing and synthesizing the literatures pertaining to the communicative functions served by touch among humans, nonhuman primates, and rats. In humans, the authors focused on the role that touch plays in emotional communication, attachment, bonding, compliance, power, intimacy, hedonics, and liking. In nonhuman primates, the authors examined the relations among touch and status, stress, reconciliation, sexual relations, and attachment. In rats, the authors focused on the role that touch plays in emotion, learning and memory, novelty seeking, stress, and attachment. The authors also highlighted the potential phylogenetic and ontogenetic continuities and discussed suggestions for future research.