magazine issue 2 2013 / Issue 17

That human touch that means so much: Exploring the tactile dimension of social life

• written by Mandy Tjew A Sin & Sander Koole
• edited by Hans IJzerman

Equally notable are findings that touch can motivate people to work harder on shared tasks (e.g., Steward & Lupfer, 1987; Guéguen, 2004). One recent study on this topic examined touches exchanged between members of basketball teams (Kraus, Huang, & Keltner, 2010). The researchers observed touch behaviors of 294 players from all 30 National Basketball Association (NBA) teams during one game that was played within the first two months of the 2008-2009 season. The focus was on touches among two or more players who were celebrating a positive play that helped their team, including behaviors such as high fives, head slaps, or team huddles. The researchers then related the frequency of these touches to basketball performance during the subsequent NBA season. The results showed that early season touch predicted season performance. This relation held even when the researchers statistically controlled for player salary, preseason expectations, and early season performance. Indeed, the only measure that could account for the relation between touch and performance was the amount of cooperation that was observed during the game. These findings suggest that touch among basketball players is a strong indicator of trusting and cooperative attitudes, which may facilitate team performance.

The prosocial tendencies induced by touch may sometimes have harmful effects. In cultures that encourage recklessness and irresponsibility, touch may amplify the destructive behavior. One study showed that customers in US public taverns who were briefly touched by a waitress ordered more drinks and consumed more alcohol than customers who were not touched (Kaufman & Mahoney, 1999). Another recent study showed that men playing an investment game made riskier decisions after a woman pat them lightly on the shoulder (Levav & Argo, 2010). Interpersonal touch may thus lead people to pursue riskier strategies, particularly when these strategies are socially sanctioned.

Although touch may smooth social interactions and help people bond with others, people may feel unnerved when others get too familiar with them in a purely professional setting (Leander, Chartrand & Bargh, 2012). Thus, the social benefits of touch are likely to materialize only in appropriate situations.

Conclusions and Outlook

Although psychologists have learned a great deal about the significance of touch, the scientific inquiry of touch is still in its infancy. One important complexity that has yet to be addressed is that touch is inherently a multisensory experience. During interpersonal touch, we typically experience tactile stimulation, but also changes in warmth, along with changes in what we see, hear, and smell. Nevertheless, inputs from other senses can have independent effects. For instance, merely being in a warm room or holding a warm drink can make people feel closer to others compared to when they are in a cold room or holding a cold drink (Williams & Bargh, 2008; see also IJzerman & Saddlemeyer, in press). More research is needed to establish whether and how warmth and other sensory experiences like smell, sounds, and vision contribute to the effects of touch (see Paladino, Mazzurega, Pavani, & Schubert, 2010, for a pioneering study on this topic).

Other important questions relate to the role of culture. Culture regulates how easily we can access interpersonal touch, by determining who is allowed to be touched by whom, which parts of the body can be touched, what touch means, how touch is ritualized in greetings (e.g., whether we kiss or shake hands with our friends), and so on. However, it is unclear to what degree we can attribute the influence of touch to psychological factors. As we have seen, some of the effects of touch are physiological, such as the release of oxytocin, and they are part of our biological hardware. These physiological processes may be resistant to cultural constraints. For instance, one study showed that individuals who consider touch inappropriate may still show physiological benefits from touch (Wilhelm et al., 2001). However, evidence of this kind remains limited. More research is therefore needed before we can draw firm conclusions about the role of culture in determining the physiological effects of touch.

Despite these limitations, insights from touch research could have many real-world applications. For instance, touch-based therapies may be useful in treating deficiencies in perspective taking (i.e. perceiving someone else’s thoughts and feelings), one of the core symptoms of autistic spectrum disorder (Baron-Cohen & Belmonte, 2005). Given that oxytocin (which is released upon touch) improves perspective-taking abilities among high-functioning autistics (Guastella et al., 2010; Hollander et al., 2007), touch-based interventions might be helpful to autistic individuals (see Escalona, Field, Singer-Strunck, Cullen, & Hartshorn, 2001). More broadly speaking, interpersonal touch may support health-promoting behaviors by enhancing compliance. Indeed, one study showed that when service staff at a home for the elderly touched the patients while verbally encouraging them to eat, these patients consumed more calories and protein up to five days after the touch (Eaton, Mitchell-Bonair, & Friedmann, 1986; for related findings, see Guéguen & Vion, 2009).