(Thought-Random)
Excerpts from an article by Rick Chillot
Probing our ability to communicate
nonverbally is hardly a new psychological tack; researchers have long
documented the complex emotions and desires that our posture, motions,
and expressions reveal. Yet until recently, the idea that people can
impart and interpret emotional content via another nonverbal
modality—touch—seemed iffy, even to researchers, such as DePauw
University psychologist Matthew Hertenstein, who study it. In 2009, he
demonstrated that we have an innate ability to decode emotions via touch
alone. In a series of studies, Hertenstein had volunteers attempt to
communicate a list of emotions to a blindfolded stranger solely through
touch. Many participants were apprehensive about the experiment. "This
is a touch-phobic society," he says. "We're not used to touching
strangers, or even our friends, necessarily."
But
touch they did—it was, after all, for science. The results suggest that
for all our caution about touching, we come equipped with an ability to
send and receive emotional signals solely by doing so. Participants
communicated eight distinct emotions—
anger,
fear, disgust, love,
gratitude, sympathy,
happiness,
and sadness—with accuracy rates as high as 78 percent. "I was
surprised," Hertenstein admits. "I thought the accuracy would be at
chance level," about 25 percent.Previous studies by
Hertenstein and others have produced similar findings abroad, including
in Spain (where people were better at comminicating via touch than in
America) and the U.K. Research has also been conducted in Pakistan and
Turkey. "Everywhere we've studied this, people seem able to do it," he
says.
Indeed, we appear to be wired to interpret the touch of our
fellow humans. A study providing evidence of this ability was published
in 2012 by a
team who used fMRI scans to measure
brain
activation in people being touched. The subjects, all heterosexual
males, were shown a video of a man or a woman who was purportedly
touching them on the leg. Unsurprisingly, subjects rated the experience
of male touch as less pleasant. Brain scans revealed that a part of the
brain called the primary somatosensory cortex responded more sharply to a
woman's touch than to a man's. But here's the twist: The videos were
fake. It was always a woman touching the subjects.
The results
were startling, because the primary somatosensory cortex had been
thought to encode only basic qualities of touch, such as smoothness or
pressure. That its activity varied depending on whom subjects believed
was touching them suggests that the emotional and social components of
touch are all but inseparable from physical sensations. "When you're
being touched by another person, your brain isn't set up to give you the
objective qualities of that touch," says study coauthor Michael Spezio,
a psychologist at Scripps College. "The entire experience is affected
by your social evaluation of the person touching you."
If touch is
a language, it seems we instinctively know how to use it. But
apparently it's a skill we take for granted. When asked about it, the
subjects in Hertenstein's studies consistently underestimated their
ability to communicate via touch—even while their actions suggested that
touch may in fact be more versatile than voice, facial expression, and
other modalities for expressing emotion.
"With the face and voice,
in general we can identify just one or two positive signals that are
not confused with each other," says Hertenstein. For example, joy is the
only positive emotion that has been reliably decoded in studies of the
face. Meanwhile, his research shows that touch can communicate
multiple
positive emotions: joy, love, gratitude, and sympathy. Scientists used
to believe touching was simply a means of enhancing messages signaled
through speech or
body language,
"but it seems instead that touch is a much more nuanced, sophisticated,
and precise way to communicate emotions," Hertenstein says.
It
may also increase the speed of communication: "If you're close enough to
touch, it's often the easiest way to signal something," says Laura
Guerrero, coauthor of
Close Encounters: Communication in Relationships,
who researches nonverbal and emotional communication at Arizona State
University. This immediacy is particularly noteworthy when it comes to
bonding. "We feel more connected to someone if they touch us," Guerrero
notes.
There's no phrase book to translate the language of touch;
if anything, experts have barely begun documenting its grammar and
vocabulary. "We found that there are many different ways to indicate a
given emotion through touch," Hertenstein notes. What's more, how a
touch gets interpreted is very context dependent. "Whether we're at the
doctor's office or in a nightclub plays a huge role in how the brain
responds to the same type of contact," Spezio explains. Still, examining
some of the notable ways that we communicate and bond through touch
(and how we develop the capacity to do so) reveals the versatility of
this tool and suggests ways to make better use of it. There's much to be
gained from embracing our tactile sense—in particular, more positive
interactions and a deeper sense of connection with others.
Learning the Language of Touch
We
begin receiving tactile signals even before birth, as the vibration of
our mother's heartbeat is amplified by amniotic fluid. No wonder then
that touch plays a critical role in parent-child relationships from the
start: "It's an essential channel of communication with caregivers for a
child," says San Diego State University School of Communication
emeritus professor Peter Andersen, author of
Nonverbal Communication: Forms and Functions.
A mother's touch enhances
attachment between mother and child; it can signify security ("You're safe; I'm here") and, depending on the type of touch,
it can generate positive or negative emotions.
(Playing pat-a-cake makes infants happy, while a sudden squeeze from
Mom often signals a warning not to interact with a new object). Mom's
touch even seems to mitigate pain when infants are given a blood test.
University of Miami School of Medicine's Tiffany Field, director of the
Touch Research Institute, has linked touch, in the form of massage, to a
slew of benefits, including better
sleep, reduced irritability, and increased sociability among infants—as well as improved growth of preemies.
We're
never touched as much as when we're children, which is when our comfort
level with physical contact, and with physical closeness in general
(what scientists call proxemics), develops. "The fact that there's a lot
of cultural variation in comfort with touch suggests it's predominantly
learned," Andersen says.
Warm climates tend to produce cultures
that are more liberal about touching than colder regions (think Greeks
versus Germans, or Southern hospitality versus New England stoicism).
There are a number of hypotheses as to why, including the fact that a
higher ambient temperature increases the availability of skin ("It pays
to touch somebody if there's skin showing or they're wearing light
clothing through which they can feel the touch," Andersen says); the
effect of sunlight on mood ("It increases affiliativeness and
libidinousness—lack of sunlight can make us depressed, with fewer
interactions"); and migratory patterns ("Our ancestors tended to migrate
to the same climate zone they came from. The upper Midwest is heavily
German and Scandinavian, while Spaniards and Italians went to Mexico and
Brazil. That influences the brand of touch").
What goes on in your home also plays a role. Andersen notes that atheists and agnostics touch more than
religious
types, "probably because religions often teach that some kinds of touch
are inappropriate or sinful." Tolerance for touch isn't set in stone,
however. Spend time in a different culture, or even with touchy-feely
friends, and your attitude toward touch can change.By the time
we're adults, most of us have learned that touching tends to raise the
stakes, particularly when it comes to a sense of connectivity. Even
fleeting contact with a stranger can have a measurable effect, both
fostering and enhancing cooperation. In research done back in 1976,
clerks at a university library returned library cards to students either
with or without briefly touching the student's hand. Student interviews
revealed that those who'd been touched evaluated the clerk and the
library more favorably. The effect held even when students hadn't
noticed the touch.
More recent studies have found that seemingly
insignificant touches yield bigger tips for waitresses, that people shop
and buy more if they're touched by a store greeter, and that strangers
are more likely to help someone if a touch accompanies the request. Call
it the human touch, a brief reminder that we are, at our core, social
animals. "Lots of times in these studies people don't even remember
being touched. They just feel there's a connection, they feel that they
like that person more," Guerrero says.
Just how strong is touch's
bonding benefit? To find out, a team led by University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign psychologist Michael Kraus tracked physical contact
between teammates during NBA games (consider all those chest bumps, high
fives, and backslaps). The study revealed that the more on-court
touching there was early in the season, the more successful teams and
individuals were by season's end. The effect of touch was independent of
salary or performance, eliminating the possibility that players touch
more if they're more skilled or better compensated.
"We were very
surprised. Touch predicted performance across all the NBA teams," says
Kraus. "Basketball players sometimes don't have time to say an
encouraging word to a teammate; instead, they developed this incredible
repertoire of touch to communicate quickly and accurately," he explains,
adding that touch can likely improve performance across any cooperative
context. As with our primate relatives, who strengthen social bonds by
grooming each other, in humans, "touch strengthens relationships and is a
marker of closeness," he says. "It increases cooperation but is also an
indicator of how strong bonds are between people."
If a
post-rebound slap on the back or the brush of a hand while delivering a
bill can help us all get along a bit better, it may be because "when you
stimulate the pressure receptors in the skin, you lower
stress hormones," says the Touch Research Institute's Field. At the same time, warm touch stimulates release of the "cuddle hormone,"
oxytocin, which enhances a sense of trust and attachment.
The
release also helps explain our propensity for self-caressing, which we
do hundreds of times each day as a calming mechanism. "We do a lot of
self-touching: flipping our hair, hugging ourselves," Field notes. Other
common behaviors include massaging our foreheads, rubbing our hands, or
stroking our necks. Evidence supports the idea that it's effective:
Self-massage has been shown to slow the heart rate and lower the level
of the stress hormone cortisol.
A Touch of Love
Every
evening at bedtime, DePauw's Hertenstein gives his young son a back rub.
"It's a bonding opportunity for the two of us. Oxytocin levels go up,
heart rates go down, all these wonderful things that you can't see."
Moments like these also reveal the reciprocal
nature
of touch, he says: "You can't touch without being touched. A lot of
those same beneficial physiological consequences happen to me, the
person doing the touching."
In fact, when we're the ones
initiating contact, we may reap all the same benefits as those we're
touching. For example, Field's research has revealed that a person
giving a massage experiences as great a reduction in stress hormones as
the person on the receiving end. "Studies have shown that a person
giving a hug gets just as much benefit as a person being hugged," she
adds.
Moreover,
touching another person isn't just a one-way street when it comes to
signaling; aside from sending them a message, it reveals a great of deal
information about their state of mind, Hertenstein notes. Are they open
to touch or do they pull away? Are they relaxed or tense? Are they
warm—or perhaps cold and clammy? "Sometimes I'll touch my wife and can
tell instantly—even if my eyes are closed—that she's stressed," he says.
"You can sense that through muscle tightness and contraction, and this
kind of information can guide our behavior with that person—
it influences what we think, how we perceive what they say."
Perhaps
because touch affects both the person being touched and the one doing
the touching, it is one of the most fundamental ways of fostering and
communicating intimacy in a
romantic relationship. One paper proposed a sequence of 12 behaviors of increasing intimacy that couples generally follow:
After
the first three (eye-to-body contact, eye-to-eye contact, and
speaking), the remaining nine involve touching (starting with holding
hands, then kissing, and eventually sexual intimacy). "Touch functions a
bit differently depending on the stage of the relationship," says
Guerrero. "In the beginning, it's kind of exploratory. Will the other
person reciprocate if I touch?" As the relationship progresses, touching
begins to spike. "You see lots of public touch," she notes, "people
holding hands the whole time they're together or with their arms around
each other's shoulders. It signals they're intensifying the
relationship."
But it would be a mistake to think that the amount
of touching couples do continues to follow an escalating trajectory.
Research involving observation of couples in public and analysis of
their self-reports shows that the amount of touching rises at the
beginning of a relationship, peaks somewhere early in a
marriage,
and then tapers off. Over time romantic partners adjust the amount of
touching they do, up- or downshifting their behavior to move closer to
their significant other's habits. Inability to converge on a common
comfort zone tends to derail a relationship early on, while among
couples in long-term marriages, touching reaches an almost one-to-one
ratio.
While couples who are satisfied with each other do tend to
touch more, the true indicator of a healthy long-term bond is not how
often your partner touches you but how often he or she touches you in
response
to your touch. "The stronger the reciprocity, the more likely someone
is to report emotional intimacy and satisfaction with the relationship,"
Guerrero says. As with many things in relationships, satisfaction is as
much about what we do for our partner as about what we're getting.
The Laws of Social Contact
The
most important things we reveal through touch: "probably our degree of
dominance and our degree of intimacy," Andersen says. Take, for example,
the handshake, one of the few situations in which it's OK to make
prolonged contact with a stranger. As such, it's an important
opportunity for sending a message about yourself. "A limp handshake
signifies uncertainty, low enthusiasm,
introversion,"
Andersen says, while a viselike grip can be taken as a sign that you're
trying to dominate. "You want to have a firm but not bone-crushing
handshake," he advises, since it's better to be perceived as overly warm
than as a cold fish. "We like people to have a kind of medium-high
level of warmth," Andersen says. "A person who touches a lot says, 'I'm a
friendly, intimate person.' More touch-oriented doctors, teachers, and
managers get higher ratings."
Still, outside of close
relationships, the consequences of sending the wrong message also
increase. "Touchy people are taking some risk that they might be
perceived as being over-the-top or harassing," says Andersen. "Physical
contact can be creepy; it can be threatening." Context matters, which is
why we have rules about whom we can touch, where, and when. "Generally,
from the shoulder down to the hand are the only acceptable areas for
touch," at least between casual acquaintances, according to Andersen.
"The back is very low in nerve endings, so that's OK too."
Of
course, there are other contextual considerations as well. Different
cultures and individuals have different tolerance levels for touch.
Same-sex and opposite-sex touches have different implications. Then
there's the quality of the touch, the duration, the intensity, the
circumstances. "It's a complex matrix," Andersen says. A quick touch and
release—like a tap on a cubicle mate's shoulder to get her attention—no
problem. But a stroke on the shoulder could be easily misinterpreted.
("Most cases of sexual harassment involve stroking touches," notes
Andersen.)A touch will naturally seem more intimate if it is
accompanied by other signals, such as a prolonged gaze, or if it is held
an instant too long. Meanwhile, a squeeze on the arm could be a sign of
sympathy or support, but if it doesn't end quickly and is accompanied
by intense eye contact, it can come across as a squeeze of aggression.
Environment changes things too: On the playing field, a man might feel
comfortable giving his teammate a pat on the butt for a job well done,
but that congratulatory gesture wouldn't do too well in the office.
Really,
the only rule that ensures communicating by touch won't get you into
trouble is this: Don't do it. Which is likely what it says in the
employee handbook for your
workplace.
Still, leaving your humanity behind every time you leave home isn't
very appealing. Andersen's slightly less stringent guidelines for touch:
Outside of your closest relationships, stick to the safe zones of
shoulders and arms (handshakes, high fives, backslaps), and in the
office, it's always better for a subordinate, rather than a superior or
manager, to initiate.
If there's a
most appropriate time
to communicate via touch, it's probably when someone needs consoling.
"Research shows that touch is the best way to comfort," says Guerrero.
"If you ask people how they'd comfort someone in a given situation, they
tend to list pats, hugs, and different kinds of touch behaviors more
than anything else. Even opposite-sex friends, for example, who usually
don't touch a lot so they won't send the wrong signals, won't worry
about being misinterpreted," she says.
Maybe that's because there are times—during intense
grief or fear, but also in ecstatic moments of joy or love—when only the language of touch can fully express what we feel.
