Sara enjoys research, art, and seeking a sustainably fun life, balancing physical and mental health. Read more on how she explores, learns, and balances all her interests at www.
In addition to her work as a clinical therapist, Melissa is passionate about promoting emotional wellness through leading workshops, guest appearances, and across social media platforms. Have you ever wondered why holding hands, a hug, or cuddles can feel so good? There are a variety of benefits to human touch, from social bonding to boosting the immune system. Physical contact is a basic human need with emotional, mental, and physical benefits.
From the moment of birth, babies need to cling, suckle, and rest on caregivers. This practice forms the bonds at the heart of our familial social structure and is a key tool of survival.
Even as we age, touch remains a critical component of our social and emotional growth. One study found that students are three times as likely to speak up in class after their teacher pats them in a friendly manner. It has been observed that the gelada baboon grooms for about 17 percent of its waking hours. Among the various reasons why primates touch each other is the need to ease tensions in social settings. The release of the hormone oxytocin is another benefit of physical touch.
Read: How to Deal With Anxiety. Why is human touch so powerful? The benefits of physical touch, and the biological stimulation that comes with it, go beyond social bonding and can manifest positively in your mental and physical health.
Oxytocin also generates feelings of compassion during interactions. This can contribute to an expansion of trust among individuals during social situations. Physical touch increases levels of dopamine and serotonin, two neurotransmitters that help regulate your mood and relieve stress and anxiety. Dopamine is also known to regulate the pleasure center in your brain that can offset feelings of anxiety.
One study on breast cancer patients found that massage therapy in the form of stroking, stretching, and squeezing relaxed participants and increased dopamine and serotonin levels. The longer term massage effects included reduced depression and hostility and increased urinary dopamine, serotonin values, NK cell number, and lymphocytes.
TF: If you take an extreme example of, say, orphans in Romania, you get growth deprivation and all kinds of developmental delays without sufficient touch. I visited an orphanage over in Romania, and it was just pathetic seeing these kids. They were half their expected height and weight for their age.
They were getting adequate nutrition, but there were other things at play. For example, the kids that were on the top floor of this orphanage were looking healthier than the kids on the bottom floor, and the only difference I could see was that the top-floor kids were getting some sunlight.
TF: Aside from the Romanian case, which is an extreme example, we also compared kids in Paris with kids in Miami. For the preschoolers, the kids in Paris were getting touched more by their parents on the playground than the kids in Miami. And the kids in Paris were less aggressive with each other than the kids in Miami. We were looking at positive touch and negative touch, and what kind of talk was going on.
The same pertained to adolescents. We looked at those kids interacting with each other, and in Paris, the kids were touching each other and hugging each other and stroking each other more than the kids in Miami. And they were less aggressive, both verbally and physically. The kids are all on smartphones and so are their parents, and little two year olds on iPads.
In recent years, a wave of studies has documented some incredible emotional and physical health benefits that come from touch. This research is suggesting that touch is truly fundamental to human communication, bonding, and health.
In my own lab, in a study led by my former student Matt Hertenstein now a professor at DePauw University , we asked whether humans can clearly communicate compassion through touch. One person stuck his or her arm through the barrier and waited. The person whose arm was being touched had to guess the emotion. Given the number of emotions being considered, the odds of guessing the right emotion by chance were about eight percent.
But remarkably, participants guessed compassion correctly nearly 60 percent of the time. Gratitude, anger, love, fear—they got those right more than 50 percent of the time as well.
We had various gender combinations in the study, and I feel obligated to disclose two gender differences we found: When a woman tried to communicate anger to a man, he got zero right—he had no idea what she was doing.
Ethologists who live in different parts world quickly recognize this. Nonhuman primates spend about 10 to 20 percent of their waking day grooming each other. If you go to various other countries, people spend a lot of time in direct physical contact with one another—much more than we do.
This has been well-documented. He observed these conversations for the same amount of time in each of the different countries.
What did he find? In England, the two friends touched each other zero times. In the United States, in bursts of enthusiasm, we touched each other twice. Check out this research on the positive effect of touch in schools, and learn how important touch is in communicating positive emotions.
But in France, the number shot up to times per hour. And in Puerto Rico, those friends touched each other times! Of course, there are plenty of good reasons why people are inclined to keep their hands to themselves, especially in a society as litigious as ours. But other research has revealed what we lose when we hold back too much. Similarly, research by Darlene Francis and Michael Meaney has found that rats whose mothers licked and groomed them a lot when they were infants grow up to be calmer and more resilient to stress, with a stronger immune system.
This research sheds light on why, historically, an overwhelming percentage of humans babies in orphanages where caretakers starved them of touch have failed to grow to their expected height or weight, and have shown behavioral problems.
We meet and greet and part from each other by shaking hands, kissing or hugging, depending on the kind of relationship we have with the others. Good friends may embrace and kiss. Men in the United States are more likely to shake hands. In France and other nations, men greet by kissing each side of the cheek upon greeting and parting. It is not uncommon for a certain number of patients to complain that they could not remember their mom hugging or touching them. Of course, they admitted that during infancy they probably were touched.
On one occasion, a patient expressed frustration and loneliness that no one ever touches them and they need that physical contact. In the Positive Psychology News Daily, writer Kathryn Britton wrote an article entitled, "Touch and Trust" in which she reports on research that shows the importance of touching in our lives.
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