Affective touch communication in close adult relationships

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that close adults can effectively communicate emotional cues through touch alone, with performance influenced by contextual information but unaffected by relationship type or comfort with touch.

Contribution

It reveals that emotional communication via touch is possible among close adults and highlights the role of context in enhancing touch-based signaling.

Findings

Participants communicated emotional cues with above chance accuracy.

Performance was influenced by contextual information availability.

Relationship type and comfort with touch did not significantly affect results.

Abstract

Inter-personal touch is a powerful aspect of social interaction that we expect to be particularly important for emotional communication. We studied the capacity of closely acquainted humans to signal the meaning of several word cues (e.g. gratitude, sadness) using touch sensation alone. Participants communicated all cues with above chance performance. We show that emotionally close people can accurately signal the meaning of different words through touch, and that performance is affected by the amount of contextual information available. Even with minimal context and feedback, both attention-getting and love were communicated surprisingly well. Neither the type of close relationship, nor self-reported comfort with touch significantly affected performance.