Researchers are exploring whether these ubiquitous fluorinated molecules might worsen infections or hamper vaccine effectiveness.
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Contributed by Riitta Hari, September 29, 2015 (sent for review April 28, 2015; reviewed by Jon H. Kaas, Håkan Olausson, and Gabriele Schino)
Significance
Touch is a powerful tool for communicating positive emotions. However, it has remained unknown to what extent social touch would maintain and establish social bonds. We asked a total of 1,368 people from five countries to reveal, using an Internet-based topographical self-reporting tool, those parts of their body that they would allow relatives, friends, and strangers to touch. These body regions formed relationship-specific maps in which the total area was directly related to the strength of the emotional bond between the participant and the touching person. Cultural influences were minor. We suggest that these relation-specific bodily patterns of social touch constitute an important mechanism supporting the maintenance of human social bonds.
Abstract
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 r2 = 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.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: juulia.suvilehto{at}aalto.fi or riitta.hari{at}aalto.fi.
Author contributions: J.T.S., E.G., R.H., and L.N. designed research; J.T.S. and R.I.M.D. performed research; E.G. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; J.T.S. and L.N. analyzed data; and J.T.S., E.G., R.I.M.D., R.H., and L.N. wrote the paper.
Reviewers: J.H.K., Vanderbilt University; H.O., Linköping University; and G.S., Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, CNR.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
*All target children (subjects’ own, acquaintances, strangers) were ultimately excluded from the analyses because of the small number of children reported in the national samples.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1519231112/-/DCSupplemental.
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.
Social touch and bonding
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