Determinants for positive and negative experiences of interpersonal touch: context matters

ABSTRACT

The goal of the study was to determine which aspects of interpersonal touch interactions lead to a positive or negative experience. Previous research has focused primarily on physical characteristics. We suggest that this may not be sufficient to fully capture the complexity of the experience. Specifically, we examined how fulfilment of psychological needs influences touch experiences and how this relates to physical touch characteristics and situational factors.

In two mixed-method studies, participants described their most positive and most negative interpersonal touch experience within a specific time frame. They reported fulfilment of nine needs, affect, intention, and reason for positivity/negativity, as well as the body part(s) touched, location, type of touch, interaction partner, and particular touch characteristics (e.g. humidity).

Positive and negative touch experiences shared similar touch types, locations, and body parts touched, but differed in intended purpose and reasons. Overall, the valence of a touch experience could be predicted from fulfilment of relatedness, the interaction partner and initiator, and physical touch characteristics. Positive affect increased with need fulfilment, and negative affect decreased.

The results highlight the importance of relatedness and reciprocity for the valence of touch, and emphasise the need to incorporate psychological needs in touch research.

KEYWORDS:

• C-tactile
• affective touch
• social touch
• affect
• psychological needs

Acknowledgements

Study 2 was supported by grant 16SV9108 of the German Federal Ministry for Research and Education, project VEREINT. US was also supported by ERA-NET-NEURON, JTC 2020/Norwegian Research Council (grant number 323047), and a Jena Excellence Fellowship. IC was supported by ERA-NET-NEURON, JTC 2020/DRL (grant number 01EW2105). We thank Andreas Lie Massey for his assistance with various manuscript preparation tasks, including the creation of Figures 2 and 4. We also thank Marie Hoffmann for help with data collection in study 1, and Trond Farestveit Erstad for preparing Figure S1.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contribution statement

Original idea and design of study 2: Uta Sailer (US) and Marc Hassenzahl (MH). Design of study 1: US, Yvonne Friedrich (YF) and Ilona Croy (IC). Data collection: YH (study 1), US (study 2). Data analysis: Fatemeh Asgari (FHA) and US. US wrote the first draft. All authors contributed to article writing.

Declaration of interest statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena: [Jena Excellence Fellowship]; ERA-NET-NEURON, JTC 2020/Norwegian Research Council: [Grant Number 323047]; German Federal Ministry for Research and Education: [Grant Number 16SV9108; project VEREINT]; ERA-NET-NEURON, JTC 2020/DRL: [Grant Number 01EW2105].