Friendly, non-sexual touch, such as a hug, a hand on the shoulder or a high-five, does more than feel nice. Research links it with lower stress, milder colds, smoother teamwork and stronger bonds between people. Touch is also the first sense to develop before birth, and babies who are deprived of it struggle. Yet in many modern societies, especially among adult men, everyday platonic touch has become rare. Here are four well-studied reasons it matters, what the evidence really shows, and how to bring more of it into life without crossing anyone’s boundaries.
1. Hugs and support may help protect your health
The best-known study on this comes from Sheldon Cohen and colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, published in Psychological Science in December 2014. They followed 404 healthy adults. Over 14 evenings, researchers phoned each volunteer to ask about arguments and about how often they had been hugged. The volunteers were then deliberately exposed to a common cold virus and watched in quarantine.
People who felt well supported were less likely to get infected after stressful conflicts, and hugs explained about a third of that protective effect. Among those who did catch the cold, people with more support and more hugs had milder symptoms. Cohen summed it up carefully, saying that those who receive more hugs “are somewhat more protected from infection.”
The key word is “somewhat”. The study shows an association, and Cohen himself noted that hugs might work through the touch itself or because they are a sign of a supportive relationship. Claims that hugging lowers blood pressure in the long term or “boosts the immune system” go further than the evidence. A fair reading is that close, supportive relationships, with touch as one visible part of them, seem to buffer stress.
2. Touch helps teams cooperate
Handshakes, fist bumps and pats on the back send a quick, wordless message: we are on the same side. A study by Michael Kraus, Cassey Huang and Dacher Keltner at the University of California, Berkeley, published in the journal Emotion in 2010, put this to an unusual test. The team coded every touch between teammates in NBA games early in the 2008–09 season.
Players and teams that touched more early in the season tended to perform better later, even after accounting for player salary, preseason expectations and early results. The link ran through cooperation: teams that touched more also passed, helped on defence and worked together more.
The study was observational and limited to one season of one men’s sport, so it does not prove that high-fives win games. It does fit a wider picture in which brief, friendly contact signals trust and makes people more willing to cooperate. Whether that carries over to an office or a school committee is plausible but untested.
3. Touch builds trust and calms the body
Touch is a surprisingly precise language. Studies by Matthew Hertenstein and colleagues found that people could identify emotions such as anger, fear, love, gratitude and sympathy from touch alone, with accuracy comparable to reading faces or voices.
Touch also seems to calm. In a well-known experiment by James Coan at the University of Virginia, women facing the threat of a mild electric shock showed less stress-related brain activity while holding their husband’s hand, and the effect was strongest in the most satisfying marriages. Keltner has argued that supportive touch activates the vagus nerve, which is involved in calming the body, and can trigger the release of oxytocin, a hormone linked with bonding. Oxytocin research is active and often oversold in popular articles, so treat “the love hormone” as a nickname rather than a full explanation.
The idea that we judge trustworthiness by a handshake has some support too, though cultural norms play a big role. What counts as a reassuring touch in one country can feel intrusive in another.
4. Early touch shapes development
Psychologist Harry Harlow’s famous and ethically troubling experiments in the 1950s showed that infant rhesus monkeys spent far more time clinging to a soft cloth “mother” than to a wire one that held a feeding bottle. Monkeys raised with the cloth figure were more emotionally stable as adults. For many researchers, this suggested that comfort through touch is a basic need, not a bonus.
Neuropsychologist James W. Prescott took the idea further in the 1970s, arguing that a lack of body contact and movement in early childhood could cause brain changes that raise the risk of violence later, and that cultures with less physical affection towards infants tended to be more violent. His work was influential but controversial, and it was based on correlations, so it does not show that a lack of touch causes violence.
Modern child-development research is more cautious but still points the same way: warm, responsive care, including holding and cuddling, supports healthy attachment. Skin-to-skin contact for newborns is now standard practice in many hospitals.
Why touch has become scarce
Cultures differ widely. In an often-quoted observation of couples in cafés, researchers counted about 180 touches an hour in Puerto Rico, 110 in Paris, two in Florida and none in London. A later study of European public places found touch was more common in Italy and Greece than in England, France or the Netherlands.
Within those cultures, men often get the least platonic touch. Writer Mark Greene, in an essay for The Good Men Project, argued that fear of being seen as gay or predatory has led many men to avoid touching anyone except romantic partners, leaving them in what he called “touch isolation.” He described the opposite in his own life: frequent hugs with his young son that changed how he saw himself as a father.
Researchers sometimes use the term “skin hunger” for the longing that results. Touch deprivation in adults has been linked with depression, and interest in the topic grew sharply during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when many people living alone went months without a hug.
Common myths about touch
- “You need eight hugs a day.” This popular number, often credited to family therapist Virginia Satir, is a saying, not a research finding.
- “Hugs cure illness.” The Carnegie Mellon study found a modest protective association, not a treatment.
- “More touch is always better.” Unwanted touch raises stress. Consent and context matter as much as the touch itself.
Bringing more friendly touch into daily life
- Hug family members and close friends who welcome it, and let the hug last a few seconds.
- Offer a choice: “Hug or handshake?” takes the guesswork out with people you know less well.
- Parents can make physical warmth an ordinary part of the day: greetings, reading together, bedtime.
- Activities like partner dancing, team sports, massage from a licensed therapist, or simply stroking a pet can provide contact for people who live alone.
- If loneliness or low mood has become persistent, talk to a doctor; it is a common problem and help is available.
Touch will not fix every problem, but the research suggests a world with a little more of it, offered with care, would be a calmer and more cooperative one.
Sources: Carnegie Mellon University: Hugs help protect against stress and infection (2014); PubMed: Tactile communication, cooperation, and performance: an ethological study of the NBA (Emotion, 2010); Wikipedia: Haptic communication; Wikipedia: James W. Prescott; Mark Greene, The Good Men Project: Touch Isolation; original article by Robyn Reisch for I Heart Intelligence.
COMMENTS