Touch Flashcards
What is touch?
any body to body contact
scientific experiment about touch
- monkey went to the cloth mother rather than the mother with the milk
- contact = soothing
messages conveyed by touch (7)
- Greeting
- Hostility
- Reassurance
- Instruction
- Liking
- Power
- Sexuality
The Meaning of Touch is Affected By what?
- What part of the body is touched
- What part of the other person’s body touched the self
- How long the touch lasts
- How much pressure is used
- Whether there is movement after contact has been made
- Whether anyone else is present
- If others are present, who they are
- The situation
- The relationship between the persons involved
Heslin’s Taxonomy of Touch
Five Situations/Relations Involving Touch
1) Functional/professional
• Touch treats the decoder (the touchee) as an object
• Preforming a professional function on you
• The least intimate
2) Social/polite
• Usually do in greetings, to greet other people
o High-five
o Shake hands
3) Friendship/warmth
• Want to convey their friendship and their liking
• Differences between sexes for how they use this/portray this
• Issues of context
o More likely in social situations (if alone, may be confused with sexual tension)
4) love/intimacy
• People in a romantic relationship
• People more inclined to enact in private
• Could also be a parent holding a small child
5) sexual arousal
functional/professional
- Touch treats the decoder (the touchee) as an object
- Preforming a professional function on you
- The least intimate
social/polite
• Usually do in greetings, to greet other people
o High-five
o Shake hands
friendship/warmth
• Want to convey their friendship and their liking
• Differences between sexes for how they use this/portray this
• Issues of context
o More likely in social situations (if alone, may be confused with sexual tension)
love/intimacy
- People in a romantic relationship
- People more inclined to enact in private
- Could also be a parent holding a small child
sexual arousal
self explanatory
Culture and Touch
- Contact vs. noncontact cultures
- Arabs > Americans
- Costa Ricans > Americans
- Italian & Greek > British, Dutch, French
- Different meanings in different cultures (e.g. same sex touch)
sex differences
A. Intimate Touch
• Gerarard’s golden standard touch chart
Reactions to intimate touch 2 studies (1975/1976)
- Nguyen et al. (1975)
- Men and women agree on what kind of touch signifies sexual desire
- They differ in their reactions
- Men: sexual touch (+)
- Women: sexual touch (-)
- Presumably not married
- Nguyen et al. (1976)
- The relationship btw sexual touch and men’s (+) reactions was very weak
- Women: sexual touch (+)
- This sample was married
Sex Difference and Marital Status, Controlling for Age
- 305 adults aged 18-69
- survey measure of reactions to touch to different body regions from an intimate partner
- touch to nonintimate body regions: men’s reactions = positive than women’s
- touch to intimate body regions: men’s reactions more positive than women’s
- unmarried men responded more positively to intimate touch than married men did
- pattern holds even after statistically controlling for age
M F vs. F M
- Observation of 4500 dyads in public
- M F = M M touch
- M initiate more touches but F reciprocate so M = F
- F may touch less earlier and more later in relationship development