A Touching Way To Encourage
Jenny Galvao
Based on a study completed by Nicolas Guéguen, University of Bretagne-Sud, touching can lead to positive behaviour by increasing participation in an educational setting.
In fact, even the slightest contact, such as grazing a student’s arm, can provide all the encouragement a student needs to participate and get involved. The results also showed that touching led younger children to be better-behaved during class and actually want to participate more.
A single one-second touch on the shoulder may seem like such an insignificant act, yet it immediately yields positive results in terms of students overall classroom behaviour.
Guéguen points out in the research paper that “there was a 60% reduction in disruptive behaviour following touching, compared with the average of such behaviour before the adoption of this tactile encouragement. It was also found that the number of pupils increased positive behaviours in their school tasks: taking a book in order to read it and checking information in a dictionary increased by approximately 20%.”
In the experiment, the professor encouraged each student in a positive way. After offering the same words of encouragement to each student separately and quietly (so the other students did not hear), the professor either touched them or did not touch them. The touch was simple, it was a one second slight tap on the upper arm.
Next, the professor asked who would like to volunteer to correct the solutions on the board. Amazingly, the students who were touched were the ones more willing to volunteer and participate.
The results showed that the simple, nonverbal, one second touch seemed to be enough to motivate the student participants to get more involved in their class.
Amazingly, of the students who did not receive touching, almost nobody volunteered! Compare this to the students who were touched; the group who was touched was the group where the greater level of participation occurred.
“The results obtained show that touching is a factor of encouragement to produce the behaviour expected by the person who touches,” says Guéguen.
The results are conclusive: Nonverbal recognition of a job well done actually plays a larger role than the verbal recognition in terms of activating greater participation. When students feel the touch of another, they take it to heart. Touching creates a sense of closeness and is much more powerful than simply saying “good job.”
On the other “hand,” when a student does not receive touch, but are simply told they did well, there is nothing done to reinforce those encouraging words. A one second touch says much more, and carries much more weight and power.
In other words, when it comes to positive encouragement “actions speak louder than words.”
People have many means of communication, and research such as this show us that the ones that leave the greatest impacts with the longest-lasting effects, are those stemming from nonverbal origins. Body language is more powerful than a few “empty” and often recycled words!
So next time you really want to help someone out or encourage them, go that extra mile and literally lend them a hand. This can work in more than just a teacher-student setting, it can work in a parent-child, a boyfriend-girlfriend, or even a boss-employee or business relationship.
In fact, touching works to encourage in most any dyad.
Sending a nonverbal nudge could make all the difference in a person’s behaviour, and you don’t even need to lift a finger – well, hardly!
About the Author: Jenny Galvao is an undergraduate student at the University of Guelph studying psychology.
Resources
Guéguen, Nicolas. Nonverbal encouragement of participation in a course: the effect of touching
Social Psychology of Education. 2004. 7: 89–98.