Using Touch To Convey Emotion
Christopher Philip
U.K. researchers Erin Thompson and James Hampton designed a study to look at the efficacy of touch to convey specific emotions.
The study involved couples interacting both with each other and with members of another couple. The experimental design had subjects interact with a participant under an opaque black curtain. The subjects were made aware of whether they were interacting with their romantic partner or a stronger, but they were told whether that person was male or female. The subjects were told to convey one of 12 emotions by touching the forearm of the other person. The other person, the decoder was instructed to circle which of the 12 emotions they figured the toucher was trying to convey.
The 12 emotions consisted of “universal” expressions including: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise; as well as “prosocial” expressions including: gratitude, love and sympathy; and “self-focused emotions”: embarrassment, envy and pride.
Results showed that couples were able to convey the correct emotion 51% of the time and 38% of the time with strangers. In fact 11 out of 15 foursomes performed better with their romantic partner than with a stranger. The rate of success at a chance level was calculated at 25% (a conservative number), suggesting that the subjects performed well.
Couples were successful at conveying specific emotions at rates of 52%, 60% and 39% across universal, prosocial and self-focused emotions. In comparison, strangers performed at 39%, 56% and 17% for universal, prosocial and self-focused.
Thus, it was obvious that as the difficultly with which emotion was to convey through touch, the difficulty was exacerbated when done between strangers.
Additionally, the results showed that couples and strangers both used similar types of touch to convey the same emotions. For example, positive emotions were conveyed through lift, shake, and squeeze.
When emotions were confused it was usually because they match the “arousal” and “valence.” For example envy, anger and disgust have high arousal and negative valence thus they form along the same spectrum.
Strangers often confused love, sadness and sympathy and the analysis showed that they often used the same types of touch including stroking and squeezing. Interestingly, this is consistent with confusion found in facial recognition of emotion as well as that in body posture.
Couples excelled over strangers in demonstrating love from sadness and sympathy. Couples, however, tended to still confuse anger and disgust which is also a common confusion in emotional facial recognition.
Overall, however, both couples and strangers performed accurately despite the emotional conveyance suggesting that touch is a relevant way to communicate feelings to others.
Image Credit: Garry Knight
Resources
Thompson, Erin H. and James A. Hampton. The Effect of Relationship Status on Communicating Emotions Through Touch,. Cognition and Emotion. 2019. 25(2): 295-306. DOI: 10.1080/02699931.2019.492957.