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Published: Sunday, 07 November 2010 22:43
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Written by Jane Peterson, Ph.D.
I recently came across a fascinating little video clip by Dacher Keltner, PhD. His work builds on earlier research showing how touch subconsciously affects people. He claims that we can discern up to twelve different common emotional states of other people through the quality of their touch! In the study, participants were unable to see or hear the person who touched them. The person who did the touching was asked to feel and then communicate a specific emotional state through a one second contact with other person’s forearm. For almost all cases, participants – of either gender – were able to identify correctly most of the time the feeling the “toucher” was attempting to communicate. There were two very interesting exceptions. When a woman was trying to communicate to a man the emotion of anger, he had no idea what emotional state she was trying communicate. Conversely, when a man attempted to communicate compassion through his touch, the woman could not identify that emotion correctly. No wonder we have issues of gender communication! These two exceptions aside, this research would indicate that human beings are designed to be in contact with each other and to read and respond to emotional states from many different cues: facial expression, gesture, voice tone, and now touch, all clue us in to what another person is feeling.
Read more: How Touch Communicates Feelings