The Psychology of Touch
Alan Gray is a social psychologist and behavioural change analyst. His research tries to understand the mechanisms that underpin relationship development, with particular interest to attraction, laughter, and self-disclosure.
He holds degrees in psychology from the universities of Durham and Oxford, and lives in London.
Spend some time with monkeys, and it won’t take long for you to recognise what they do with their days. Besides the obvious biological necessities, primates dedicate an awful lot of time to grooming one another. In fact, it’s practically at the heart of their little (and not so little) communities - with time spent grooming and time spent being groomed being intricately related to rank and all that comes with it. Grooming, in other words, isn’t just for nit-picking, it's about cementing bonds, making friends, and influencing your fellow chimp. It’s literally: you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. And it doesn’t hurt that it feels darn great too.
We humans aren’t so different, it turns out. Yes, massage (and of course MASAJ) feels just awesome, but it also seems to have a deep effect on our psychology - relieving stress and stimulating the very same brain regions associated with social bonding.
Everybody knows that massage can do wonders for a migraine or that twinge in your back, but there’s an ever-increasing sum of research that demonstrates additional bonuses for the worn-out mind. Studies have shown massage to decrease a whole host of troubling stress symptoms, from lowering blood pressure to curbing cortisol production. And there has even been evidence that touch-based interventions go some way to alleviating anxiety and depression - showing massage’s potential to reduce both physical and emotional pain. More recent work, for instance, also suggests benefits to body image - improving how we feel about our bodies, and (ahem) our willingness to show them off.
A big part of this, no doubt, is the way that touch communicates with us, the intentions and emotions that social touch conveys. A pinch sends a very different signal than a sympathetic stroke, and people have been shown to associate various presses, pushes, and pokes with all sorts of inner states. A certain squeeze, say, could imply anger, a more gentle touch, love.
In a particularly interesting study, Mariana von Mohr and her colleagues at UCL demonstrated the ability of a light, soothing touch to reduce feelings of social exclusion. In her experiment, participants were invited to play a game of catch online. Only the real catch (excuse me) was that the other players were computer-generated and programmed to shun the participant - passing to each other rather than to the true (i.e. human) player.
If you’re as rubbish at ballgames as I am, you’ll know all too well how this feels. But you don’t have to stretch your imagination too far to recognise that Von Mohr’s frozen out participants were surely feeling more than a little bummed at the end of it all. Thirty passes later. And yet, and yet, after a slow gentle stroking on the left hand - miraculously - things didn’t seem half so bad. That small bout of sympathetic touching, apparently, buffered the wrongs of being spurned.
Touch, then, can help us get through the hard times of both body and mind. And while much still needs investigating, it’s power seems to come from the essential role it plays in our social lives. Massage isn’t simply about wresting out those office-chair-induced knots, clearly; it’s also about boosting inner wellbeing and befriending your body. Touch can send messages words sometimes can’t, and while we might not know it, the smiling hidden chimp within us has most certainly cottoned on.
All good news, needless to say. Especially when you consider that the sum total required is to plonk down, subside into the plush table, and let a therapist unleash their magic.
Find out more about Alan’s research at grayarea.co.uk
Further Reading
Dunbar, R. (1996). Grooming, gossip, and the evolution of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Dunigan, B.J., King, T.K., Morse, B.J. (2011). A preliminary examination of the effect of massage on state body image. Body Image 8, 411-414.
Field, T. (2014) Massage Therapy: Research Review. Complementary therapies in clinical practice. 20, 224-229.
Hertenstein, M. J., Keltner, D., App, B., Bulleit, B. A. & Jaskolka, A. R. (2006). Touch communicates distinct emotions. Emotion 6, 528.
von Mohr, M., Kirsch, P. L., & Fotopoulou, A. (2017). The Soothing Function of Touch: Affective Touch Reduces Feelings of Social Exclusion. Scientific Reports. 7: 13516.