Reach out to one and you reach out to many: Social touch affects third‐party observers

Abstract

Casual social touch influences emotional perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours of interaction partners. We asked whether these influences extend to third-party observers. To this end, we developed the Social Touch Picture Set comprising line drawings of dyadic interactions, half of which entailed publicly acceptable casual touch and half of which served as no-touch controls. In Experiment 1, participants provided basic image norms by rating how frequently they observed a displayed touch gesture in everyday life and how comfortable they were observing it. Results implied that some touch gestures were observed more frequently and with greater comfort than others (e.g., handshake vs. hug). All gestures, however, obtained rating scores suitable for inclusion in Experiments 2 and 3. In Experiment 2, participants rated perceived valence, arousal, and likeability of randomly presented touch and no-touch images without being explicitly informed about touch. Image characters seemed more positive, aroused, and likeable when they touched as compared to when they did not touch. Image characters seemed more negative and aroused, but were equally likeable, when they received touch as compared to when there was no physical contact. In Experiment 3, participants passively viewed touch and no-touch images while their eye movements were recorded. Differential gazing at touch as compared to no-touch images emerged within the first 500 ms following image exposure and was largely restricted to the characters' upper body. Gazing at the touching body parts (e.g., hands) was minimal and largely unaffected by touch, suggesting that touch processing occurred outside the focus of visual attention. Together, these findings establish touch as an important visual cue and provide novel insights into how this cue modulates socio-emotional processing in third-party observers.

The role of empathy in the neural responses to observed human social touch

“…This finding shows that third-party observers of touch are affected by the social experience of touch observation and that social exchange of touch is deemed pleasant in the eye of the observer. Our study is in line with recent findings showing that photos containing touch are considered more positive and exciting compared to photos without touch (Schirmer et al, 2015) and further indicates that the perception of social touch can induce feelings in an observer who is not part of the touch itself.…”

“…Furthermore, social psychology literature shows that gestures of touch have an impact on the attitudes and behaviors of another individual and that social touch can enhance a positive evaluation of the toucher (Crusco & Wetzel, 1984;Fisher, Rytting, & Heslin, 1976). It has recently been reported that interactions involving touch are considered more positive and exciting than are interactions with no touch (Schirmer et al, 2015), indicating that third party observers of touch may possibly share the touch recipient's social experiences.…”

Emotion Perception from Face, Voice, and Touch: Comparisons and Convergence

“…(Right) Compared to no-touch interactions, tactile interactions are perceived as more positive and arousing. Images taken from the Social Touch Picture Set [108]. …”

Socio-affective touch expression database

“…These studies therefore only address a very small part of "affective touch" since humans use much more complex and varied interactions to express affective intentions (both positive and negative) by touch. A wider range of more complex interpersonal affective touch events has so far only been addressed in studies using static images (for example, using pictures of kissing, hugging, and hitting as stimuli: (15)(16)(17)(18). However, there has been 1 Bänziger T, Scherer KR.…”