Michael Banissy
Appearances
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Yeah, well, the data on this suggests that people don't feel they have enough touch in their life compared to what they want. And there's a few different data points to speak to this. So we did a study in 2020. Obviously, COVID started early 2020. So we launched the study in January. So partway through, there was a COVID lockdown. But
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
When we were asking people this question then, we had about 54% of a world sample saying that they didn't get enough touch in their life. Whereas in contrast, only 4% of people reported having too much touch in their lives. This naturally changed across world regions. So somewhere like North America, it was close to 72% of people said they were getting too little touch.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
And we weren't alone in this. Studies that came out later in that year, so as things like pandemic restrictions came into place where people maybe couldn't go out and touch, we're getting closer to 80% of people reporting they weren't getting enough touch in their lives.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
And you might think that's pandemic related, but it's important to know that even before the pandemic, there was data like this. So in 2015, Corey Floyd, who's a researcher at the University of Arizona, he conducted a study that was surveying around 1500 Americans. And in that study, he asked about affection hunger.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
So not just touch, but just more generally, do people feel they have enough affection in their lives? And around 75% of the people tested, you know, agreed that, you know, Americans in their mind were in a state of affection hunger at that time, which is quite alarming when we consider just how important and powerful things like touch and affection can be for our health and well-being.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Yeah, I would love to have an answer to that. That's actually one of the things that we're now trying to look at a bit more in our own research. We got the figure and it's then, well, let's try to understand that. I mean...
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
So although we don't have that specific answer, I mean, we do know, going back to this idea about touch personas and that we might have different approaches to touch, that there are some people that prefer touch more than others.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Yeah, for sure. And I think that's the thing we've got to keep in mind that, you know, although there's all these benefits to touch that I spoke about in terms of health, well-being and so forth, you know, for some people, touch isn't the way to go. It's not the source of affection they need. And affection can come in a whole range of ways, right? That could be
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
somebody giving you a hug, sure, that's tactile, but that could also be somebody making you a coffee in the morning, right? Somebody doing that gesture for you, sending a message. There's a whole range of ways that you can get affection.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
And I think that's the nice thing about this relationship between affection and health is, you know, touch is one of the most powerful sources we have for that, a really great demonstration from day to day, but there are other ways. So we can bring some of those benefits into our life through other sources, just generally sharing affection, yeah, depending on whether it's touch or not.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Yeah, so when we perceive kind of pleasant touch or supportive or effective touch, we see a release of a hormone called oxytocin. And oxytocin is a hormone that's involved in calmness and relaxation. It's also involved in building bonds and building trust. So there's this...
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
effectively to a degree a kind of pleasant hormonal release um uh when we when we have these experiences one of the reasons why it's pleasant and beneficial is oxytocin helps to modulate our parasympathetic nervous system so in our body we have a nervous system that might respond to fight or flight so when we're in a stressful situation it might kick in
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
That's typically our autonomic nervous system. And this system, you know, obviously if we have a stressful event, we need to somehow get it back to baseline and getting back to baseline is what our parasympathetic nervous system does predominantly. And so the fact that when we have these affectionate embraces, when we have positive tactile experiences,
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
We release these release of hormones like oxytocin that provides a way to, you know, relax our body, bring it back to this kind of state of balance. And that's one way the supportive touch and affection exchanges can be positive for things like buffering against stress.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Yeah, absolutely. Stress is one of the examples that's been shown in several studies. Actually, there's work now showing that even self-touch can help to reduce stress for individuals as well. So there was a study recently showing that when people effectively hugged themselves, it led to a lowering of their stress hormones after stressful events in a similar way to receiving touch from others.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
But there's other ways as well. So people have shown, for instance, that holding hands can have these benefits to things like reducing anxiety and pain and dissatisfaction. And then you've got all these things like massage, and massage has been shown to have huge benefits on a whole range of things like sleep, pain response, immune response. So it really cuts across a whole range of settings.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Yeah, so stroking animals can also kind of buffer against stress, which I can imagine a lot of us can understand that anecdotally. You know, those of us that might sit there with our dogs in the evening, if you're a dog person like me and stroke your pet, it does have these effects on things like cortisol release. So cortisol is a major stress hormone. So petting animals can do that.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
There was one study that came out in 2021 that basically simply had couples just sitting together having a conversation, basically. And during that conversation, some of those couples touched, some of them didn't. And then later on, they were just asked about how much positive time they'd had together and things like that.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
And those couples that were encouraged to touch more had more kind of positive interpretation of their time together. And the amazing thing was even a week later that was still playing out. So touch can promote kind of this feeling of closeness and connection between couples and carry benefits in that way.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Yeah, it does sound a bit weird, right? And I don't think, yeah, it's amazing we don't often stop and think about it. I think touch is one of these experiences we just go through day to day, and we don't often stop and think about just how powerful and important it is. But it is so important to building and maintaining our social bonds.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Thanks so much. It's been an absolute pleasure.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Well, the answer to that is yes, it does. There's a lot of work that's been shown for a whole range of different types of tactile experiences. Take hugging as an example, showing that these kind of experiences can have stress buffering effects. They can change how we respond to experiences like painful events.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
They can make us feel less pain and they can even impact on things like our immune system as well.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Yeah, no, absolutely. There's something which has been really demonstrated by a number of researchers in the US, actually. So people like Corey Floyd and Tiffany Field, they've spoken for a while about something called touch hunger. And touch hunger is the situation where people don't get enough touch in their life or don't get the right amount of touch for what they crave.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
people who are more touch hungry can be more lonely it can exert negative effects on things like their stress and their well-being and have a kind of range of impacts just in terms of general life satisfaction why do we think this is true why is it what is it about touch that has these magical properties One of the things we touch is that it's one of the first senses that we use.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
It's also one of the last senses that goes. And it's an incredibly important sense in helping us form and build connections with others. So those kind of social connections. And those social connections and bonds that we have are incredibly important for our health and our well-being.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
In that regard, one of the reasons why we think touch is so important is that it just plays this key role, almost acting a bit like a social glue that helps us to form and maintain bonds that are important throughout our lives.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I really wish I could tell you there was a magic number of the right amount of touch. The key really is that we all know touch varies from one person to another, and it's about trying to find the amount of touch that aligns to an individual's desire. So when we talk about touch hunger, what we're talking about there is
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Some research showed that just simply getting people to engage in handshakes before they engage in things like negotiations sees people lean in more, they cooperate more, and they try to get more kind of joint negotiation outcomes, so outcomes that can be beneficial for both parties.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
when people aren't getting the amount of touch that they desire in their life. And that is going to vary from one person to another. But even people that don't desire a great amount of touch, when they get touch in their life, it can still be beneficial. So there are some people, for instance, who potentially have these what we might call more avoidant touch personas.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
So these might be people that try to kind of, they don't enjoy too much touch. Occasionally it's OK, but they prefer not to have too much.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
but in those situations you know still having you know supportive hug or supportive interactions supportive tactile interactions can bring benefits to their wellness but but the key is that it's about not doing too much there right it's it's the quality of the touch rather than the quantity because you know it's it's not necessarily a case that more is always better it's really about aligning the amount of touch that the person receives to the amount that they individually desire
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
I think that really comes down to communication to a large degree. I think the more that we're able to be open and discuss our needs and our preferences for touch, the better. It can be very easy sometimes when we think about others to automatically put our preferences onto them. There's a general bias that we know about from the psychological science literature that that shows this.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
And so we've got to be really careful to avoid automatically mapping our own preferences onto others and actually trying to engage in more kind of open conversations with one another about what amount of touch is right for you, what amount of touch is right for me. And in that context as well, it's really important that we're mindful of just how some of these things can change.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
So for instance, I don't know, if you're in a long-term relationship, you might think that those touch needs that your partner had very early on,
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
you know maybe they you think they continue to align throughout life well there's a there's a good chance they might change you know they may change from one situation to another for instance so we just want to make sure we're having these open conversations with one another during our relationships to try to better understand you know with the people we're interacting with what does touch mean to them are they getting the right amount of touch they need are we providing that support in a way that is beneficial or not
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
When we talk about touch, there's those supportive touches like hugs, but then there's those more everyday exchanges like a handshake, a fist bump, a high five. And these touches can sometimes be really brief, but they can exert an incredible powerful effect on our behavior. I mean, handshakes have been around for a long time.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
There's evidence going back to the ancient Romans to point to the role of handshakes and evidence of it. So when people were talking about this idea that handshakes might disappear post the pandemic, I suppose if you don't like handshakes, perhaps that was wishful thinking because they're such a culturally important part of society.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
And what they represent often is this idea about kind of reciprocation, trust, Again, building a connection. And there's studies that back this up.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
So for instance, some research that came out of work from UC Berkeley showed that just simply getting people to engage in handshakes before they engage in things like negotiations and so forth sees people lean in more, they engage more with their partner, they cooperate more, and they try to get more kind of joint negotiation outcomes. So outcomes that can be beneficial for both parties.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Sometimes when it might even be at the detriment of one of those individuals. The key is that things like handshakes, they're a culturally important part of our exchanges and they can have these quite powerful effects on how we interact with one another.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
One of the interesting things is also about handshakes in job interviews and things like that, right? If in those situations somebody went to shake a hand but a candidate didn't shake the hand, how would that impact your perception of that person if you were on that panel? We place quite a large amount of weight on these social gestures.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
And in that context, handshakes are just one of a number, of course, of social gestures that can be very important.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
candidates who were rated as having better handshakes were more likely to get jobs than those that are rated as having poorer handshakes. And of course, what is a good handshake? What is a poor handshake? We might all have some subjective views on that.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
But in that research, they had trained handshake assessors who effectively were trained to kind of judge things like the grip strength, how long was the handshake? They looked at all these different factors.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Yeah, so there was a really interesting study that was actually conducted on the NBA. And effectively, they were, in this particular work, they were looking at how things like fist bumps, high fives, and these kind of, I suppose, what we might call positive tactile effects,
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
behaviors between teammates, how the number of those, the frequency of those in the preseason and early season games, they wanted to see whether they were predictive of individual performance in a team and also team performance later on. And what they found in these professional basketball teams was that the teams that shared more of these positive touches in early season
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
They tended on to go on to win more games as the season progressed. So there was a relationship between these kind of positive tactile exchanges between teammates and better team performance.
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
Well, I think there was, I mean, in that particular study, they didn't get to the exact details as to why. But if you talk to sports teams, I mean, a lot of the teams, not necessarily those NBA teams, but other work that's been done since with, for instance, women's basketball and also in other sports like lacrosse, there's a lot of,
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
prominence placed on touch between teammates in terms of building trust and building cooperation, people feeling a greater sense of psychological safety with their coaches, for instance, in teams who share more of these kind of positive tactile behaviors. And the important word there is positive because it relies on the members of the team perceiving that touch to be positive, right?
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Why Human Touch is So Important & Space Facts That Will Shock You - SYSK Choice
And if you perceive a fist bump to not be positive, then maybe it won't have this effect. And this idea about feeling more trust, more of a sense of belonging with your teammates, you could see how that might then confer and play out into better performance in the team as they move forward.