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Cross-cultural similarity in relationship-specific social touching

Many species use touching for reinforcing social structures, and particularly, non-human primates use social grooming for managing their social networks. However, it is still unclear how social touch contributes to the maintenance and reinforcement of human social networks. Human studies in Western...

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Autores principales: Suvilehto, Juulia T., Nummenmaa, Lauri, Harada, Tokiko, Dunbar, Robin I. M., Hari, Riitta, Turner, Robert, Sadato, Norihiro, Kitada, Ryo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6501924/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31014213
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.0467
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author Suvilehto, Juulia T.
Nummenmaa, Lauri
Harada, Tokiko
Dunbar, Robin I. M.
Hari, Riitta
Turner, Robert
Sadato, Norihiro
Kitada, Ryo
author_facet Suvilehto, Juulia T.
Nummenmaa, Lauri
Harada, Tokiko
Dunbar, Robin I. M.
Hari, Riitta
Turner, Robert
Sadato, Norihiro
Kitada, Ryo
author_sort Suvilehto, Juulia T.
collection PubMed
description Many species use touching for reinforcing social structures, and particularly, non-human primates use social grooming for managing their social networks. However, it is still unclear how social touch contributes to the maintenance and reinforcement of human social networks. Human studies in Western cultures suggest that the body locations where touch is allowed are associated with the strength of the emotional bond between the person touched and the toucher. However, it is unknown to what extent this relationship is culturally universal and generalizes to non-Western cultures. Here, we compared relationship-specific, bodily touch allowance maps across one Western (N = 386, UK) and one East Asian (N = 255, Japan) country. In both cultures, the strength of the emotional bond was linearly associated with permissible touch area. However, Western participants experienced social touching as more pleasurable than Asian participants. These results indicate a similarity of emotional bonding via social touch between East Asian and Western cultures.
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spelling pubmed-65019242019-05-15 Cross-cultural similarity in relationship-specific social touching Suvilehto, Juulia T. Nummenmaa, Lauri Harada, Tokiko Dunbar, Robin I. M. Hari, Riitta Turner, Robert Sadato, Norihiro Kitada, Ryo Proc Biol Sci Behaviour Many species use touching for reinforcing social structures, and particularly, non-human primates use social grooming for managing their social networks. However, it is still unclear how social touch contributes to the maintenance and reinforcement of human social networks. Human studies in Western cultures suggest that the body locations where touch is allowed are associated with the strength of the emotional bond between the person touched and the toucher. However, it is unknown to what extent this relationship is culturally universal and generalizes to non-Western cultures. Here, we compared relationship-specific, bodily touch allowance maps across one Western (N = 386, UK) and one East Asian (N = 255, Japan) country. In both cultures, the strength of the emotional bond was linearly associated with permissible touch area. However, Western participants experienced social touching as more pleasurable than Asian participants. These results indicate a similarity of emotional bonding via social touch between East Asian and Western cultures. The Royal Society 2019-04-24 2019-04-24 /pmc/articles/PMC6501924/ /pubmed/31014213 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.0467 Text en © 2019 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Behaviour
Suvilehto, Juulia T.
Nummenmaa, Lauri
Harada, Tokiko
Dunbar, Robin I. M.
Hari, Riitta
Turner, Robert
Sadato, Norihiro
Kitada, Ryo
Cross-cultural similarity in relationship-specific social touching
title Cross-cultural similarity in relationship-specific social touching
title_full Cross-cultural similarity in relationship-specific social touching
title_fullStr Cross-cultural similarity in relationship-specific social touching
title_full_unstemmed Cross-cultural similarity in relationship-specific social touching
title_short Cross-cultural similarity in relationship-specific social touching
title_sort cross-cultural similarity in relationship-specific social touching
topic Behaviour
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6501924/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31014213
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.0467
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