Self-soothing touch and being hugged reduce cortisol responses to stress: A randomized controlled trial on stress, physical touch, and social identity

BACKGROUND: Being touched by others improves stress coping. However, when touch from others is unavailable, feels uncomfortable, or is not considered to be safe (as in the COVID-19 pandemic), self-touch gestures, like placing a hand on the heart, may provide an alternative way to experience less strain. METHODS AND MATERIALS: In this study, 159 healthy participants (96 women, 62 men, and 1 non-binary person), aged 18–35 years, were exposed to a standardized psychosocial stressor (Trier Social Stress Test) to investigate whether self-soothing touch or receiving a hug from others has a buffering effect on their stress responses. In addition, the study explored whether the effectiveness of these interventions is moderated by participants' assignment to a “personal” or “social” identity condition. Participants provided salivary cortisol samples, wore an ECG to record their heart rate, and completed self-report measures on stress-related subjective-emotional states during the study. RESULTS: For cortisol, mixed-effects regression models with Touch and Identity as between-subject factors and Time as the within-subject factor yielded a significant main effect for touch and a significant interaction of Touch x Time indicating that cortisol levels differed between the experimental touch interventions. Post-hoc contrast tests showed that participants in both touch conditions had lower cortisol levels after the stressor than those in the control conditions. Heart rates and self-reported measures of stress neither differed across touch nor identity conditions. The three-way interaction for Touch x Identity x Time was non-significant for either outcome measure. DISCUSSION: These results are in line with previous work indicating that physical touch has protective effects on physiological stress responses but not necessarily on self-reported stress and suggest that self-soothing touch and receiving hugs are simple and yet potentially powerful means for buffering individuals' resilience against stress.