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The Communication of Emotion via Touch

I came across a research article from 2009 titled, "The Communication of Emotion via Touch". A quote from the abstract:

"The study of emotional communication has focused predominantly on the facial and vocal channels but has ignored the tactile channel. Participants in the current study were allowed to touch an unacquainted partner on the whole body to communicate distinct emotions. Of interest was how accurately the person being touched decoded the intended emotions without seeing the tactile stimulation."

The article is a full text paper, so you can read through the results yourself.

So much of the so called subjective experience of bodywork can deal with the collective consciousness--like awareness of emotions which has little documentation. A paper such as this takes these experiences to a level of plausibility when viewed in the larger lens of science. I'd love your feedback to this article.

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Permalink Reply by Christopher A. Moyer on March 12, 2010 at 9:02am

Hi Walt.

Thanks for posting this! It's very interesting. I have added this study to my list of things to read and hope to get to it soon. In fact, I myself wanted to do a study very much like this one, but it seems these folks got there first. Good for them.

I'm disappointed to see no one has yet responded to this topic - I wonder if some people might be put off by reading a research article? I hope not, and that's just speculation in any case. Maybe a more specific question about the article would kick off a discussion...

Anyway, I hope I'll be able to say a little bit more once I've had a chance to look at it more closely.

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Permalink Reply by Walt Fritz, PT on March 12, 2010 at 10:15am

Christopher,

If anyone is put off be reading research, this article is quite straightforward, so don't be scared!

I found it fascinating that certain emotions could be picked up with greater accuracy in certain parts of the body. For example, fear was most accurately predicted with contact at the mid arm, while anger tended to be greatest in the upper trunk/shoulders.

Having experienced so-called collective consciousness moments during my training, finding this article gave me both insight as well as reassurance that these phenomenons can be expalined in a more grounded fashion than what I was led to believe.