Moreover, while much less studied, the stress-buffering effects of interpersonal touch do not necessarily appear to be limited to touch provided by a romantic partner. When exposed to a variety of different experimental laboratory stress tasks, individuals assigned to various interpersonal touch manipulations with romantic partners report less distress and show reduced cardiovascular reactivity, cortisol secretion, and activation of brain regions associated with emotional and behavioral threat compared to those who did not engage in interpersonal touch with their partners. The theory that interpersonal touch improves well-being by acting as a general stress buffer has garnered a fair amount of empirical support. Mechanistically, theorists have proposed that one of the key pathways through which interpersonal touch benefits well-being is by helping buffer against the deleterious consequences of psychological stress. Enthusiasm for this topic is bolstered by multiple lines of converging evidence suggesting that individuals who engage more frequently in interpersonal touch enjoy better physical, psychological, and relational health (e.g., ). Interpersonal touch can be defined as touch behaviors (e.g., hugging and holding hands) that are used to communicate affection or are generally thought to indicate affection. Non-sexual interpersonal touch is emerging as an important topic in the study of adult social relationships (for reviews, see ). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
HUGS 98 SOURCE DOWNLOAD
Through this website (hosted by Carnegie Mellon University), anyone can freely download the data described here after first agreeing to the Common Cold Project's data sharing agreement.įunding: Preparation of this manuscript was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (AT006694 SC) the conduct of the studies was supported by grants from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (AI066367 SC) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (HL65111, HL65112 SC) and supplementary support was provided by a grant from the National Institutes of Health to the University of Pittsburgh Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UL1 RR024153, UL1 TR0005). The development of this website was funded by the NIH as a means of making publicly available the methodology and data from five prospective viral challenge studies conducted under the directorship of Sheldon Cohen, PhD. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: The data presented in this report along with additional information regarding study measures are available online at ( ). Received: MaAccepted: AugPublished: October 3, 2018Ĭopyright: © 2018 Murphy et al. Duran, Arizona State University, UNITED STATES Possible mechanisms through which hugs facilitate positive adaptation to conflict are discussed.Ĭitation: Murphy MLM, Janicki-Deverts D, Cohen S (2018) Receiving a hug is associated with the attenuation of negative mood that occurs on days with interpersonal conflict.
While correlational, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that hugs buffer against deleterious changes in affect associated with experiencing interpersonal conflict. Associations between hug receipt and conflict-related changes in affect did not differ between women and men, between individuals who were married or in a marital-like relationship and those who were not, or as a function of individual differences in baseline perceived social support.
Hug receipt was also prospectively associated with a smaller conflict-related increase in next day negative affect but was not associated with next day positive affect. Results indicated that there was an interaction between hug receipt and conflict exposure such that receiving a hug was associated with a smaller conflict-related decrease in positive affect and a smaller conflict-related increase in negative affect when assessed concurrently. A sample of 404 adults were interviewed every night for 14 consecutive days about their conflicts, hug receipt, and positive and negative affect. This investigation considers whether being hugged is associated with reduced conflict-related decreases in positive affect and increases in negative affect as well as whether these associations differ between women and men. Interpersonal touch is emerging as an important topic in the study of adult relationships, with recent research showing that such behaviors can promote better relationship functioning and individual well-being.
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