From 2015: The more we learn about touch, the more we realize just how central it is, from womb to old age.
When Nicolae Ceaușescu came to power, in the mid-nineteen-sixties, Romania saw the proliferation of—literally, “cradles,” otherwise known as institutional homes for the very young. Ceaușescu wanted to increase Romania’s industrial output, and he thought that that required a larger population.
Touch is the first of the senses to develop in the human infant, and it remains perhaps the most emotionally central throughout our lives. While many researchers have appreciated its power, others have been more circumspect. Writing in 1928, John B. Watson, one of the originators of the behaviorist school of psychology, urged parents to maintain a physical boundary between themselves and their children: “Never hug and kiss them, never let them sit on your lap.
is a consistent proxy for group size and coherence. Similarly, among humans, touch might seem to serve as little more than a proxy for social bonds: if we often experience friendly or loving caresses, it’s safe to assume that we have a strong social network, which is itself one of the best predictors of happiness, health, and longevity.
In real-world interactions, of course, we always experience touch in context: it can be hard, if not impossible, to separate its physical and emotional effects. In, out this month, touch was shown to boost the immune systems of people who had been exposed to the common cold. For two weeks, researchers monitored a little more than four hundred adults, asking them not just about their social interactions but about how many hugs they’d gotten over the course of each day.
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