Touching is a nearly universal nonverbal aspect of social exchange between people.
Homewever, emotional responses to touching depend on how, when and where people are touched; moreover, there are many cultural difference in touching behavior.
In Western culture, Men and women touch people in a different way: men tend to limit themselves to ritual touching like shaking hands or clapping others on the shoulder or upper back.
Instead women touch more warmly, gently and initiate more hugging and touching that expresses support, affection, comfort.
Certain parts of our body – hands, arms and shoulders – may be touched by acquaintances and even strangers (under the right circumstances) without causing a negative response.
In contrast, your head, neck, body, legs and feet are typically taboo for touching except by people with whom you are intimate.
Even nonsexual touching – are extremely powerful; for example, being touched by a clerk in a supermaket increase the probability of trying a food sample or buying a product.
Some experiment has proved that the simple fact of touching someone’s forearm induces him/her to hand back money found in a phone box, or to give money to a person in the street.
. Author: Unspecified
Source: Web Page
Title: Touch deprivation and violent behavior
. Authors: Jenny A. Taylor Enochson, Richard L. Wiseman
Source: Paper presented to the Interpersonal Communication Division for the annual meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, November 1999
Title: Married Couples’ Perceptions of Touch Behavior and Marital Satisfaction
. Author: Victor Christian Jarrett
Source: Web Page
Titolo: The power of a light touch on the arm
. Authors: Schmidlin AM, Williams L
Review: J Soc Psychol., 1990, Apr; 58(4):634-43
Title: Gender Patterns in social Touch: the Impact of Setting and Age
. Authors: Maribel H. Cruz and Randy J. Larsen
Review: Social Behavior and Personality, 1995 23 (1), 93-104
Title: Personality Correlates of Individual Differences in Electrodermal Lability
. Authors: Nicolas Guéguen E.
Source; review: Social Psychology of Education, Volume 7, Number 1, 2004 , pp. 89-98(10)
Title: Nonverbal Encouragement of Participation in a Course: the Effect of Touching
