Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015 Sep 21;25(18):2392-7.
doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.07.049. Epub 2015 Sep 10.

Active Interpersonal Touch Gives Rise to the Social Softness Illusion

Antje Gentsch  1 , Elena Panagiotopoulou  1 , Aikaterini Fotopoulou  2
Affiliations

Active Interpersonal Touch Gives Rise to the Social Softness Illusion

Antje Gentsch et al. Curr Biol. .

Abstract

Social touch plays a powerful role in human life, with important physical and mental health benefits in development and adulthood. Touch is central in building the foundations of social interaction, attachment, and cognition, and early, social touch has unique, beneficial neurophysiological and epigenetic effects. The recent discovery of a separate neurophysiological system for affectively laden touch in humans has further kindled scientific interest in the area. Remarkably, however, little is known about what motivates and sustains the human tendency to touch others in a pro-social manner. Given the importance of social touch, we hypothesized that active stroking elicits more sensory pleasure when touching others' skin than when touching one's own skin. In a set of six experiments (total N = 133) we found that healthy participants, mostly tested in pairs to account for any objective differences in skin softness, consistently judged another's skin as feeling softer and smoother than their own skin. We further found that this softness illusion appeared selectively when the touch activated a neurophysiological system for affective touch in the receiver. We conclude that this sensory illusion underlies a novel, bodily mechanism of socio-affective bonding and enhances our motivation to touch others.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The Social Softness Illusion (A) Experimental setup. The “active” participant (“A”) gently strokes her own left arm (self-touch) versus stroking the left arm of the “passive” participant (“P”; other-touch) with the right hand. (B) Mean ratings of softness and smoothness for one’s own skin relative to another’s skin. When participants were asked to directly compare self-touch and other-touch on a visual analog scale (see also Figure S1), they consistently rated the other’s skin to be softer and smoother than their own skin on the forearm, but not on the palm. This bias is called the social softness illusion (SSI). Error bars represent SEM. ∗∗p < 0.01.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mediators of the Social Softness Illusion (A) Mean ratings of softness for one’s own skin relative to another’s skin, with the skin stroking being performed at different speeds. The illusory feeling of increased softness of other people’s skin varies in an inverted U-shape pattern with stroking velocity. (B) Experimental setup and mean ratings of softness for one’s own skin relative to another’s skin, with the skin stroking being performed under different conditions of voluntary control. The social softness illusion increased with increasing control over the stroking movement. Together, these results suggest that the social softness illusion is based on affective simulation and sensory prediction based on internal models. Error bars represent SEM. ∗p < 0.05, ∗∗p < 0.01.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Indirect Assessment of the Social Softness Illusion (A) Experimental setup. Skin softness is indirectly assessed by reference to external objects with surfaces of varying softness. (B) Mean judgments of skin softness relative to surfaces. When asked to compare skin-touch and object-touch, participants rated the other’s skin, but not their own skin, as being softer than the object, but only when touching the forearm and not the palm. Error bars represent SEM. ∗p < 0.05.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Field T. MIT Press; Cambridge, MA: 2003. Touch.
    1. Montagu A. Columbia University Press; New York: 1971. Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin.
    1. Harlow H.F. The nature of love. Am. Psychol. 1958;13:673–685.
    1. Gallace A., Spence C. The science of interpersonal touch: an overview. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 2010;34:246–259. - PubMed
    1. Cascio C.J. Somatosensory processing in neurodevelopmental disorders. J. Neurodev. Disord. 2010;2:62–69. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types