Which of our senses has no art form?

We treat our senses to all sorts of pleasures – music for our ears, art for our eyes, perfume and gastronomy for our nose and tongue. But what about touch? It may be the only sense without an art form.

“Touch is the first system to come online, and the foundations of human relationships are all touch,” explains Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner, in a New Yorker piece by Adam Gopnik. “Skin to skin, parent to child, touch is the social language of our social life.”

At our core, human beings are social animals and research has confirmed that we have an innate ability to communicate emotions via touch alone. In a fascinating series of experiments, researchers demonstrated that human beings were capable of communicating eight distinct emotions – anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, sympathy, happiness, and sadness – through touch alone, with accuracy rates as high as 78 percent.

“I was surprised,” said DePauw University psychologist Mathew Hertenstein, in a Psychology Today article written by Rich Chillot. “I thought the accuracy would be at chance level,” about 25 percent. (In the experiment, two people were separated by a curtain – one was given an emotion, then told to communicate it to the other via touch alone.)

Whether it’s a handshake, a high-five or a deep and warm embrace, touch has its own special language.

It’s unique in so many respects:

• “. . . During intense grief or fear, but also in ecstatic moments of joy or love . . . only the language of touch can fully express what we feel,” noted Chillot

. • Said Gopnik: “Perhaps the reason that touch has no art form is that its supremacy makes it hard to escape. We can shut our eyes and cover our ears, but it’s our hands that do it when we do. We can’t shut off our skins.”

• Ryan Genz, co-designer of the Hug Shirt told Gopnik: “We can transmit voice, we can transmit images – but we [can’t] transmit touch.”

• Commenting on social media trends, evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, in an interview with Bloomberg.com, noted: “In the end, we rely heavily on touch and we still haven’t figured out how to do virtual touch. Maybe once we can do that we will have cracked a big nut.”

What have we learned about touch?

The scientific inquiry of touch is still in its infancy. Johns Hopkins University neuroscientist David Linden, author of “Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind,” told Gopnik: “Over the past 50 years, there have been probably a hundred papers about vision for every paper about touch in the scientific literature.” Linden added: “People go blind often. But almost no one is touch-blind – the fact that you have to say ‘touch-blind’ is a hint of the problem. Being touch-blind isn’t compatible with life. There are no national foundations for the hard-of-touch.”

Nonetheless, new as it is, enormous strides have been made on quantifying the benefits of touch. University of Miami School of Medicine’s Tiffany Field, director of the Touch Research Institute, has linked touch, in the form of massage, to a slew of benefits, including better sleep, reduced irritability, and increased sociability among infants – as well as improved growth of preemies.

According to the Institute, touch has also: lessened pain, lowered blood pressure, stimulate the hippocampus, lowered heart rates, reduced stress hormones, increased levels of oxytocin, improved pulmonary function, increased growth in infants, lowered blood glucose and improved immune function.

In one study, according to an article by Maria Konnikova for the New Yorker, Fields found that “even short bursts of touch – as little as fifteen minutes in the evening, in one of her studies – not only enhance growth and weight gain in children but also led to emotional, physical, and cognitive improvements in adults.”

What else have we learned?

• Newborns that are touched gain weight faster and have superior mental and motor skill development – an advantage they retain for months. (Source: Livestrong.com article by Mary Bauer);

• There is some evidence that the level of aggression and violence among children is related to lack of touching (Source: Livestrong.com article by Mary Bauer); • People who are touched briefly on the arm or shoulder are more likely to comply with requests such as volunteering for charity activities. (Source: in-mind.org article authored by Mandy Tjew A Sin and Sander Koole);

• Touch predicted performance across all the NBA teams (Source: team led by psychologist Michael Kraus);

• In a series of studies, diners who were touched by the waitress (e.g., a touch on the shoulder) left between 18% and 36% more tips than diners who were not touched (Source: professors April Crusco and Christopher Wetzel)

• At a home for the elderly, those who were touched while being encouraged to eat consumed more calories and protein up to five days after the touch (Source: Eaton, Mitchell-Bonair & Friedman).

Teens, atheists, senior citizens, doctors and teachers

• By the time children reach their teen years, they receive only half as much touching as they did in the early part of their lives. Adults touch each other even less. (Source: Livestrong.com article by Mary Bauer)

• Warm climates tend to produce cultures that are more liberal about touching than colder regions (Source: Psychology Today article by Chillot);

• Atheists and agnostics touch more than religious types, “probably because religions often teach that some kinds of touch are inappropriate or sinful,” according to professor Peter Anderson of San Diego University, as quoted by Chillot);

• Senior citizens receive the least touching of any age group (Source: Livestrong.com article by Mary Bauer); and

• More touch-oriented doctors, teachers, and managers get higher ratings (Source: Psychology Today article by Chillot).

Would more touch benefit us all? No doubt, say the experts. But in a touch-phobic society such as ours it’s challenging to create a culture that promotes touch (people in Spain, for instance, were found to be far better at communicating via touch than their American counterparts). In 1998, Fields called for “a shift in the social-political attitude toward touch,” noting that, “leaving your humanity behind every time you leave home isn’t very appealing.”

The future of touch?

Imagine an online shopper “feeling” the linen of a summer shirt while sitting at their computer. Imagine receiving a long-distance Swedish massage. Or imagine a surgeon in Los Angeles performing surgery in Botswana, and actually feeling the flesh and organs of the patient.

It’s all possible.

So hug a friend today. It’ll feel good.