From Face to Hands

We read facial expressions, and we understand them. Matsumoto & Hwang (2011) have distinguished seven basic emotions and their corresponding facial expressions, and argued that these have biological and genetic support. Such emotions include joy, surprise, contempt, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear.

How 'bout we express these through touch?*

Aside from being able to read them, we express them ourselves. Indeed, it is not too difficult to comprehend facial expressions as a language. After all, we use this language everyday even without us being much aware of it.

Yet there’s another language we use; a language we communicate to a more limited number of recipients; a language that sometimes tells the message directly, but more often indirectly; a language that, to some extent, is harder to express and interpret: the language of touch.

It seems quite obvious that the meaning attributed to touching depends on who touches whom. A person whose hands were held by someone special would cause butterflies in his or her stomach. But it would be a different thing if his or her hands were held by a stranger.

Conversely, even when we mean the same thing, the manner by which we express it depends on whom we would touch. We may give a brief tap at the shoulder of an acquaintance in distress. We may hug a friend who’s feeling the same.

Expression and interpretation of touch depends on who we are. They depend on our disposition at the moment we are being touched. They depend on our age. They depend on our personality.

The language of touch is so interesting in that it could not be simply confined into rules for ease of expression and interpretation. Also in spite of it, we still learn to use the language accurately in most of our dealings.

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Some of the basic emotions with universal facial expressions could be expressed accurately through touch. Such included fear, disgust, and anger. In addition to this are the prosocial emotions: love, gratitude, sympathy, surprise, happiness, and sadness. However, self-focused emotions- embarrassment, envy, pride- were said to be more difficult to express through touch (Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, and Jaskolka, 2006; in Thomson & Hampton, 2011).

Thomson & Hampton (2011) extended the study done by Hertenstein and colleagues, and found that the longetivity of a relationship was not a good predictor of the accuracy of expression and interpretation of an emotion through touch, although romantic partners performed better at decoding different types of emotions than strangers do.

It is interesting to note also that both relationship types- partner and stranger- more often agree on the means of expressing particular emotions. For instance, anger was generally expressed by hitting the other person; disgust by pushing; fear by squeezing; happiness by lifting the hand; sadness by stroking; and surprise by also lifting. Gratitude was expressed by a handshake; love by a gentle stroke; sympathy also by a stroke; and embarrassment and envy by a squeeze.

The manner of expression of different emotions may be the same. And so it is necessary to emphasize the importance of other cues in fully and accurately understanding the meaning of every action.

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It is amazing to realize how we speak in a lot of ways. It is even more amazing to think we are able to understand all these complex things. Really, the face, the hands, and the brain (of course)  are amazing!

*Matsumoto, D. & Hwang, H. S. (2011). Reading facial expressions of emotion: Basic research leads to training programs that improve people’s ability to detect emotions. Retrieved from Psychological Science Agenda,  American Psychological Association. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2011/05/facial-expressions.aspx

Thompson, E. H. & Hampton, J. A. (2011). The effect of relationship status on communicating emotions through touch. Cognition and Emotion, 25 (2), 295- 306.