HUG!

I went to an all-boys school for 12 years of my, so far, short 21-year old life. Going to college culture-shocked me in so many ways, not the least of which was having girls as close everyday, non-romantic friends. Saying hi through non-verbal ways used to mean fist bumps, high fives, a punch in the shoulder, and sometimes even a short hug. Now it means tighter hugs, heads on my shoulder and so many more variations of hand touches. But even after four years in college, I can honestly say that I've still never fully felt comfortable with the beso.

I guess there can be sex differences when it comes to how males and females communicate through touch, and when and how they use them. Touch is after all a rich medium for social communication and therefore, that can express anything from status differences, messages such as gratitude and sympathy, as well as emotions. Given its role in our social lives, it's therefore likely that it IS indeed gendered.

In a study conducted by Hertenstein and Keltner (2010), they analyzed 212 undergraduate students. The experiment's unit of analysis was dyadic (which I found really interesting), an emotion encoder-emotion decoder dyad. The procedure consisted of the encoder carrying out a randomized emotion (among these - Disgust, Fear, Envy, Embarrassment, Sadness, Pride, Love, Gratitude, Happiness, Anger, Sympathy) through touch on a part of the bare arm of the decoder (who was across a black curtain), whose task it is to guess the emotion and the sex of the encoder. It was found that anger was more readily communicated through the curtain if a male comprised any of the members of the dyad, sympathy was more readily communicated if there's a female, and the dyad with both females were the only ones able to communicate happiness. The other emotions were statistically significant. 

The author hypothesized the reason for this using evolutionary psychology and engendered social roles- males being the protectorate and territorial, and females being the more care-taking and emotional.

So does this mean that guys are more socially inept at encoding and decoding emotion? It must really suck to be us if that's the case- to mostly perceive and relate non-verbal touch with an emotion as negative as anger for most of the time. But I guess that's the reason there are [verbal and] other non-verbal cues to read from, it would be interesting to find an integrated and comprehensive study of communication and emotion perception using non-verbal cues. The best way I guess for us guys (and girls)  to master the art of proper and accurate encoding and decoding is to interact with people, go out and experience life. :)

Hertenstein, M. & Keltner, D. (2010).Gender and the Communication of Emotion Via Touch. Sex Roles, 64(1-2), 70–80.


Photo sources: 
http://www.spanishdict.com
http://notworkappropriate.blogspot.com