Friday, March 4, 2011

You're Just Too Good To Be True, Can't Keep My Hands Off Of You


Recent discussions in one of my psychology classes discussed the issues surrounding the public display of affection (PDA), particularly that of same-sex couples. Needless to say, most reactions toward it were that of uneasiness, discomfort, and, to a more extreme level, disgust. But regardless of the sex of the people involved in the incident of PDA, the action itself is generally viewed in a negative light. Though being cuddly and loving in a public area may receive reactions of the couple being sweet, couples who grope around and are more torrid with each other get reactions that are typically along the “get-a-room” variety. This literally touchy topic receives a lot of flak, being in the public sphere and all, but there may be an underlying reason to their public displays of affectionate behavior.

Acceptable vs. Unacceptable

A 2007 study published in the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology presents support for the idea that there are two major classes of the sense of touch. These are namely discriminative touch, which deals with interpreting tactile information to be able to recognize objects and to feel sensations, and emotional touch, which involves the affective component of pleasantness or pleasure derived from the sense of touch. They relate findings of physiological evidence that show there are different types of mechanoreceptors that respond differently to certain stimuli, which are then transmitted to different nerve fibers of varying properties.

There have been more studies documenting the functions of the mechanoreceptors used for (discriminative) touch, pain, temperature, and itch. Most of these low-threshold mechanoreceptors are located in glabrous (hairless) skin areas, such as the palm and the sole of the foot, and travel along heavily-myelinated nerve fibers, called A-fibers (alpha/beta/delta), that are coated with a thick layer of fat that facilitates impulse conduction. There are 4 types of these mechanoreceptors, each of which are responsible for the perception of certain sensations on the skin.

Not as much attention has been devoted to the study of the affective component of touch, which was found to have its own separate pathway for conducting tactile sensations. The specialized CT system, which is found only in areas of the skin with hair, respond best to slowly moving, low-force, mechanical stimuli. Signals travel along unmyelinated C-tactile afferent (CT-afferent) fibers that provide or support emotional, hormonal, and behavioral responses to skin-to-skin contact with con-specifics. In addition, these fibers project into areas of the brain that are associated with the affective aspects of feeling from the body, such as well-being and rewards. In combining the input from both A-fibers and CT-fibers received from the hair-covered areas of skin, a fuller sensation of pleasantness derived from touch may be experienced.

Reading this article explains, in a rather nerdy manner, why some people publicly have their hands all over their significant other in places no one else will find. Despite this strong evidence for the body having a system that for touch serving an emotional need, like most behaviors, the acceptability of PDA is usually determined by the context it is done in. Perhaps getting inspiration from the saying that actions speak louder than words, gently caressing your significant other’s body, public or otherwise, can say so much more to the CT system than any cheesy line can ever manage.


McGlone, F., Vallbo, A.B., Olausson, H., Loken, L., Wessberg, J. (2007). Discriminative touch and emotional touch. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61(3), 173-183.

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