Michael Draper Annamarie Elmer Hanover College Preference for Touch and its Relationship to Other Personality Characteristics Michael Draper Annamarie Elmer Hanover College

Background Personal touch defined Physical contact between two people that is non-erotic by nature and is not out of the realm of everyday experience

Touch and Development Harlow, 1958: Contact comfort Infant monkeys prefer the company of the cloth “mother” than the wire “mother” who provided it with food. Orphanages: lack of physical and emotional attachment causes mental handicaps Montagu, 1971: Tactile experience plays important role in physical, emotional, and intellectual development

Role of Touch in Adulthood Whitcher & Fisher, 1979: in a hospital setting, participants benefitted from therapeutic touch Hertenstein, Keltner, & App, 2000 Touch communicates distinct emotions Toronto, 2001 Touch, along with empathic behavior, is an effective tool in psychoanalysis

Touch and Empathy Empathy A sense of shared experience, including emotional and physical feelings, with someone or something other than oneself Empathy is emotional connection with another, touch is physical connection with others

Touch and the Big Five Big Five: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism Openness, extraversion, and agreeableness will positively correlate with one’s preference for touch.  Neuroticism will negatively correlate No significant correlation between preference for touch and conscientiousness.

Hypothesis Preference for touch and empathy will be positively correlated Preference for touch and the Big Five characteristics of agreeableness, openness, and extraversion will be positively correlated Preference for touch will be negatively correlated with neuroticism There will be no correlation between preference for touch and conscientiousness

Pilot Study: Method Online Study Developed Preference for Touch Scale Psychological Research on the Net (Krantz, 2007) Developed Preference for Touch Scale 50 scenarios Refined Study 10 scenarios *Questionnaire included informed consent, demographics, and debriefing form

Scale Development Started with 50 questions Factor analysis Sorted by factor loading and took top 10 Reliability α = .916

Main Study: Method Participants Online Study N = 144 Dropped 15 N = 129 Males – 32 Predominately Caucasian (85%) Age: 18 - 60 Mean = 25.42

Main Study: Touch Scale 10 questions rated on a 7 point Likert Scale Developed by the authors for the purposes of this study Holding a small child’s hand while crossing the street Sleeping close to your best friend in bed On the first date, your date touches you on the hand

Main Study: Empathy Empathy Multi-Dimensional Emotional Empathy Scale (Caruso & Mayer, 1999). 30 questions rated on a 5 point Likert scale Ex: The suffering of others deeply disturbs me Certain pieces of music can really move me

Main Study: Big Five Costa and McCrae, 1992 Big Five Personality Inventory 10 questions ranked on a 7 point Likert Scale Anxious, easily upset Sympathetic, warm Dependable, Self-Discliplined

Main Study: Procedure Informed consent Demographics questions 10 question Touch Scale 30 question Empathy Scale 10 question Big 5 Scale Debriefing form

Empathy Score Touch Score r(127) = .303, p < .01 First we did a correlation analysis of empathy to the preference for touch and it was significant with a r = .303. It is important to notice that this is a positive correlation which means that as people score higher on the empathy scale, they tend to have a higher preference for touch. Touch Score r(127) = .303, p < .01

Results r = 0.303 Touch r = 0.381 r = 0.186 p = .05 Trait 1 Trait 2 r p- value Agreeableness Empathy r = 0.436 p = .01 Touch r = 0.381 Conscientiousness Openness r = 0.446 r = 0.303 Extraversion r = 0.377 r = 0.186 p = .05 We ran a bivariate correlation of empathy and the characterisitcs of the Big 5. There were far too many things significant to report them all, so shown are the ones that had a r value of over .3 and those that were directly related to touch. The ones highlighted in red are those that relate directly to the big 5 characteristics and empathy’s relationship to the preference for touch. These are the ones that we focused on for our study. As you can see people that rated themselves as more agreeable also tended to have a high preference for touch. As stated before, those that scored high on the empathy scale also tended to have a higher preference for touch and people who rate themselves as more open tend to have a higher preference for touch also. But this is a very small significance.

Regression Results Ran regression using gender and empathy as predictors of preference for touch Empathy is a significant predictor of preference for touch b = 0.32, p < 0.01 Gender is not a significant predictor. In order to gain some more insight we ran a regression analysis using gender and empathy as predictors for preference for touch. The analysis revealed that empathy is a significant predictor of preference for touch, with beta = .32. Gender was shown to not be a predictor for empathy and preference for touch.

Agreeableness is a significant predictor of preference for touch Ran regression using gender and agreeableness as predictors of preference for touch Agreeableness is a significant predictor of preference for touch b = 0.395 , p <0.01 Gender is not a significant predictor Likewise, a regression analysis was run for agreeableness. The results showed that agreeableness is a significant predictor for preference for touch; beta equals .395. As with empathy, gender is not a predictor for agreeableness and preference for touch.

Regression Results (con’t) Openness is no longer a significant predictor for touch when controlling for gender Shows that openness is a weak result overall The regression analysis showed that openness is no longer a significant predictor for touch when controlling for gender.

Discussion Relationship exists between touch and empathy Regression shows that empathy and agreeableness are related to preference for touch Neuroticism and Openness This study may not have accurately tested for comparing either of these personality traits with touch Our data revealed that there is in fact a relationship between preference for touch and empathy. This confirms the first part of our hypothesis. Similarly, there is a relationship between agreeableness and preference for touch. This confirms the second part of our hypothesis. A regression analysis showed that empathy and agreeableness are related to preference for touch. Neuroticism and openness were not significant so therefore did not support our hypothesis. This lack of statistical significance could be due to the fact that A) a strong correlation does not actually exist or B) that our study may not have accurately tested for comparing either of these personality traits with touch.

Agreeableness and Touch Agreeableness: a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others. Compassion can be shown by hugging An antagonistic person would not want to touch another or be touched Agreeableness related to touch Our results provide insight as to the relationship between preference for touch and an overall more agreeable and empathic temperament. Montagu (1971): touch is related to a persons’ overall well-being. Our date yielded results that showed a significant relationship between agreeableness and the preference for touch. In order to look at the relationship between preference for touch and agreeableness a definition of agreeableness. It is defined as a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others. When thinking about these characteristics, it makes sense that a compassionate person would also tend to have a higher preference for touch because compassion is usually shown by hugging someone or by being close to them. An antagonistic person probably would not want to be touched. This result provides insight as to the relationship between preference for touch and an overall more agreeable and empathic temperament. Referring back to Ashley Montagu: touch is related to a persons’ overall well-being.

Future Directions Even distribution of males to females Test validity of our touch scale Experimental environment Develop a scale that separates between “touch-giving” and “touch-receiving” Future directions: although this was outside of our direct control, it would certainly be beneficial if we had gotten an even distribution of males to females. This would have allowed us to get better accuracy and reliability, especially when looking specifically at gender. Also, examining the accuracy of the preference for touch scale in an experimental environment would help strengthen its validity as well. Finally, although we tested this and found no significant difference, developing a scale that separates between “touch giving” and “touch receiving” could allow for more specific results. Perhaps touch giving has to do with a person being compassionate and touch receiving might have something to do with being cooperative.

Questions?