Social distancing is a phrase we have been forced to accept and practice because of COVID-19. It is, per Merriam-Webster, the practice of maintaining a greater than usual physical distance from other people or of avoiding direct contact with people or objects in public places during the outbreak of a contagious disease to minimize exposure and reduce the transmission of infection. Under this concept, handshaking is discouraged, with other less tactile forms of greeting observed. It is the no-touch policy that prohibits hugs, squeezes, and strokes we used to warm our daily interaction.
An interesting article at The Economist aptly titled, “You’ve lost that lovin’ feeling” discussed how the pandemic deprived the world of human contact. According to Tiffany Field of the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, touch is as necessary to human survival as food and water. It is the first sense to develop and the only one necessary for survival. We can live with the loss of sight or hearing. But without touch, which enables us to detect such stimuli as pressure, temperature and texture, we would be unable to walk or feel pain. Our skin is the vehicle through which we navigate the world.
Humans need touch to form close relationships. Alberto Gallace of the University of Milano-Bicocca says humans need to interact with each other and have developed a neurological system designed to respond to affectionate touch. Stimuli applied to skin at a certain pressure and speed (basically a caress) activates a dedicated nerve fiber in the skin. This stimulates parts of the brain responsible for pleasure, releasing hormones like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin that sooth anxiety and makes humans feels happier.
Touch depresses levels of cortisol, a hormone produced in response to stress, triggering a flight or fight response. Touch also produces natural killer cells in patients with HIV and cancer. Healthy adults hugged more frequently are less likely to get colds and people who feel cared for are less likely to fall ill.
A lack of touch can be damaging. David Linden, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University wrote a book entitled Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart and Mind. He says that of the five senses, touch is the most overlooked and perhaps the most important for promoting psychological health. Touch has an extremely critical role in child development and if deprived, growth is slow, cognitive skills are delayed and aggression can be fueled. Interpersonal touch is a social glue that binds couples/partners, parents, and children, and makes people in communities and workplace effective teams.
Michael Kraus and Dacher Keltner of the University of California, Berkeley studied every team in the NBA in the first half of a season and reviewed all celebratory touches — exchanges among teammates, chest bumps, high fives, pats in the back, etc. They found out that teams that touched the most in the first half of the season win more games in the second half and play in a more cooperative fashion. Touch instills trust. Studies have shown that waitresses who touch customers get better tips and doctors who touch patients received more favorable review.
Filipinos are not well-known huggers, but we have a custom that is uniquely ours on the realm of touch — taking the elderly’s hand and placing it at the back of their forehead — the “pagmamano” and it’s not just the children. Of course, in recent times the “beso” has caught on together with the high fives among friends. Among relatives or friends of the same gender, it is common for Filipinos to walk hand in hand or arm in arm, as a sign of affection or friendship.
An interesting article by Michael Tan years ago on “Body Ethics” discussed peculiar touching practices by Filipino women fondling genitals of children out of “gigil” or uncontrollable affection, for which a few of our countrymen have gotten into trouble as OFW’s. Other touching practices include rubbing bellies of pregnant women, adult males grabbing each other’s “baskets” out of mischief and woman to woman touching. Even among Filipinos, some groups are more “touching” than others. People in Visayas are more prone to touch people than say, Tagalogs, as a way of greeting or conversing with each other. Although this article was more about unusual touching practices, it highlights how touch is important to the Filipino way of relating.
The pandemic has caused a lot of pain, most visible of which is the loss of jobs and income and the unfortunate recession we are all in. But one major negative effect is what The Economist termed as people becoming “skin hungry,” a state in which they experience less touch than they want. Being deprived of touch has been linked to loneliness, depression, stress, mood and anxiety disorders and secondary immune disorders.
Presently, we are experiencing a surge in infection. Anecdotally, this is partly attributed to a lot of family contagion as many are unable to resist skin hunger. Children touch parents who are infected and vice versa, despite all risks attendant to the act.
As Linden said, to be human is to be emotional and to feel things. For all of us, the sense of touch is intrinsically emotional. This pandemic is causing more emotional pain and deprivation other than monetary poverty. We need to get out of this very difficult situation as we look forward to the day we can touch each other again and express our feelings and affections the way we used to.
Benel Dela Paz Lagua was previously Executive Vice-President and Chief Development Officer at the Development Bank of the Philippines. He is an active FINEX member and an advocate of risk-based lending for SMEs. The views expressed herein are his own and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of his office as well as FINEX.