Understanding Touch Aversion as Adaptation

Some people melt into a hug; others tense up or step back. The reluctance to be touched, often called touch aversion, is not a quirk, but a stable, measurable predisposition (Andersen & Leibowitz, 1978; Webb & Peck, 2015). Decades of work show large individual differences in how much touch people like, and where on the body they are comfortable being touched (Jourard, 1966; Suvilehto et al., 2015).

Because touch often calms us and helps regulate threat and stress (Coan et al., 2006; Eckstein et al., 2020), it is easy to assume that “more touch” is always better. Yet research also shows strong cultural and relational variation: people typically allow more touch from close partners than from acquaintances or strangers, and even then, touch is not equally welcomed in all cultures (Guerrero & Andersen, 1991; Suvilehto et al., 2019). At ConTakt Lab, we ask: what if lower touch preference is not always a problem, but sometimes an adaptive way of navigating a sensitive body and a complex social world?

Different mechanisms seem to shape touch aversion. One is sensory sensitivity: people who experience sensory input more intensely also report higher autistic traits (Robertson & Simmons, 2013), and studies show that higher autistic traits and hypersensitivity are linked to greater social touch avoidance (Ujiie & Takahashi, 2022). 

A second mechanism involves threat and disease avoidance. People who feel more vulnerable to illness tend to be more reluctant to touch or be touched by others, especially during times of heightened infection risk (Thiebaut et al., 2021). This fits broader theories of a behavioural immune system that motivates us to avoid potential sources of contamination.

Attachment style also shapes motives for seeking or avoiding partner touch: attachment anxiety and avoidance predict different patterns of approach and avoidance motives for touch, which in turn relate to daily relationship well-being (Jakubiak et al., 2021).

In our ongoing observational work at ConTakt Lab (Sailer, Abra, Fairhurst, in prep), we combine questionnaires on touch aversion with touchability and interpersonal distance tasks. Early results suggest that sensory and threat sensitivity work together in shaping who feels comfortable with which kinds of touch, and from whom.

Do you recognise yourself more as a “touch seeker” or a “buffer-zone keeper”? How might your sensory world, threat system and relationships have shaped that? What would change in families, clinics or workplaces if preferring less touch were understood not only as a deficit, but also as an adaptive calibration to one’s body and context?

We invite you to join the discussion. Share your thoughts on our social media channels, and explore the studies linked on our website to dive deeper into the science of touch aversion.

References

Andersen, P. A., & Leibowitz, K. (1978). The development and nature of the construct touch avoidance. Environmental Psychology and Nonverbal Behavior, 3(2), 89–106. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01135607

Coan, J. A., Schaefer, H. S., & Davidson, R. J. (2006). Lending a hand: Social regulation of the neural response to threat. Psychological Science, 17(12), 1032–1039. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01832.x

Eckstein, M., Mamaev, I., Ditzen, B., & Sailer, U. (2020). Calming effects of touch in human, animal, and robotic interaction—Scientific state-of-the-art and technical advances. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11, 555058. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.555058

Guerrero, L. K., & Andersen, P. A. (1991). The waxing and waning of relational intimacy: Touch as a function of relational stage, gender and touch avoidance. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 8(2), 147–165. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407591082001

Jakubiak, B. K., Debrot, A., Kim, J. J., & Impett, E. A. (2021). Approach and avoidance motives for touch are predicted by attachment and predict daily relationship well-being. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 38(1), 256–278. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407520961178

Jourard, S. M. (1966). An exploratory study of body-accessibility. British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 5(3), 221–231. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8260.1966.tb00978.x

Robertson, A. E., & Simmons, D. R. (2013). The relationship between sensory sensitivity and autistic traits in the general population. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 43(4), 775–784. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-012-1608-7

Suvilehto, J. T., Glerean, E., Dunbar, R. I. M., Hari, R., & Nummenmaa, L. (2015). Topography of social touching depends on emotional bonds between humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(45), 13811–13816. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1519231112

Suvilehto, J. T., Nummenmaa, L., Harada, T., Dunbar, R. I. M., Hari, R., Turner, R., Sadato, N., & Kitada, R. (2019). Cross-cultural similarity in relationship-specific social touching. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 286(1900), 20190467. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.0467

Thiebaut, G., Méot, A., Witt, A., Prokop, P., & Bonin, P. (2021). “Touch me if you can!”: Individual differences in disease avoidance and social touch. Evolutionary Psychology, 19(4), 14747049211056159. https://doi.org/10.1177/14747049211056159

Ujiie, Y., & Takahashi, K. (2022). Associations between self-reported social touch avoidance, hypersensitivity, and autistic traits: Results from questionnaire research among typically developing adults. Personality and Individual Differences, 184, 111186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111186

Webb, A., & Peck, J. (2015). Individual differences in interpersonal touch: On the development, validation, and use of the “comfort with interpersonal touch” (CIT) scale. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25(1), 60–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcps.2014.07.002