Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

daily lives, such as greeting, comfort, affection, task accomplishment, and control. You may have engaged
in a few or all of these behaviors today. If you shook hands with someone, hugged a friend, kissed your
romantic partner, then you used touch to greet and give affection. If you visited a salon to have your
hair cut, then you were touched with the purpose of task accomplishment. You may have encountered a
friend who was upset and patted the friend to ease the pain and provide comfort. Finally, you may recall
your parents or guardians putting an arm around your shoulder to help you walk faster if there was a
need to hurry you along. In this case, your parent/guardian was using touch for control.
Several factors impact how touch is perceived. These factors are duration, frequency, and intensity.
Duration is how long touch endures. Frequency is how often touch is used, and intensity is the amount
of pressure applied. These factors influence how individuals are evaluated in social interactions. For
example, researchers state, “a handshake preceding social interactions positively influenced the way
individuals evaluated the social interaction partners and their interest in further interactions while
reversing the impact of negative impressions.” 7 This research demonstrates that individuals must
understand when it is appropriate to shake hands and that there are negative consequences for failing to
do so. Importantly, an appropriately timed handshake can erase the negative effects of any mistakes one
might make in an initial interaction!
Touch is a form of communication that can be used to initiate, regulate, and maintain relationships.
It is a very powerful form of communication that can be used to communicate messages ranging from
comfort to power. Duration, frequency, and intensity of touch can be used to convey liking, attraction,
or dominance. Touch can be helpful or harmful and must be used appropriately to have effective
relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners. Consider that inappropriate touch can convey
romantic intentions where no romance exists. Conversely, fear can be instilled through touch. Touch is a
powerful interpersonal tool along with voice and body movement.
It’s also essential to understand the importance of touch on someone’s psychological wellbeing.
Narissra Punyanunt-Carter and Jason Wrench created the touch deprivation scale to examine the lack of
haptic communication in an individual’s life (Table 5.1). 8
As you can see, Punyanunt-Carter and Wrench found that there are three different factors related to
touch deprivation: the absence of touch, longing for touch, and sexual intimacy for touch. First, the
absence of touch is the degree to which an individual perceives that touch is not a normal part of their
day-to-day interactions. Many people can go days or even weeks without physically having contact with
another person. People may surround them on a day-to-day basis at work, but this doesn’t mean that they
can engage in physical contact with other people.
Second, there is the longing for touch. It’s one thing to realize that touch is not a normal part of your
day-to-day interactions, but it’s something completely different not to have that touch and desire that
touch. For some people, the lack of touch can be psychologically straining because humans inherently
have a desire for physical contact. For some people, this lack of physical contact with other humans can
be satisfied by having a pet.
Lastly, some people desire touch so much that they’ll engage in sexual activity just as a way to get
touched by another human being. Obviously, these types of situations can be risky because they involve
sexual contact outside of an intimate relationship. In fact, “hooking up” can be detrimental to someone’s
psychological wellbeing. 9
In the Punyanunt-Carter and Wrench study, the researchers found that there was a positive
relationship between touch deprivation and depression and a negative relationship between touch
deprivation and self-esteem. The study also found that those individuals who felt that they did not receive
enough touch growing up (tactile nurturance) also reported higher levels of touch deprivation as adults.
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Interpersonal Communication