Reseach on skin hunger
Feb 4, 2018 15:49:59 GMT -5
GeekGoddess, misssunnybunny, and 4 more like this
Post by northstarmom on Feb 4, 2018 15:49:59 GMT -5
First part of this article talks about skin hunger and solitary confinement. Then it goes on to talk about skin hunger for those in other situations:
"What some psychologists term "skin hunger" (also known as touch hunger) is a need for physical human contact. Although many people sate their skin hunger through sex, skin hunger isn't exactly a sexual need. Satisfying your skin hunger requires you to have meaningful physical contact with another person, and failing to observe your need for human touch can have profound emotional, even physical, consequences.
Scientists began investigating skin hunger shortly after the Second World War. In controversial experiments run by American psychologist Harry Harlow, infant rhesus macaques were separated from their birth mothers and given the option of two inanimate surrogates: one made out of wire and wood, and another covered in cloth. The baby monkeys overwhelmingly favored the embrace of the cloth surrogate, even when the wire mother was the only surrogate that held a bottle of milk.
From this, Harlow deduced infant macaques needed more than nourishment from their mothers to stay alive. He termed it "contact comfort." As a result of Harlow's research, we now know that human beings need touch, particularly in childhood, almost as powerfully as they need basic necessities like food and water.
Researchers have shown that touch can communicate a range of emotions, serving as an important social tool, and even the act of hugging can reduce your levels of the stress hormone cortisol. A study from the Touch Research Institute, part of the University of Miami, found that Parisian teenagers hanging out in McDonald's restaurants (France is deemed a "high contact" culture) overwhelmingly touched each other more than their American peers, and were less likely to exhibit symptoms of aggression.
"Touching each other keeps the peace," explains Dr Tiffany Field of the Touch Research Institute. A pioneer in the field of skin hunger, Field has long advocated for touch to be reintroduced into educational systems, where fears about sexual abuse and possible litigation have led some US schools to implement no-touch policies. "Touch facilitates intimacy, and most people you touch won't respond with aggression."
It's possible to be touch hungry and not even know it—or even to mistake your symptoms for poor mental health. "People who are touch hungry usually present as being depressed individuals," Field says. "They're withdrawn; their voice intonation contour is flat." She adds that people suffering from clinical depression may also often suffer from touch hunger—and this can be seen in an area of the brain called the vagus. "When you massage these people, their depression levels go down and their vagal activity goes up....
Besides prisoners in solitary confinement, there is another demographic that illustrates the debilitating effects of skin hunger: the elderly. Being extremely lonely can amount to a chronic medical condition, and it's one that is more likely to surface in later life as friends and family members die off. One study found that lonely people aged 50 and over were twice as likely to die as their non-lonely peers. In comments reported in USA Today, psychologist Janice Kiecolt-Glaser argues that the elderly need prolonged physical contact more than younger generations: "The older you are, the more fragile you are physically, so contact becomes increasingly important for good health."
Research shows that people in Western societies overwhelmingly feel lonelier. According to the National Science Foundation's 2014 General Social Study, a quarter of Americans feel they have no one they can talk to about their problems. One study from British relationship charity Relate finds almost ten percent of people have no close friendships at all, and 20 percent of those in relationships rarely feel "loved." Concurrently, we're spending more time online than ever before: British adults average 21.6 hours a week, according to recent statistics.
Conventional wisdom holds that technology is turning us into maladroit loners, even if it should, in theory, make us more connected. If you took a paper and pencil and stencilled the outline of the average person's online presence—like a modern day Vitruvian man—you could sketch out a web of stretching connections, too numerous to count. Millions of fibre optic cables connect us to our social networks: friends, followers, email acquaintances, even lurkers. So why do we feel more isolated than ever before? Could it have something to do with the fact that none of these connections involve human touch?
"The ease with which we communicate now is probably the biggest change of the last twenty years," explains Professor Kory Floyd of the University of Arizona, an expert in the communication of affection in close relationships. "In some instances, it encourages us to be less thoughtful of what we say—but it doesn't have to."
Having studied affection for nearly two decades, however, Floyd believes verbal or written communication is no substitute for physical touch. "There's an immediacy to touch that words don't have. And there are certain health benefits that seem to be more pronounced when affection is expressed through tactile ways."
Like a pair of binoculars flipped the wrong way, the Internet can have the effect of making us closer together or further apart—depending on how you look at it. No movement illustrates this more powerfully than the Free Hugs initiat
Most of us have seen someone at a music festival wandering around with a "Free Hugs" sign before, but few realize one individual—a Sydney resident who goes by the pseudonym Juan Mann—was behind it. Unlike cuddle parties where you'll pay $45 to be spooned by a stranger ineptly concealing his boner, Mann wanted to bring free affection to the masses.
"I started giving out Free Hugs mostly because at the time I had nobody around. No-one hugged me or socialized with me," he explains over email. "Then out of nowhere this young woman came up to me at a party and hugged me. For the first time in months I felt alive. It got me thinking about all the other lonely people out there in the world who might need or want a hug."
broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/d3gzba/the-life-of-the-skin-hungry-can-you-go-crazy-from-a-lack-of-touch?utm_campaign=sharebutton
If you relate, you don't have to just suffer. When I was in my SM and experienced skin hunger, I got into the habit of participating in organizations in which people hugged, and I also cultivated friendships with people who were huggers. And I got regular massages, facials and pedicures from cosmetologists and massage therapists with good energy who enjoyed their work
"What some psychologists term "skin hunger" (also known as touch hunger) is a need for physical human contact. Although many people sate their skin hunger through sex, skin hunger isn't exactly a sexual need. Satisfying your skin hunger requires you to have meaningful physical contact with another person, and failing to observe your need for human touch can have profound emotional, even physical, consequences.
Scientists began investigating skin hunger shortly after the Second World War. In controversial experiments run by American psychologist Harry Harlow, infant rhesus macaques were separated from their birth mothers and given the option of two inanimate surrogates: one made out of wire and wood, and another covered in cloth. The baby monkeys overwhelmingly favored the embrace of the cloth surrogate, even when the wire mother was the only surrogate that held a bottle of milk.
From this, Harlow deduced infant macaques needed more than nourishment from their mothers to stay alive. He termed it "contact comfort." As a result of Harlow's research, we now know that human beings need touch, particularly in childhood, almost as powerfully as they need basic necessities like food and water.
Researchers have shown that touch can communicate a range of emotions, serving as an important social tool, and even the act of hugging can reduce your levels of the stress hormone cortisol. A study from the Touch Research Institute, part of the University of Miami, found that Parisian teenagers hanging out in McDonald's restaurants (France is deemed a "high contact" culture) overwhelmingly touched each other more than their American peers, and were less likely to exhibit symptoms of aggression.
"Touching each other keeps the peace," explains Dr Tiffany Field of the Touch Research Institute. A pioneer in the field of skin hunger, Field has long advocated for touch to be reintroduced into educational systems, where fears about sexual abuse and possible litigation have led some US schools to implement no-touch policies. "Touch facilitates intimacy, and most people you touch won't respond with aggression."
It's possible to be touch hungry and not even know it—or even to mistake your symptoms for poor mental health. "People who are touch hungry usually present as being depressed individuals," Field says. "They're withdrawn; their voice intonation contour is flat." She adds that people suffering from clinical depression may also often suffer from touch hunger—and this can be seen in an area of the brain called the vagus. "When you massage these people, their depression levels go down and their vagal activity goes up....
Besides prisoners in solitary confinement, there is another demographic that illustrates the debilitating effects of skin hunger: the elderly. Being extremely lonely can amount to a chronic medical condition, and it's one that is more likely to surface in later life as friends and family members die off. One study found that lonely people aged 50 and over were twice as likely to die as their non-lonely peers. In comments reported in USA Today, psychologist Janice Kiecolt-Glaser argues that the elderly need prolonged physical contact more than younger generations: "The older you are, the more fragile you are physically, so contact becomes increasingly important for good health."
Research shows that people in Western societies overwhelmingly feel lonelier. According to the National Science Foundation's 2014 General Social Study, a quarter of Americans feel they have no one they can talk to about their problems. One study from British relationship charity Relate finds almost ten percent of people have no close friendships at all, and 20 percent of those in relationships rarely feel "loved." Concurrently, we're spending more time online than ever before: British adults average 21.6 hours a week, according to recent statistics.
Conventional wisdom holds that technology is turning us into maladroit loners, even if it should, in theory, make us more connected. If you took a paper and pencil and stencilled the outline of the average person's online presence—like a modern day Vitruvian man—you could sketch out a web of stretching connections, too numerous to count. Millions of fibre optic cables connect us to our social networks: friends, followers, email acquaintances, even lurkers. So why do we feel more isolated than ever before? Could it have something to do with the fact that none of these connections involve human touch?
"The ease with which we communicate now is probably the biggest change of the last twenty years," explains Professor Kory Floyd of the University of Arizona, an expert in the communication of affection in close relationships. "In some instances, it encourages us to be less thoughtful of what we say—but it doesn't have to."
Having studied affection for nearly two decades, however, Floyd believes verbal or written communication is no substitute for physical touch. "There's an immediacy to touch that words don't have. And there are certain health benefits that seem to be more pronounced when affection is expressed through tactile ways."
Like a pair of binoculars flipped the wrong way, the Internet can have the effect of making us closer together or further apart—depending on how you look at it. No movement illustrates this more powerfully than the Free Hugs initiat
Most of us have seen someone at a music festival wandering around with a "Free Hugs" sign before, but few realize one individual—a Sydney resident who goes by the pseudonym Juan Mann—was behind it. Unlike cuddle parties where you'll pay $45 to be spooned by a stranger ineptly concealing his boner, Mann wanted to bring free affection to the masses.
"I started giving out Free Hugs mostly because at the time I had nobody around. No-one hugged me or socialized with me," he explains over email. "Then out of nowhere this young woman came up to me at a party and hugged me. For the first time in months I felt alive. It got me thinking about all the other lonely people out there in the world who might need or want a hug."
broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/d3gzba/the-life-of-the-skin-hungry-can-you-go-crazy-from-a-lack-of-touch?utm_campaign=sharebutton
If you relate, you don't have to just suffer. When I was in my SM and experienced skin hunger, I got into the habit of participating in organizations in which people hugged, and I also cultivated friendships with people who were huggers. And I got regular massages, facials and pedicures from cosmetologists and massage therapists with good energy who enjoyed their work