the language of touch

Interesting article on touch, and how touch is far more 'information rich' - in other words, 'communicates a lot more' - than was previously understood. (Funny how these so-called 'researchers' - mostly men??? have to do 'science' to know what most mothers could tell them just from interacting with those mobile lumps of inarticulate protoplasm known as 'babies'. Of course, there *are* exceptions - my own personal µ unit, for example.)

Whatever it takes.

From http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/health/23mind.html (bolds mine):

Psychologists have long studied the grunts and winks of nonverbal communication, the vocal tones and facial expressions that carry emotion. A warm tone of voice, a hostile stare — both have the same meaning in Terre Haute or Timbuktu, and are among dozens of signals that form a universal human vocabulary.

But in recent years some researchers have begun to focus on a different, often more subtle kind of wordless communication: physical contact. Momentary touches, they say — whether an exuberant high five, a warm hand on the shoulder, or a creepy touch to the arm — can communicate an even wider range of emotion than gestures or expressions, and sometimes do so more quickly and accurately than words.

“It is the first language we learn,” said Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of “Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life” (Norton, 2009), and remains, he said, “our richest means of emotional expression” throughout life.

The evidence that such messages can lead to clear, almost immediate changes in how people think and behave is accumulating fast. Students who received a supportive touch on the back or arm from a teacher were nearly twice as likely to volunteer in class as those who did not, studies have found. A sympathetic touch from a doctor leaves people with the impression that the visit lasted twice as long, compared with estimates from people who were untouched. Research by Tiffany Field of the Touch Research Institute in Miami has found that a massage from a loved one can not only ease pain but also soothe depression and strengthen a relationship.
[...]
“We used to think that touch only served to intensify communicated emotions,” Dr. Hertenstein said. Now it turns out to be “a much more differentiated signaling system than we had imagined."

It seems a little bizarre that actual *research* is required to come to these conclusions - but then, these are *men* we're talking about, here, doing much of this 'research' - and not only men, but men from a Western, highly touch-averse culture.

Sigh.

Well, if it helps them *finally* learn how to do all the things that machismo has been trying to destroy in them for - millenia? - I'm all for it. Less work for me, too - I ain't into the whole 'edumacatin' them savages' bidness. They can learn it their *own* dang selves.

Maybe the warrior culture can finally be laid to rest, after all, and we can enjoy a time of peace and prosperity based on cooperation and compassion

instead of the endlessly waged 'tit for tat' schoolboy revenge battles we've been witnessing yea these many centuries.

Time, gentlemen - time.