Affective Regulation Through Touch: A Plain-English Review
Touch is one of our earliest forms of communication. Long before we can understand language, supportive physical contact can play a role in soothing, connection and care.
This 2022 review by Fotopoulou, von Mohr and Krahé explored the science of social and affective touch and how touch may contribute to the regulation of our emotional and physiological states.
Rather than testing a particular therapy, the authors brought together research from psychology and neuroscience to consider how touch may influence regulation through interacting biological, psychological and social processes.
What did the research find?
The review describes touch as having an important role in social connection, caregiving and regulation.
Supportive interpersonal touch can influence how we respond to stress and discomfort. Its effects appear to involve several interacting processes, including sensory information from the skin, expectations, previous experiences, social context and our relationship with the person providing the touch.
This means that touch is not simply a physical stimulus.
The same physical contact can be experienced very differently depending upon who is touching us, why, the context in which it occurs and whether the touch feels wanted and safe.
The authors discuss how affective touch may contribute to both homeostatic regulation — processes that help maintain stability within the body — and allostatic regulation, where the nervous system anticipates and adapts to changing needs and circumstances.
What does this mean in practice?
This research offers an interesting framework for understanding why appropriate therapeutic touch can sometimes have effects beyond the purely mechanical manipulation of muscles and tissues.
Touch takes place within a relationship.
How someone experiences contact may therefore depend not only on pressure or technique, but also on trust, predictability, consent, context and their previous experiences of touch.
For body-oriented therapeutic work, this supports the importance of approaching touch collaboratively and paying attention to how the person receiving it actually experiences the contact.
It also helps explain why more touch is not necessarily better. The quality, meaning and context of touch matter.
A note of caution
This paper is a scientific review of affective and social touch, not a clinical trial of NeuroAffective Touch, Somatic Experiencing, Shiatsu or another particular therapeutic approach.
The research therefore should not be taken as evidence that any specific form of touch therapy treats trauma or mental-health conditions.
Responses to touch also vary considerably between individuals. Personal history, culture, relationships and the circumstances surrounding touch can all influence how it is experienced.
Its value is in helping us understand some of the mechanisms through which supportive interpersonal touch may contribute to human connection and regulation.
The original research
Fotopoulou, A., von Mohr, M. & Krahé, C. (2022). Affective regulation through touch: homeostatic and allostatic mechanisms. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 43, 80–87.
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