1. Michael Draper Annamarie Elmer Hanover College
Preference for Touch and its Relationship to Other Personality Characteristics
Michael Draper
Annamarie Elmer
Hanover College

2. Background Personal touch defined
Physical contact between two people that is non-erotic by nature and is not out of the realm of everyday experience

3. Touch and Development Harlow, 1958: Contact comfort
Infant monkeys prefer the company of the cloth “mother” than the wire “mother” who provided it with food.
Orphanages: lack of physical and emotional attachment causes mental handicaps
Montagu, 1971: Tactile experience plays important role in physical, emotional, and intellectual development

4. Role of Touch in Adulthood
Whitcher & Fisher, 1979:
in a hospital setting, participants benefitted from therapeutic touch
Hertenstein, Keltner, & App, 2000
Touch communicates distinct emotions
Toronto, 2001
Touch, along with empathic behavior, is an effective tool in psychoanalysis

5. Touch and Empathy Empathy
A sense of shared experience, including emotional and physical feelings, with someone or something other than oneself
Empathy is emotional connection with another, touch is physical connection with others

6. Touch and the Big Five
Big Five: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism
Openness, extraversion, and agreeableness will positively correlate with one’s preference for touch. 
Neuroticism will negatively correlate
No significant correlation between preference for touch and conscientiousness.

7. Hypothesis
Preference for touch and empathy will be positively correlated
Preference for touch and the Big Five characteristics of agreeableness, openness, and extraversion will be positively correlated
Preference for touch will be negatively correlated with neuroticism
There will be no correlation between preference for touch and conscientiousness

8. Pilot Study: Method Online Study Developed Preference for Touch Scale
Psychological Research on the Net (Krantz, 2007)
Developed Preference for Touch Scale
50 scenarios
Refined Study
10 scenarios
*Questionnaire included informed consent, demographics, and debriefing form

9. Scale Development Started with 50 questions Factor analysis
Sorted by factor loading and took top 10
Reliability α = .916

10. Main Study: Method Participants
Online Study
N = 144
Dropped 15
N = 129
Males – 32
Predominately Caucasian (85%)
Age:
Mean = 25.42

11. Main Study: Touch Scale
10 questions rated on a 7 point Likert Scale
Developed by the authors for the purposes of this study
Holding a small child’s hand while crossing the street
Sleeping close to your best friend in bed
On the first date, your date touches you on the hand

12. Main Study: Empathy Empathy
Multi-Dimensional Emotional Empathy Scale (Caruso & Mayer, 1999).
30 questions rated on a 5 point Likert scale
Ex: The suffering of others deeply disturbs me
Certain pieces of music can really move me

13. Main Study: Big Five Costa and McCrae, 1992
Big Five Personality Inventory
10 questions ranked on a 7 point Likert Scale
Anxious, easily upset
Sympathetic, warm
Dependable, Self-Discliplined

14. Main Study: Procedure Informed consent Demographics questions
10 question Touch Scale
30 question Empathy Scale
10 question Big 5 Scale
Debriefing form

15. Empathy Score Touch Score r(127) = .303, p < .01
First we did a correlation analysis of empathy to the preference for touch and it was significant with a r = .303.
It is important to notice that this is a positive correlation which means that as people score higher on the empathy scale, they tend to have a higher preference for touch.
Touch Score
r(127) = .303, p < .01

16. Results r = 0.303 Touch r = 0.381 r = 0.186 p = .05 Trait 1 Trait 2 r
p- value
Agreeableness
Empathy
r = 0.436
p = .01
Touch
r = 0.381
Conscientiousness
Openness
r = 0.446
r = 0.303
Extraversion
r = 0.377
r = 0.186
p = .05
We ran a bivariate correlation of empathy and the characterisitcs of the Big 5. There were far too many things significant to report them all, so shown are the ones that had a r value of over .3 and those that were directly related to touch. The ones highlighted in red are those that relate directly to the big 5 characteristics and empathy’s relationship to the preference for touch. These are the ones that we focused on for our study. As you can see people that rated themselves as more agreeable also tended to have a high preference for touch. As stated before, those that scored high on the empathy scale also tended to have a higher preference for touch and people who rate themselves as more open tend to have a higher preference for touch also. But this is a very small significance.

17. Regression Results
Ran regression using gender and empathy as predictors of preference for touch
Empathy is a significant predictor of preference for touch
b = 0.32, p < 0.01
Gender is not a significant predictor.
In order to gain some more insight we ran a regression analysis using gender and empathy as predictors for preference for touch. The analysis revealed that empathy is a significant predictor of preference for touch, with beta = .32. Gender was shown to not be a predictor for empathy and preference for touch.

18. Agreeableness is a significant predictor of preference for touch
Ran regression using gender and agreeableness as predictors of preference for touch
Agreeableness is a significant predictor of preference for touch
b = , p <0.01
Gender is not a significant predictor
Likewise, a regression analysis was run for agreeableness. The results showed that agreeableness is a significant predictor for preference for touch; beta equals As with empathy, gender is not a predictor for agreeableness and preference for touch.

19. Regression Results (con’t)
Openness is no longer a significant predictor for touch when controlling for gender
Shows that openness is a weak result overall
The regression analysis showed that openness is no longer a significant predictor for touch when controlling for gender.

20. Discussion Relationship exists between touch and empathy
Regression shows that empathy and agreeableness are related to preference for touch
Neuroticism and Openness
This study may not have accurately tested for comparing either of these personality traits with touch
Our data revealed that there is in fact a relationship between preference for touch and empathy. This confirms the first part of our hypothesis. Similarly, there is a relationship between agreeableness and preference for touch. This confirms the second part of our hypothesis. A regression analysis showed that empathy and agreeableness are related to preference for touch. Neuroticism and openness were not significant so therefore did not support our hypothesis. This lack of statistical significance could be due to the fact that A) a strong correlation does not actually exist or B) that our study may not have accurately tested for comparing either of these personality traits with touch.

21. Agreeableness and Touch
Agreeableness: a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.
Compassion can be shown by hugging
An antagonistic person would not want to touch another or be touched
Agreeableness related to touch
Our results provide insight as to the relationship between preference for touch and an overall more agreeable and empathic temperament.
Montagu (1971): touch is related to a persons’ overall well-being.
Our date yielded results that showed a significant relationship between agreeableness and the preference for touch. In order to look at the relationship between preference for touch and agreeableness a definition of agreeableness. It is defined as a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others. When thinking about these characteristics, it makes sense that a compassionate person would also tend to have a higher preference for touch because compassion is usually shown by hugging someone or by being close to them. An antagonistic person probably would not want to be touched. This result provides insight as to the relationship between preference for touch and an overall more agreeable and empathic temperament. Referring back to Ashley Montagu: touch is related to a persons’ overall well-being.

22. Future Directions Even distribution of males to females
Test validity of our touch scale
Experimental environment
Develop a scale that separates between “touch-giving” and “touch-receiving”
Future directions: although this was outside of our direct control, it would certainly be beneficial if we had gotten an even distribution of males to females. This would have allowed us to get better accuracy and reliability, especially when looking specifically at gender. Also, examining the accuracy of the preference for touch scale in an experimental environment would help strengthen its validity as well. Finally, although we tested this and found no significant difference, developing a scale that separates between “touch giving” and “touch receiving” could allow for more specific results. Perhaps touch giving has to do with a person being compassionate and touch receiving might have something to do with being cooperative.

23. Questions?