Are you a hugger? Genetics may have played a role

A new study has found that some people likely miss hugging a lot more than others during pandemic lockdown and “huggers” crave human touch more because of a variety of factors, including genes.

Communication Monographs published research by University of Arizona Prof. Kory Floyd which looked into the relationship between skin-on-skin touch and the psyche.

“There’s something special about touch that I think relates back to the fact that we, as human beings, are born in such a state of immaturity that we have no ability to take care of our own needs,” Floyd said in an article on the University of Arizona’s website .

“Touch equals survival as infants. If we don’t have someone touching us and helping to meet our needs, then we don’t survive.”

People living alone, who have limited in-person interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic, could be dealing with hereditary “skin hunger,” Floyd said.

“Just like regular hunger reminds us that we’re not getting enough to eat, skin hunger is the recognition that we’re not getting enough touch in our lives,” he said. “Many people these days are recognizing that they miss getting hugs, they miss touch, and it’s maybe the one thing technology hasn’t really figured out how to give us yet.”

Floyd’s research on affectionate behaviour found that genetics play a strong role in women, but not at all for men.

For women, affection is driven 45 per cent by hereditary factors and 55 per cent from their environment, such as personal experience and the media. Men, on the other hand, seem to rely solely on their environment, according to the research.

“A study like this makes room for us to talk about the possibility that a number of social and behavioural traits that we automatically assume are learned may also have a genetic component,” Floyd said.

“The trait of being affectionate may be more adaptive for women in an evolutionary sense. There is some speculation that affectionate behaviour is more health supportive for women than it is for men, and that it helps women to manage the effects of stress more than it does for men. That may be partly why women are more likely than men to inherit the tendency to behave that way rather than that tendency simply being a product of their environment.”