Don’t kiss a stranger, most people prefer a gentle handshake
IT IS a familiar social dilemma. You meet a stranger for the first time and in a split second must decide whether to offer a chilly handshake or risk offence with a kiss on the cheek.
Now, research from Oxford University has found that erring on the side of caution could be the best way to put people at their ease.
The biggest study ever conducted into physical contact suggests that most people harbour an underlying reticence at being touched by a stranger anywhere but on their hands.
Prof Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist, who led the study, said that, although kissing at a first meeting was now socially acceptable, people will often adopt an “arm hold” manoeuvre to make the practice less alarming.
“Most people will put their hand on the arm of the person as a braking mechanism and to let the other person know that they are not about to chomp them,” he said.
“We interpret touch depending on the context of the relationship. We may perceive a touch in a particular place from a relative or friend as a comforting gesture, while the same touch from a partner might be more pleasurable, and from a stranger it would be entirely unwelcome.
“I would guess that kissing a stranger on the cheek would still make a lot of people uncomfortable. But with modern life it has become as conventional as a handshake and so no longer seems overly familiar, especially if you have been introduced by a friend.”
To see what kind of touching people found acceptable, researchers from Oxford and Finland’s Aalto University asked more than 1,300 men and women from five countries to colour in areas of the human body that they would allow particular people to touch, from their partner to a stranger.
The answers were combined to create a map showing for the first time where the touchable areas of the body are for particular relationships and revealing which areas are off limits.
Some results were unsurprising, such as women being generally more comfortable with being touched than men. For most women, however, it would be completely taboo to be touched intimately be someone other than their partner or mother.
Italians were less comfortable with being touched than Russians, while Finns were the most comfortable.
Prof Dunbar added that the rise of social networking could damage relationships in the long term. “Even in an era of mobile communications and social media, touch is still important for establishing and maintaining the bonds between people,” he said.
Debretts warned that age and location must also be borne in mind when deciding whether to kiss or shake hands. “Older people may not want to be kissed at all and even if they do not mind they often only expect one kiss,” said a spokesman.
“Some men now kiss socially, but kissing is rare amongst the older generation and within more traditional professions or in very rural areas.”
The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
‘Kissing is rare amongst the older generation and within more traditional professions or in very rural areas’
Only a generation or two ago the British seemed to be convinced that life was not a game of physical contact. If a man saw a woman of his acquaintance, he was equipped with a hat, the brim of which he could touch in greeting. Shaking hands was for people to whom one had newly been introduced. But today everything is uncertain. The curse of the mwa-mwa kiss means no one knows whether a cheek is to be proffered to a stranger, and, if so, how many applications of the osculatory apparatus should be attempted. Amid this promiscuous pecking has come a new awareness that some cultures eschew even handshakes between the sexes, let alone kisses. So it is something of a comfort that scientists from Oxford have concluded that caution is the wisest course in social intercourse. On that we can shake.