Did you ever get home after a long day at work and just felt you needed a hug from your spouse?
Well, you are not alone. And now, researchers are beginning to quantify the benefits of those hugs, although it appears that women tend to benefit more from a brief hug than men do.
Researchers
tested
76 men and women, each of whom had a pre-existing romantic partner before the study. Both the experiment and control groups were told their hands would be placed in freezing water for three minutes, and then their heartbeats would be recorded along with a saliva sample taken.
In the experimental group, the romantic partners were encouraged to hug each other before they underwent the freezing hand stressor. In the control group, no pre-bath hug was allowed.
Researchers found that the women who were part of the hugging group had lower levels of cortisol in their saliva after the freezing bath. Cortisol is the hormone the body produces to lower stress. Researchers theorized that the reason why the hug-group women produced less cortisol than the control group is that the hug from their romantic partner naturally added to their stress tolerance levels, thus requiring less cortisol to be released while they were undergoing stress.
There was no difference in the cortisol levels among the male hug and no-hug groups.
While this study may suggest men require less physical affection than women, other studies have found that it is men who are more likely to suffer from a lack of physical touch than women. One
study
found that people who do not receive as much physical affection as they want suffer worse health outcomes and are less happy than those that report being happy with the amount of physical affection they receive. Men, far more than women, reported not getting the amount of tactile care they needed.
Gender differences aside, what is undisputed is that all of us need at least some human physical affection some of the time. And there is never any harm in asking about your spouse’s need for a hug right now.
