Robot Hugs Are Better Than No Hugs
looorg writes:
Human hugs > robot hugs > no hugs
A systematic review and multivariate meta-analysis of the physical and mental health benefits of touch interventions:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01841-8
The sense of touch has immense importance for many aspects of our life. It is the first of all the senses to develop in newborns and the most direct experience of contact with our physical and social environment. Complementing our own touch experience, we also regularly receive touch from others around us, for example, through consensual hugs, kisses or massages.
The recent coronavirus pandemic has raised awareness regarding the need to better understand the effects that touch-and its reduction during social distancing-can have on our mental and physical well-being. The most common touch interventions, for example, massage for adults or kangaroo care for newborns, have been shown to have a wide range of both mental and physical health benefits, from facilitating growth and development to buffering against anxiety and stress, over the lifespan of humans and animals alike. [...]
A critical issue highlighted in the pandemic was the lack of touch due to social restrictions. To accommodate the need for touch in individuals with small social networks (for example, institutionalized or isolated individuals), touch interventions using objects/robots have been explored in the past (for a review, see ref. 11). We show here that touch interactions outside of the human-human domain are beneficial for mental and physical health outcomes. [...]
[...] In conclusion, we show clear evidence that touch interventions are beneficial across a large number of both physical and mental health outcomes, for both healthy and clinical cohorts, and for all ages. These benefits, while influenced in their magnitude by study cohorts and intervention characteristics, were robustly present, promoting the conclusion that touch interventions can be systematically employed across the population to preserve and improve our health.
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