Love and affectionate touch toward romantic partners all over the world

Sorokowska, Agnieszka (author), Kavčič, Tina (author), Zupančič, Maja (author)

Touch is the primary way people communicate intimacy in romantic relationships, and affectionate touch behaviors such as stroking, hugging and kissing are universally observed in partnerships all over the world. Here, we explored the association of love and affectionate touch behaviors in romantic partnerships in two studies comprising 7880 participants. In the first study, we used a cross-cultural survey conducted in 37 countries to test whether love was universally associated with affectionate touch behaviors. In the second study, using a more fine-tuned touch behavior scale, we tested whether the frequency of affectionate touch behaviors was related to love in romantic partnerships. As hypothesized, love was significantly and positively associated with affectionate touch behaviors in both studies and this result was replicated regardless of the inclusion of potentially relevant factors as controls. Altogether, our data strongly suggest that affectionate touch is a relatively stable characteristic of human romantic relationships that is robustly and reliably related to the degree of reported love between partners.

• Language: English
• Keywords: touch, love, romantic relationships, cross-cultural studies
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: ZF - Faculty of Health Sciences; FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 01.01.2023
• Year: 2023
• Number of pages: Str. 1-13
• Numbering: Vol. 13, article no. 5497
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-152738
• UDC: 159.922:177.6
• ISSN on article: 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-31502-1
• COBISS.SI-ID: 147821059
• Publication date in RUL: 05.12.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Scientific reports
• Shortened title: Sci. rep.
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• ISSN: 2045-2322
• COBISS.SI-ID: 18727432

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
• Description: A creative commons license that bans commercial use, but the users don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: dotik, ljubezen, partnerski odnosi, medkulturne študije

Projects

• Funder: Other - Other funder or multiple funders
• Funding programme: University of Wroclaw, Poland
• Name: “Being Human” Scientific Excellence Incubator

• Funder: MESTD - Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of Republic of Serbia
• Project number: 451-03-47/2023-01/200165
• Name: Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovations of the Republic of Serbia