Open AccessThe Dark Side of Interpersonal Touch: Physical Contact Leads to More Non-compliance With Preventive Measures to COVID-19
Author(s) -
Heng Li,
Yu Cao
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
psychological reports
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.645
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1558-691X
pISSN - 0033-2941
DOI - 10.1177/00332941211051985
Subject(s) - psychology , feeling , body contact , interpersonal communication , compliance (psychology) , social psychology , handshake , eye contact , interpersonal relationship , intervention (counseling) , perspective (graphical) , great rift , covid-19 , personality , developmental psychology , medicine , computer science , disease , pathology , astronomy , infectious disease (medical specialty) , physics , optoelectronics , artificial intelligence , psychiatry , overhead (engineering) , operating system
Following preventive measures is crucial for slowing the rate of COVID-19 spread. To date, most research has focused on the role of individual differences and personality in compliance with preventive measures to COVID-19. Building on findings that interpersonal touch instills a feeling of security, we propose that interpersonal touching behavior, an underexplored factor tied to social interaction, leads to more breaches of coronavirus restrictions by inducing security feelings. In a lab experiment (Experiment 1) and a field study (Experiment 2), we demonstrated that a female experimenter's fleeting and comforting pat on the shoulder made people less willing to abide by preventive measures in their self-report and actual behavior. Further, we excluded a potential alternative explanation that touch intervention by the experimenter presents the defiance of COVID-19 rules because the effect cannot be observed when the touch consists of a handshake rather than a comforting pat on the shoulder (Experiment 3). Finally, consistent with our theoretical perspective, the results revealed that sense of security mediated the effect of interpersonal touch on violation of instructions to follow coronavirus precautions. Taken together, interpersonal touch not only enhances trust and security, but also can push people away from health guidelines.