The need for unpleasant touch: behavioural and physiological investigations into negative affective touch and how it can be used to shape interactions

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Knut Drewing
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology ; Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 502774891

When we choose to interact with an object, like purchasing new clothing or soft furnishings, our decision on whether we like or dislike an item is strongly affected by the feelings evoked from touching (just think of that rough itchy jumper!). Touching different materials generates emotions that range from pleasantness to unpleasantness, and in the worst case, may even cause the feeling of pain. While both ends of that continuum (i.e., pleasant touch and pain) have been studied extensively, the concept of unpleasant touch has gained little attention. Even though unpleasant touch gives a negative emotional reaction, this is nevertheless important in touch, and negative affect is associated with strong physiological and behavioural (avoidance) responses. Our project focuses on understanding the common reactions to unpleasant touch, including the underlying perceptual and physiological mechanisms, offering a unique opportunity to obtain important insights on the use of materials for behavioural guidance (e.g., using unpleasant materials to prevent contact with dangerous substances). This interdisciplinary project will make a significant contribution to understanding the different aspects of emotional unpleasant touch. We will start by identifying and classifying the materials and material properties that most humans reliably perceive as unpleasant-to-touch. We will then use this information to determine how unpleasant-to-touch materials affect perception and attention and alter our actions and interactions with objects. We will expand our work by investigating the role of learnt associations on the perception of, and reaction to, unpleasant materials (i.e., can perceived tactile unpleasantness be altered through learning). This behavioural work will be complemented by physiological investigations identifying bodily reactions linked to the feeling of unpleasantness (e.g., through arousal). Crucially, we will then use the combined knowledge on the perceptual, behavioural and physiological responses to unpleasant touch to determine how these different aspects are interlinked and predict human behaviour in certain situations. In addition to identifying common reactions to unpleasant touch, we also aim to investigate the factors which may account for interindividual differences (e.g., personality traits, tactile acuity, touch sensitivity), as it is evident that individuals differ on which materials they perceived as being unpleasant to touch and how strong these perceptions are (e.g., some people hate touching flour).In sum, this novel research program combines knowledge and methodology from the fields of haptic perception, action control, cognitive and biological psychology, as well as physiology to generate new insights in the field of negative affective touch perception. These insights are of high theoretical interest, but also have direct practical relevance for informing product design that encourages safe behaviour (keep your hands off that!).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France, United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partners: Rochelle Ackerley, Ph.D.; Dr. Constanze Hesse