Young men and women have very different attitudes towards touch in cross-sex friendships

Friendships between heterosexual men and women can be tricky to navigate, especially when it comes to tactile contact. Is that touch on the arm a gesture of platonic care and affection? Or an unwanted signal of sexual interest? A new survey by US researchers shows the situation is complicated by the contrasting attitudes of young men and women towards touch in cross-sex friendships.Michael Miller and his team quizzed 276 undergrads at an Eastern US University, including 128 women*. The participants were asked to consider a current or recent cross-sex friendship, and then they answered questions about the intimacy of this friendship, and their feelings about physical touch in the relationship. Friendship intimacy was gauged through a number of factors, including trust and spontaneity, uniqueness of the relationship, feeling close, and enjoying activities together.Overall, men wished for more physical touch in their cross-sex friendships than women, regardless of the friendship's level of intimacy. Perhaps the most intriguing result was that as friendship intimacy increased, men tended to say that they wished for less physical contact, whereas women showed the opposite pattern - with more friendship intimacy, they desired more physical contact.Mitchell and his team interpreted these results in line with evolutionary theory and contemporary social pressures. Evolutionary theory states that men are motivated towards having more sexual partners, whereas women are more invested in ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs