A study from the Department of Psychology at
Carnegie Mellon University, published this week in PLOS ONE,
looked at the social interactions of more than 400 people over
two weeks. A summary of their daily activities, moods, and
physical interactions revealed a causal link between emotional
states, conflicts, and the number of hugs a person gave or
received.
"Results indicated that there was an interaction between hug
receipt and conflict exposure such that receiving a hug was
associated with a smaller conflict-related decrease in positive
affect and a smaller conflict-related increase in negative
affect when assessed concurrently," the study reads. In plainer
English, hugging helped people feel less poorly after some kind
of conflict or negative event during their day.
"This effect was seen
across all genders and ages in the study, although women
reported more hugs than men. Our results are consistent with the
conclusion that both men and women may benefit equally from
being hugged on days when conflict occurs," the study found.
It did not seem to matter if the huggers were in a romantic
relationship at the time of a hug, the mood-related benefits
still stood. The study was authored by Michael Murphy, a
postdoctoral research associate at the Department of Psychology
at Carnegie Mellon.
In the study, he says
the research could be improved upon by pinpointing exactly what
kind of social relationships were involved in a hug, such as a
stranger or someone you were arguing with as opposed to a lover
or an a embrace from mom. "The lack of specificity regarding
from whom individuals received hugs also restricted our ability
to identify whether hugs from specific types of social partners
were more effective than those from others," Murphy wrote.