Love and affectionate touch toward romantic partners all over the world

Summary

This cross-cultural project examined whether love is universally linked to affectionate touch between romantic partners. Across two studies with 7,880 participants, the first surveyed people in 37 countries to test the general association between love and touch behaviours, while the second used a finer-grained scale of specific touch behaviours such as stroking, hugging, and kissing. The authors found that affectionate touch was reported in romantic partnerships worldwide, supporting its status as a near-universal feature of intimate relationships. In both studies, greater love was significantly and positively associated with more frequent affectionate touch. This relationship held even after accounting for potentially relevant control variables, suggesting the love-touch link is robust across cultures.