How To Hug Scientifically

What to do with your hands? How long should it take so that it doesn’t take too long? Fear not, science has answers to these questions.

In a two-part study, the organizers set out to find out what makes one hug better than the other. In the first part of the experiment, the team recruited 45 college students and blindfolded them one at a time. The female researcher then entered the room and hugged the participant for one, five, or ten seconds.

Each hug was done in one of two ways. In the first “criss-cross” style, each hugger puts one hand over the shoulder on the back, and the other hand passes under the partner’s hand and also presses against the back. In the second, the so-called “neck-waist” style, the researcher places both arms under the partner’s arms. In total, each participant received six hugs.

While a laboratory setting might not seem like the best way to learn about these cultural traditions, the idea was to compare the length and style of hugs in the most controlled way. Ideally, the study would have involved men and women on either side of the embrace, but Anna Daren, a psychologist at the Goldsmiths University of London and the study’s first author, says the isolation began before she and her colleagues were able to collect this data in subsequent studies. …

Volunteers consistently rated hugs of less than 1 second as least enjoyable. On a 1–100 pleasure scale, the average 1-second hugs are within a minimum of 50. Five and ten-second hugs scored a maximum of 60, with no significant difference between the two longer hugs. As the team reported this month in Acta Psychologica, the hugging style meant little.

If 10 seconds seems like an uncomfortable long time to hug a stranger, you are not alone. Daren says her team was surprised by this discovery. She thinks that over time, the members may have become accustomed to being hugged by blindfolded strangers. As they acclimated, perhaps some of the oddities have passed.

What happens in 10 seconds? Will the hug be even more enjoyable? Or is it getting weird already? “What I would like to see in the study is this state in which you actually continue to hug even more,” says Julian Packheiser, a biopsychologist at the Ruhr University in Bochum who was not involved but is studying the effects of hugging on the body and the brain in particular.

Another factor not covered in the study is the intensity of the hug. How hard should you be pressing against your partner? Pachyser suspects that the closeness of the relationship in the embrace plays a role. “If it’s a romantic relationship, the strength with which you cuddle with your partner can be much greater than if it was a chance meeting,” he says.

The second phase of the experiment took place in the real world. The researchers recruited 100 pairs of students who socialized on campus and hugged in public. The team collected data on gender, height, and how emotionally close couples rated themselves.

Without prompting students how to cuddle, the researchers found that the criss-cross style was more common, accounting for 66 out of 100 hugs. Cross hugging was especially common in male couples, with 82% of the 28 couples observed opting for this style. Neither emotional closeness nor height had a significant effect on hugging style. However, the researchers note that most of the participants were relatively close in height, and it is possible that the neck and waist (the second hugging style in the experiment) play a larger role when the difference in height is more significant.

Pahaizer praises this second phase of the study: “It’s really nice that they’ve confirmed this in real life.”

Daren says that men’s and women’s preference for cross-hugging was especially interesting because previous research has shown that people are more equal in this style of a hug. Criss-cross can convey some intimacy without adding romance, she says.

Daren believes this trend may have something to do with men who are preoccupied with passing romantic hints on to their hugging partner. “When we did this second study, we were talking to people,” she says. They often said that the neck and waist seemed a little more intimate.

Overall, the results indicate that a hug that will leave a pleasant imprint on your memory will be a 5 to 10-second hug with arms crossed.