The Power of Touch

The Power of Touch Every human has eight distinct emotions -- anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, sympathy, happiness, and sadness. All these emotions are displayed and given if various ways. Most often they are verbally communicated from person to person. This article talks about how these emotions are communicated non-verbally through touch. The article starts out with a story from a subway train. It talks about a child being comforted by his mother through a simple squeeze of the hand and couple showing affection to one another through non-verbal communication. Later on in the article, it talks of an experiment testing various touches on a blind folded person. This person was observed after each test for the different emotions they displayed. The test proved a 78 percent accuracy rate of correct touches with correct emotions displayed. A research method that would be applicable to this experiment would be a cross sectional study. This test is fitting because different age groups can be observed and the results can decipher when the various touches are inferred as the correct emotion. One study that would not work is the longitudinal study. This experiment does not involve many years to figure out correct results so it would just be a waste of time and money to use a longitudinal study. Another type of research method that would not work for this type of experiment would be a naturalistic observation study. This type of method involves just observing the studied object without any interaction that would alter the results. This experiment involves touching the object being studied so a naturalistic observation would not