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Not everyone is a hugger. Hugs can feel awkward or uncomfortable for some people.
At the same time, hugging can be essential for humans. Hugs can reduce stress by calming our sympathetic nervous system; they can make us feel safe, loved and not alone.
But like kisses, handshakes and fist bumps, hugs are not the safest way to greet people outside our immediate family members during a pandemic.
Are you a hugger? Do you miss hugs? Who do you want to hug again when life returns to normal? If you don’t like to hug, are there other greetings you’ll be happy to reinstate?
In “When We Can Hug Again, Will We Remember How It Works?” A.C. Shilton writes about the “HuggieBot 1.0,” an on-demand squeeze machine, and recent research on hugging:
Alexis Block was worried that the robot she’d built was malfunctioning. She was testing the optimal hug duration for her “HuggieBot 1.0,” a purple-furred, on-demand squeeze machine. Ms. Block had built pressure sensors into the machine’s torso, so if the human tester tapped or squeezed the robot on the back, it let go. But this hug was going on and on. “I worried that the pressure sensors were malfunctioning,” she said.
Her palms began to sweat (getting stuck in the clutches of a giant robot is no one’s idea of a good time). But then, the hug ended, and the HuggieBot released its test subject. When Ms. Block, who is working toward her Ph.D. at the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems in both Stuttgart, Germany and Zurich, Switzerland, asked the subject if something had gone wrong, he surprised her by explaining that he had wanted the hug to last a long time. “He said, ‘I just needed it, and the robot wasn’t going to judge me.’”
As the weeks of coronavirus quarantine stretched into months, hugs are among the many things isolated people found themselves aching for. Hugs are good for humans — perhaps more valuable than many of us realized, until we found ourselves missing them.
Research has shown that hugs can lower our cortisol levels during stressful situations, and can raise oxytocin levels and maybe even lower our blood pressure. A 2015 paper published in Psychological Science even found that study subjects who got more hugs were less likely to get sick when exposed to a cold virus than those who weren’t hugged as often.
“The need for human contact is extremely profound,” said Judith Hall, a psychology professor emerita at Northeastern University who researched interpersonal touch at the university’s Social Interaction Lab. But whether to hug someone or not sometimes seems fraught.
Not everyone enjoys having their body squished against yours — as evidenced by the wealth of “Not a Hugger” T-shirts available online. Ms. Block, the hug robot researcher, knows this all too well. Her best friend defines herself as “not a hugger.” She makes an exception for Ms. Block, but, “She told me she actually preferred hugging my robot to hugging me because sometimes I don’t let go,” Ms. Block, who is now working on a HuggieBot 2.0, said with a laugh.
Students, read the entire article, then tell us:
Do you miss hugs? Would you want an embrace from a hug robot like the HuggieBot 2.0?
Ms. Shilton writes that the first rules of hugging are “You don’t have to hug anyone you don’t want to,” and “It’s best to ask before going in for a squeeze — especially if it’s someone you don’t know well.” Why do you think these are such important rules? What “rules” around hugging would you establish if you could?
Who do you want to hug again after the pandemic ends? Do you have a long list, or just a few people you’re especially close to?
Before the coronavirus took over our lives, how did you typically greet family and friends? Were you likely to hug others, or were handshakes, fist-bumps, cheek-kisses, head nods, bows or anything else a more central part of your repertoire? Have you adopted any new forms of greeting during these social-distancing months?
Do you have a memory of a time when a hug — or some other form of comforting physical touch — was especially meaningful to you? Why do you think you still remember it? In thinking about your own experience, would you say that you agree that “hugs are good for humans”?
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Students 13 and older in the United States and the United Kingdom, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
