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Discovery: Anatomy Of Touch: Unwanted touch

Magazines & Reviews

Unwanted touch

19/10/2020 GMT

Anatomy Of Touch

BBC World Service - Discovery, Anatomy Of Touch, Unwanted touchSearch BBC

What are the boundaries between acceptable and unwanted touch?

Claudia Hammond explores unwanted touch and who we do and don’t mind touching us – and where. She draws on insights from the largest study that’s ever been conducted on the topic of touch – The Touch Test - commissioned by Wellcome Collection. Almost forty thousand people from all over the world chose to take part. Claudia discusses where we draw the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable touch, at work or in the street, with Dr Amy Kavanagh, a visually impaired activist and campaigner, Joanna Bourke, Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London and the author of “Rape - a History”, and Dr Natalie Bowling, a psychologist at the University of Greenwich who co-created the Touch Test and has been crunching the numbers. After #meToo and Covid, could unwanted touch even become a thing of the past?

Discovery: Anatomy Of Touch

Claudia Hammond explores current global attitudes to touch revealed by The Touch Test.

Claudia Hammond explores current global attitudes to touch revealed by The Touch Test. This was an online study commissioned by Wellcome Collection and created by psychologists at Goldsmiths University of London which investigated public attitudes towards and experiences of the physical experience of touch. Almost 40,000 people from 112 different countries chose to take part between 21st January and 30th March 2020.
 
The first programme takes  the result that around three quarters of the participants have a positive attitude to and around a quarter have a negative attitude to touch. Claudia and guests explore what good touch looks and feels like, and what is happening to our physiology and psychology when we make contact with another person. She hears from two flatmates who under lockdown decided to allow themselves a daily hug. 
 
Claudia also discusses the concept of touch hunger, a craving for human contact, physical connection and warmth. Has touch hunger increased during the pandemic and what might be the long term consequences of our mental health and future relationships? Claudia tries out an app that can overcome the lack of touch.

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