Fascinating and clever study of how personal contact norms vary by relationship

Image from PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Topography of social touching depends on emotional bonds between humans” (Suvilehto et al. 2015)

This is a really clever study in that it aggregates a lot of data that is collected rather efficiently from a lot of participants. This makes the results robust for this population (“cross-cultural”, but still all European), but we have to keep in perspective what this study demonstrates: this is about what people perceive is acceptable, not what they actually do… which would be a lot harder to observe. Still, there’s great value in understanding what people consider acceptable personal contact and how this norm varies with relationship.

I wonder if these results would be consistent in a truly cross-cultural study, such as one conducted with populations from all continents and multiple scales of social complexity.