Do You Love to Hug? Research Explains Why

You may be hardwired for hugging

“The question that drove the study was: Recognizing that some people are more affectionate than others, what accounts for that variation, and is any part of that variation genetic?” said researcher Kory Floyd when explaining his work. So if you’re a hugger and your partner really isn’t, is there a reason for that?

According to Floyd’s study, which appeared in Communication Monographs, there is: It’s a little bit nature and a little bit nurture.

“When we measure people’s tendency to be affectionate and to receive affection from other people, almost without exception we find that women score higher than men.”

During his research, Floyd surveyed 464 pairs of adult twins, aged 19 to 84, about how much affection they tended to express and found that for women, their level of affection was 45 percent influenced by genetics and 55 percent influenced by environmental factors. However, when it came to the men in the study, their affectionate tendencies were entirely based on environmental factors, which can include things like interpersonal relationships, unique life experiences, and the media they consume.

The study also found that the women tended to be more affectionate than the men overall, which Floyd and his team expected.

“When we measure people’s tendency to be affectionate and to receive affection from other people, almost without exception we find that women score higher than men,” Floyd said. “The trait of being affectionate may be more adaptive for women in an evolutionary sense. There is some speculation that affectionate behavior is more health supportive for women than it is for men, and that it helps women to manage the effects of stress more than it does for men. That may be partly why women are more likely than men to inherit the tendency to behave that way, rather than that tendency simply being a product of their environment.”

“Our genes simply predispose us to certain kinds of behaviors; that doesn’t automatically mean we’re going to engage in those behaviors.”

But Floyd stresses that’s not all this tendency is about. Despite his findings, he notes there’s still a lot of individual factors that influence how affectionate someone is.

“Our genes simply predispose us to certain kinds of behaviors; that doesn’t automatically mean we’re going to engage in those behaviors,” Floyd explained. “And it certainly doesn’t mean that we have no control over them.”

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Source:

Blue, A. (2020, June 23). Are You a Hugger? It Might Be Hereditary. University of Arizona. https://news.arizona.edu/story/are-you-hugger-it-might-be-hereditary