Study shows that touching a partner eases pain

The scientific name for this is “characterisation behavior” and refers to human ability to sync with other people for the sake of living in a society.

Some studies have shown that people are not only able to sync their behavior, but that they can also sync their physiology.

“interpersonal synchronization” can be manifested in various ways. For example, when people watch the same film, their brain activity is synced. Similarly, when lovers look each other in the eye, their hearts beat literally like one.

New research conducted by scientists at Colorado University (CU) Boulder explores the role of touch in promoting interpersonial synchronization in the context of pain.

The team was led by Pavel Goldstein, a postdoctoral pain researcher at the Cognitive and Affective Neurocency Laboratory at CU Boulder, and the findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Dr. Goldstein explains what prompted his research, saying: “My wife had pain and all I thought was: “What can I do to help her?” I reached out and felt that it was helpful. I wanted to test it in the lab: can I really lower the pain with touch and if so?

Studying the Pain and Touch of Couples

Dr. Goldstein and his colleagues collected 22 heterosexual couples for their study, all between 23 and 32 years of age.

Researchers asked couples to participate in a series of tests that repeated the experience of being in a delivery hall.

The female participants were assigned the role of <x0 pain recipient”, while the men were “painmakers”.

Dr. Goldstein and their team recorded the respiratory rate and heart rate of participants using an electrocardiogram both in pain and painless conditions and in terms of touch and no touch.

In painless conditions, couples either sat together without being touched, sat together holding their hands, or were in separate rooms. In the pain scenario, all three situations were repeated, but the woman was subjected to <x0 light recovery from heat” in 2 minutes.

Touch restores syncronism, eases pain

The study confirmed previous findings and showed couples synced psychologically only by being in each other's society.

When the woman submitted to pain and her partner did not touch her, this physical mating declined dramatically. However, when the male partner held her hand, her heart rate and breathing were recompressed, and the woman's pain decreased. In addition, holding hands increased the empathy of the male partner.

In general, the touch seems to play a key role in interpersonial synchronization, as it increased physical mating whether the woman was in pain or not.

This confirms Dr. Goldstein, in which he showed that the more sympathetic a man is to a woman, the less painful his wife feels.

It seems that the more synchronizated we are, the more relaxed our pain is. However, researchers do not know whether lower - intensity pain increases interpersonal synchonicity, or whether it is the opposite.