In a paper due out this year in the journal Emotion, Mr. Kraus and his co-authors, Cassy Huang and Dr. Keltner, report that with a few exceptions, good teams tended to be touchier than bad ones. The most touch-bonded teams were the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, currently two of the league’s top teams; at the bottom were the mediocre Sacramento Kings and Charlotte Bobcats.

I’m glad the article gives a shout-out to Tiffany Field and her associates at the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami; they’ve done a marvelous job at generating and summarizing the research into touch.

While I’m excited that there’s more and more evidence to show that positive touch is not only good, but necessary for us, I’m sad that we even need science to go in that direction. I’d like to think that most everyone knows that a hug can do more than words to help with a loss, or that a gentle direction with the hands can help a child learn a new skill like rolling out dough or swinging a baseball bat.

Original Article: Mind – New Research Focuses on the Power of Contact (NYTimes)