It's surprisingly similar no matter what part of the world you're from …
There you are, sitting in a dingy apartment with no one around, alone, pining for the touch of another human being.
Except, not just any human being. Because being groped by strangers is disgusting and brushing hands with a distant relative on accident is awkward. Touch is powerful.
And according to this new fancy heat map, touch is universal.
In what's being labeled as the largest data collection quantifying where people don't mind being touched and by whom, a recent study suggests that the comfort levels people have with one another is the same — possibly through cultural gaps as well.
Almost 1,400 people from 5 different countries were given a task to rate whether or not it was okay for someone else to touch them. Responses were then graphed on a heat map in correlation to the person doing the touching.
For obvious reasons, the ass and special parts were considered "taboo" by everyone participating in the study. Those parts, also universally, were cool to be fondled if there was a close relationship between the two people.
Men and women's responses were different, however. Something the researchers weren't expecting.
“We were a bit surprised at how reluctant men were [to be touched] compared to women,” Oxford University’s Robin Dunbar, co-author of the study says.
The study says that country origins didn't play a huge factor, as one might expect with cultural differences across the board. Though, people in Britain were the most uncomfortable with being touched overall, while Finland ranked much higher on the Touchability Index.
“We hadn’t expected the Finns to turn out to be the most cuddly people,” Dunbars adds, “or that the Italians are almost as uncuddly as the Brits.”
Moral of the story: Keep your hands to yourself, as if anyone needs to be told this who isn't a toddler right now.
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