The Psychology of Affection Part II

A continuation of my findings:

Given the common stereotypes of how men and women differ in what they value about relationships, it might be surprising for you to learn that there were no gender differences in attitudes toward the importance of physical affection. However, when asked to rank order the 7 types of physical affection (listed in part I of my post), men and women did show differences in the manner of physical affection they said they expressed to their romantic partners. Men gave the strongest preference to kissing on the lips and backrubs/massages, stating that they felt that these forms of affection were expressive of love. Women preferred cuddling/holding and holding hands as ways of expressing their feelings.

Additionally, though, when asked to rate how much they enjoyed each form of physical affection, it turned out the amount of marijuana consumed before hand had less of an affect on the results than the decibel level of the reggae. Fortunately, both men and women liked kissing on the lips (or the men would’ve had no one to kiss). These ratings of enjoyment of physical affection also showed that women, more than men, liked to hug and be hugged, and get real high. Whereas the men, though enjoying the grass, tended more toward higher decibel levels.

Because the participants were, in the majority, members of the Rastafarian movement, this created some important limitations to the study’s findings. Rastafarianism is an offshoot of Abrahamic religious traditions like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Rastafarians believe in the Judeo-Christian God and call him Jah. They believe Christ came to Earth as a divine manifestation of Jah. The Church strongly advocates premarital sexual abstinence and advises that couples not engage in “excessive” physical affection, including spooning, eye gouging, small joint manipulation, gogoplatas, hair washing, and weaving beads into one another's dreadlocks.

Furthermore, as the study focused on non-sexual physical affection, this means that any expressions of intimacy associated with sexuality could not be studied as correlates of relationship satisfaction.

One might argue that the number of types of physical affection must surely total more than seven. However, when the authors examined other possibilities, these tended to be readily reduced to the ones they tested. Furthermore, most of the participants asserted a strong preference for having a list of seven, given the number of colors in the rainbow. There are also cultural variations in expressions of physical affection, such as the tendency of people from certain countries to store their women in closets or on shelves.

Even with these potential limitations, the study was groundbreaking in nature, focusing the research lens on one of the most common areas of couple communication. Unfortunately, in the decade following its publication, there have been no published studies to advance research specifically on this topic of affection outside of sexual intimacy. With the plethora of research on intimacy in general, it would seem worthwhile to return to the original question posed by these researchers.

What does this all mean for you? According to the study’s authors, there are clear implications for helping couples improve their relationship satisfaction. Many of which may be adapted without the use of marijuana or even reggae. As they state in the paper, couples therapists are always looking “for ways to improve their clients’ relationships.” Physical affection, marijuana, and reggae are three stones that have “heretofore been mostly left unturned” (p. 239).