Self-Touching and Impressions of Others

Abstract

This study compared subjects' impressions of their conversational partners who either displayed or did not display self-touching. Previous reports have focused on self-touching as an indication of underlying negative affect. Subjects were individually videotaped in two separate S-minute conversations with two different confederates: One confederate self-touched during the conversation and the other did not. Self-touching confederates were rated significantly more positively on three of four composite variables (working relationship, honest, and outgoing), and first versus second interactions were regarded more positively on likable person and honest variables. Discussion is focused on discrete and continuous self-touching, functional aspects of self-touching, and the issue of saliency for performers and observers.