The reelection of compassion
and I'll talk about this in the practice a compassion is touch
and we have amazing hands
that are much more dexterous than are
non-human primate hands that enables to do all kinds of amazing things tool use
you know signals signs and the like
a various kinds have gripping behavior
course for caretaking and so we ask
can you communicate compassion with
a touch with tactile behavior now
I could talk for about 45 minutes with how amazing the skin is
our largest organ and I'll spare you those details
needless to say it's fascinating scientists are discovering specific
said neurons in the skin that process information about
touch we know the immune response
is right there in the skin which is why a lot of touch probably makes you live
longer
on and so my student Matt Hertenstein asked can you communicate
compassion and a lot of emotions were soon to talk about with touch
and indeed so we did a
is we built the barrier in our lab
and the person stuck their arm through and they waited and this other person is given
a list emergency had to touch the person with the one second touch
to the forearm and that person on the other side is like what the heck was
that
right and they make a guess and what you find
quite remarkably those are accuracy rates in the blue bars
right in this study chance guessing was
eight-percent right and what you're seeing
compassion they're getting it right about 55-60 percent of the time
pretty amazing sympathy in this case and I am ethically obliged
to tell you to gender differences in this study
we had all gender combinations women touching man and women
and vice versa on when the
the woman try to communicate
anger to the man you get zero right they had no idea what she was doing
I was like wow
that's unbelievable and when the man
try to communicate compassion to the woman she didn't know what was going on
So good luck. Ethologists who lived in
different parts of the world quickly recognize that
a in a lot of our cultures a
people spend most your time in direct physical contact with one another
you know estimates are that non-human primates been about 20 percent
in their waking days
grooming each other ten to twenty percent you go to
various other cultures in their spending a lot of time and direct physical
contact
on and regrettably we are a touch deprived culture
in the West and this has been documented
when I favorite examples is a researcher who studied the conversations of friends
in different parts of the world they're sitting in a cafe
and in England the two friends holding constant the unit of time
touched each other 0 times
in United States in bursts enthusiasm we touch each other
twice in Puerto Rico the same friends touched each other
180 times we know
you know a as a opportunity for intervention
this thing about these thought experiments on babies that replace in
orphanages
that had all this is 78 years ago
they had all the nutrients and warned in physical security
on died at rates of 75 percent
until they told the caretakers hold the baby
they stopped dying right unbelievable
mechanism of social well-being is touch maybe
the greatest Michelangelo said that to touch is to give life
and he was right he was absolutely right so
what we know in this realm of touch and I'll talk to you about
some cultivations our interventions that flow this
is that I when you touch somebody
Edmund Rolls the neuroscientists has found when you activate or a frontal cortex
that site of reward and compassion
and the like we know that touch build-ups cooperative relationships
or what a evolution is called it reinforces reciprocity
and their studies primates you see those two guys move in each other
I if that one on the left find some food accidentally
guess who shares that food with the one on the right
the use grooming to build a cooperative alliances there's basic study showing
touch signals safety
and trust up and needless to say
there's a whole new science of touch
at soothing and what we know now you can put your facts together
basic warm touch calms cardiovascular stress
it activates the vagus nerve James Gross at Stanford has found
one study has found that it leads to oxytocin release
it makes people more cooperative in in the prisoner's dilemma game
if the experimental walks by and says it's good to have have you in the experiment and the pats
that person on the back or she pats that person on the back that person is
you know twice as likely to cooperate just by feeling a pat on the back
it is profoundly important
so what about touch therapies
these are real this isn't some weird Berkeley idea that we spin out in a hot tub
I don't even own a hot tub but
and Tiffany Field has changed medical practice
by promoting the science of touch a
and this should be encouraged in classrooms and therapeutic settings
alike
some other highlights in the over eighty
studies touch therapies is rigorously conducted
by Tiffany Field and colleagues on
in hospital settings is that touching premature babies just
regular physical contact you get a boost
the a weight gain by 47 percent
touching the patients with Alzheimer's
engaging them to engage in social touch
precipitously leads to drops in their
depressive symptomatology its associated with that organic disease
for teachers and people working with kids
teachers who pat students on the back in a friendly way
that student is twice as likely to speak out in class
teacher librarians are studying the last year's founder pat their
student checking out the book on the an that student likes the library more and is
more likely to come back
there's new working at Berkeley School of Public Health just getting medical
doctors
to make eye contact pat the person on the back they're starting to show
greater survival rates in the face of
a complex diseases so this is gonna be
a very important
the wharf
home yeah in
the