Infectious touching: Has COVID-19 changed our perceptions of social touch? A neural and behavioural study

Abstract

Social touch serves as a pivotal element in stress reduction and cultivation of social bonds. The COVID-19 pandemic's constraints greatly affected social behaviour and may have reshaped human responses to such stimuli. We investigated the impact of COVID-19 on perceptions of interpersonal touch by comparing behavioural and electrophysiological data from pre- and peri-pandemic cohorts. Based on the vigilance-avoidance theory, we hypothesized that prolonged threat context of the pandemic would lead to reduced attentional and emotional engagement with social touch. Specifically, we expected that participants tested during the pandemic would rate social touch images as less pleasant and show lower amplitudes and longer latency in the P1 and lower amplitudes in the late positive potential (LPP) Electroencephalogram (EEG) components - markers of early attention and emotional processing - compared to pre-pandemic. Ninety participants rated the pleasantness of images showing human and inanimate touch or non-touch. As predicted, peri-pandemic participants rated social touch images as less pleasant than pre-pandemic participants. EEG analysis revealed a shift in P1 responses: while pre-pandemic participants showed higher P1 amplitudes for touch than non-touch stimuli, this distinction disappeared during the pandemic. No significant differences were found in LPP or P1. Results suggest that social distancing reduced the salience of interpersonal touch.