Haptic communication is nonverbal communication and interaction via the sense of touch. Touch can come in many different forms, some can promote physical and psychological well-being. A warm, loving touch can lead to positive outcomes while a violent touch can ultimately lead to a negative outcome. The sense of touch allows one to experience different sensations such as pleasure, pain, heat, or cold.
One of the most significant aspects of touch is the ability to convey and enhance physical intimacy. Touch can be categorized in many terms such as positive, playful, control, ritualistic , task-related or unintentional. It can be both sexual kissing is one example that some perceived as sexual , and platonic such as hugging or a handshake. Striking , pushing, pulling, pinching, kicking , strangling and hand-to-hand fighting are forms of touch in the context of physical abuse.
Touch is the most sophisticated and intimate of the five senses. Human babies have been observed to have enormous difficulty surviving if they do not possess a sense of touch, even if they retain sight and hearing. Similarly to infants, in chimpanzees the sense of touch is highly developed. As newborns they see and hear poorly but cling strongly to their mothers. Harry Harlow conducted a controversial study involving rhesus monkeys and observed that monkeys reared with a "terry cloth mother", a wire feeding apparatus wrapped in softer terry cloth which provided a level of tactile stimulation and comfort, were considerably more emotionally stable as adults than those with a mere "wire mother".
For his experiment, he presented the infants with a clothed surrogate mother and a wire surrogate mother which held a bottle with food. It turns out that the rhesus monkeys spent most of their time with the terry cloth mother, over the wire surrogate with a bottle of food, which indicates that they preferred touch, warmth, and comfort over sustenance.
Heslin outlines five haptic categories: [ 8 ]. The intent of a touch is not always exclusive and touching can evolve to each one of Heslin's categories. Managers should know the effectiveness of using touch while communicating to subordinates, but need to be cautious and understand how touch can be misunderstood.
