Interpersonal touch behavior differs across cultures, yet no study to date has systematically tested for cultural variation in affective touch, nor examined the factors that might account for this variability. Here, over 14,000 individuals from 45 countries were asked whether they embraced, stroked, kissed, or hugged their partner, friends, and youngest child during the week preceding the study. We then examined a range of hypothesized individual-level factors (sex, age, parasitic history, conservatism, religiosity, and preferred interpersonal distance) and cultural-level factors (regional temperature, parasite stress, regional conservatism, collectivism, and religiosity) in predicting these affective-touching behaviors. Our results indicate that affective touch was most prevalent in relationships with partners and children, and its diversity was relatively higher in warmer, less conservative, and religious countries, and among younger, female, and liberal people. This research allows for a broad and integrated view of the bases of cross-cultural variability in affective touch.

人际接触行为因文化而异，但迄今为止还没有研究系统地测试情感接触的文化差异，也没有研究可能解释这种差异的因素。在这里，来自 45 个国家的 14,000 多人被问及他们在研究前一周是否拥抱、抚摸、亲吻或拥抱他们的伴侣、朋友和最小的孩子。然后，我们检查了一系列假设的个人层面因素（性别、年龄、寄生虫病史、保守主义、宗教信仰和首选的人际距离）和文化层面的因素（区域温度、寄生虫压力、区域保守主义、集体主义和宗教信仰）来预测这些感人的行为。我们的研究结果表明，情感接触在与伴侣和孩子的关系中最为普遍，在较温暖、不那么保守和宗教的国家，以及在年轻、女性和自由主义人群中，它的多样性相对较高。这项研究允许对情感接触中跨文化变异的基础进行广泛而综合的观察。