Self-touches are frequently performed in everyday conversations. Although self-touch appears to relate to itching skin sensations or grooming needs, there has been cumulating evidence that the production of self-touch is associated with emotional regulation and cognitive control. Yet, individuals vary greatly in how often they perform self-touch in conversations. The present study investigated how individuals’ anxiety levels (i.e., state and trait anxiety), personality traits (i.e., neuroticism, agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness), and inhibition ability can contribute to the individual differences in conversational self-touch frequency. Spontaneous self-touch was elicited from a hundred and twenty-seven participants in an animated cartoon description task and a social dilemma-solving task. Results from the correlational analysis showed that the self-touch frequency was significantly positively related to individuals’ state and trait anxiety levels and their neuroticism scores but was significantly negatively related to their agreeableness scores. However, when all predictor variables were entered simultaneously into a multiple regression analysis, the result showed that the state anxiety score was the only significant predictor of the conversational self-touch frequency. This result is consistent with the proposal that self-touch behaviors are produced to regulate negative emotional states such as anxiety and stress. The findings of the present study shed new light on the function of self-touch behaviors in conversations, and highlight the importance of using a broad correlational approach with simultaneous consideration of multiple predictors in future research aiming to understand individual differences in self-touch behaviors.

自我触摸经常在日常对话中进行。尽管自我触摸似乎与皮肤瘙痒感或修饰需求有关，但越来越多的证据表明，自我触摸的产生与情绪调节和认知控制有关。然而，个人在对话中进行自我触摸的频率差异很大。本研究调查了个体的焦虑水平（即状态和特质焦虑）、人格特质（即神经质、宜人性、外向性、责任心和开放性）和抑制能力如何影响对话自我触摸频率的个体差异. 在动画描述任务和社会困境解决任务的 127 名参与者中引发了自发的自我触摸。相关性分析结果表明，自我触摸频率与个体的状态和特质焦虑水平及其神经质评分显着正相关，但与他们的宜人性评分显着负相关。然而，当所有预测变量同时进入多元回归分析时，结果表明状态焦虑评分是对话自我触摸频率的唯一显着预测因子。这一结果与产生自我触摸行为以调节焦虑和压力等负面情绪状态的提议是一致的。本研究的结果揭示了对话中自我触摸行为的功能，