Hugging

Consensual Hugs Seem to Reduce Stress People who had a conflict in a given day but also got hugged were not as affected by the negative interaction as were their unhugged counterparts.   When a friend comes to you after a stressful day, how do you comfort them? Do you let them rant? Do you pour them a glass of wine? Those could work. But a new study finds that a very effective technique is also simple and easy. “Hugging.” Michael Murphy is a psychology postdoc at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He wanted to know if people who received hugs regularly could handle stress and conflict better. “Individuals who report perceiving the availability of a network of supportive individuals tend to show better adaptation when faced with stress.” But just because you have a support network does not mean that you definitely feel that support. “So some researchers have argued that many of the behaviors we use to support others who are stressed might actually be counterproductive because these behaviors might unintentionally communicate to others that they're not competent to manage stress.”/.../