The need for unpleasant touch: Behavioural and physiological investigations into negative affective touch and how it can be used to shape interactions

当我们选择与一件物品互动时，比如购买新衣服或软装家具，我们对喜欢或不喜欢一件物品的决定受到触摸所唤起的感觉的强烈影响（想想那件粗糙的、让人发痒的毛衣！）触摸不同的材料会产生从愉快到不愉快的情绪，在最坏的情况下，甚至可能导致疼痛的感觉。虽然连续体的两端（即愉快的触摸和疼痛）已经被广泛研究，但不愉快的触摸的概念却很少受到关注。尽管不愉快的触摸会带来消极的情绪反应，但这在接触中仍然很重要，消极的影响与强烈的生理和行为（回避）反应有关。我们的项目侧重于理解对不愉快触摸的常见反应，包括潜在的感知和生理机制，为获得关于使用材料进行行为指导的重要见解提供了一个独特的机会（例如，使用不愉快的材料来防止接触危险物质）。这个跨学科的项目将对理解情感不愉快触摸的不同方面做出重大贡献。我们将首先识别和分类大多数人认为触摸不愉快的材料和材料特性。然后，我们将使用这些信息来确定触摸不愉快的材料如何影响感知和注意力，并改变我们的行为和与物体的互动。我们将通过研究习得联想对不愉快材料的感知和反应的作用来扩展我们的工作（即，感知到的触觉不愉快可以通过学习改变吗）。这种行为研究将被生理学研究补充，以确定与不愉快感觉相关的身体反应（例如，通过唤醒）。至关重要的是，我们将利用对不愉快触摸的感知、行为和生理反应的综合知识来确定这些不同方面是如何相互联系的，并预测人类在某些情况下的行为。除了确定对不愉快触摸的常见反应外，我们还旨在调查可能解释个体间差异的因素（例如，人格特征，触觉敏度，触觉敏感性），因为很明显，个体在他们认为不愉快触摸的材料以及这些感知的强度上存在差异（例如，有些人讨厌触摸面粉）。总之，这个新颖的研究项目结合了触觉感知、动作控制、认知和生物心理学以及生理学等领域的知识和方法，在消极情感触觉感知领域产生了新的见解。这些见解具有很高的理论价值，但对于告知鼓励安全行为的产品设计也具有直接的实际意义（不要碰那个！）

When we choose to interact with an object, like purchasing new clothing or soft furnishings, our decision on whether we like or dislike an item is strongly affected by the feelings evoked from touching (just think of that rough itchy jumper!). Touching different materials generates emotions that range from pleasantness to unpleasantness, and in the worst case, may even cause the feeling of pain. While both ends of that continuum (i.e., pleasant touch and pain) have been studied extensively, the concept of unpleasant touch has gained little attention. Even though unpleasant touch gives a negative emotional reaction, this is nevertheless important in touch, and negative affect is associated with strong physiological and behavioural (avoidance) responses. Our project focuses on understanding the common reactions to unpleasant touch, including the underlying perceptual and physiological mechanisms, offering a unique opportunity to obtain important insights on the use of materials for behavioural guidance (e.g., using unpleasant materials to prevent contact with dangerous substances). This interdisciplinary project will make a significant contribution to understanding the different aspects of emotional unpleasant touch. We will start by identifying and classifying the materials and material properties that most humans reliably perceive as unpleasant-to-touch. We will then use this information to determine how unpleasant-to-touch materials affect perception and attention and alter our actions and interactions with objects. We will expand our work by investigating the role of learnt associations on the perception of, and reaction to, unpleasant materials (i.e., can perceived tactile unpleasantness be altered through learning). This behavioural work will be complemented by physiological investigations identifying bodily reactions linked to the feeling of unpleasantness (e.g., through arousal). Crucially, we will then use the combined knowledge on the perceptual, behavioural and physiological responses to unpleasant touch to determine how these different aspects are interlinked and predict human behaviour in certain situations. In addition to identifying common reactions to unpleasant touch, we also aim to investigate the factors which may account for interindividual differences (e.g., personality traits, tactile acuity, touch sensitivity), as it is evident that individuals differ on which materials they perceived as being unpleasant to touch and how strong these perceptions are (e.g., some people hate touching flour).In sum, this novel research program combines knowledge and methodology from the fields of haptic perception, action control, cognitive and biological psychology, as well as physiology to generate new insights in the field of negative affective touch perception. These insights are of high theoretical interest, but also have direct practical relevance for informing product design that encourages safe behaviour (keep your hands off that!).