Body Maps Show Where We Like To Be Touched

Touching is an essential part of any relationship. Handshakes, pats on the back and kisses on the lips -- a touch can mean a lot. But some touching isn't quite so welcome, as you can plainly see in new "body maps."

Researchers from Aalto University in Finland and the University of Oxford in England published body maps that show exactly where men and women from different cultures allow touches by friends, family, extended family and strangers.

To complete her research, Juulia Suvilehto, a doctoral candidate at Aalto University and the lead author of a paper about the research, and her colleagues asked a total of 1,368 people from Finland, France, Russia, Italy and the United Kingdom to look at the body map online and indicate those parts of their body that they would allow relatives, friends and strangers to touch.

The gender of the toucher is indicated by color -- the word cousin in red means a female cousin, and in blue means a male cousin.

Yellow means touching is OK, and darker colors mean touching is not. Areas of black outlined in blue indicate areas that are taboo to touch.

Some of the chart might not surprise you. The map suggests that when it comes to touching, relationship dictates all. Our partners have full access to our bodies, but we're way less interested in being handled by a stranger.

But these charts do tell us something interesting: Women seem more OK with being touched than men. And men are more OK with a woman touching them than a man.

#ApplicationsofScience #Discovery #Suggestion