Interpersonal touch can facilitate prosocial behavior: people briefly touched on the upper arm are more likely to comply with a request and offer their help. This study sought to investigate whether touch can increase helping after a situation of social exclusion, that normally leads to decreased prosocial behavior. In a laboratory setting, social exclusion was manipulated by giving participants bogus feedback about the future course of their social lives. The study had 3 (social feedback: future-alone vs. future-belonging vs. misfortune- control) x 2 (touch vs. no touch) between-participants factorial design. After the social exclusion manipulation, the experimenter touched or not participants' upper arm briefly in a casual way. Helping behavior was measured by asking participants to volunteer for extra studies. Participants were also given some questionnaires evaluating their current mood and attitudes towards the experimenter. The analysis of facial expressions was performed with the help of two coders, who watched the video segments and coded emotions of participants by the means of the FLOWSENSE program. It was predicted that socially excluded participants, who were briefly touched, would volunteer for more studies and exhibit more positive emotions than socially excluded participants, who were not touched. Although the hypotheses were not supported, the current study has demonstrated that touch increases helping behavior of the recipient. This result is quite important for the research on touch because the larger part of previous findings were obtained in field studies in public places.

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Touch,Social Exclusion,Helping

• Psicologia - Ciências Sociais