When someone massages my neck or even just runs a finger across my skin it feels pleasant, but doing the same things to myself basically yields no sensation. I even remember going to the doctor as a child and enjoying the feeling of getting my ears checked with whatever the tool is they use for it, or the feeling when my grandma would comb through my hair to check for lice. Again doing it myself doesn’t feel nearly as good even though it’s the same physical movements. Why?
In: Biology
One element of this is that we evolved to form bonds with other members of our species: that’s how we ensured our safety and survival.
We are born helpless and thus have strong, hard-wired drive to seek proximity to others through physical touch: the only way the helpless infant can ensure survival. Even as adults, we ensured survival by living in groups, working as tribes rather than as individuals, again evolving the preference for proximity to others and the drive to form bonds.
This survival instinct, the preference to have skin-to-skin contact, lives on in our experience of others’ touch being comforting or pleasurable.
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