Hugging your partner before having an anxiety-inducing experience reduces the release of cortisol, the stress hormone. This positive effect was only observed in women.
- All of the participants had heterosexual relationships, although the researchers did not exclude couples of other sexual orientations during study enrollment.
- This research would determine whether social restrictions, introduced during the pandemic, which reduced social contact may be associated with increases in stress and depression during the Covid-19 epidemic.
“Stress is omnipresent in our daily lives. It is therefore essential to identify behaviors that can reduce stress and help prevent its negative effects. Massages can help combat anxiety in women. However, for other forms of social contact, the potential stress-reducing effects have not been studied in detail.” This was indicated by researchers from the Ruhr University in Bochum in Germany in recent work.
An experience with couples
As part of their study published in the journal Plos One, they wanted to find out if a hug, one of the most common forms of social contact in many cultures, had a positive effect on stress. For this, they recruited 76 adults, aged 19 to 32, who were in a relationship. All participants underwent a stress test in which they were asked to immerse one hand in an ice bath for three minutes while maintaining eye contact with a camera.
Before this experiment, the team asked half of the couples to give each other a hug. As for the other volunteers, they did not kiss. The scientists measured various stress indicators, including the participants’ salivary cortisol levels before and after the test.
Kissing your partner can prevent a stress reaction in women
According to the results, women who hugged their partner before having this stressful experience showed a reduced cortisol (stress hormone) response compared to control subjects who did not kiss their lover. “No effect on stress could be observed in men”, can we read in the works. According to the authors, the study suggests that in women, brief hugs before stressful situations, such as exams, job interviews or presentations, can reduce cortisol release.
