Trial reportPloS one2021
The comfort in touch: Immediate and lasting effects of handholding on emotional pain.
Trial report in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Biological research on mental pain, social pain and other pains not primarily felt in the body: methodological systematic review.The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science · 2025Pooled it
- Navigating the Unknown: Mental Pain, Uncertainty, and Self-Isolation in Bali and Java.Culture, medicine and psychiatry · 2025Article
- Comparing the neural bases of self- and social-reappraisal.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- It's Safe to Look: Maternal Touch Affects Infants' Fear Bias.Developmental science · 2025Article
- Touch as emotion regulation.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Review
- Article
- I wanna hold your hand: Handholding is preferred over gentle stroking for emotion regulation.PloS one · 2023Article
- Social relationships and relational pain in brain tumor patients and their partners.Frontiers in pain research (Lausanne, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- The analgesic power of pleasant touch in individuals with chronic pain: Recent findings and new insights.Frontiers in integrative neuroscience · 2022Review
- In contact with grief: Affectionate touch and intimacy in bereaved parents.International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHPArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Consoling touch is a powerful form of social support that has been repeatedly demonstrated to reduce the experience of physical pain. However, it remains unknown whether touch reduces emotional pain in the same way that it reduces physical pain. The present research sought to understand how handholding with a romantic partner shapes experiences of emotional pain and comfort during emotional recollection, as well as how it shapes lasting emotional pain associated with emotional experiences. Participants recalled emotionally painful memories or neutral memories with their partners, while holding their partner's hand or holding a squeeze-ball. They additionally completed a follow-up survey to report how much emotional pain they associated with the emotional experiences after recalling them in the lab with their partners. Although consoling touch did not reduce emotional pain during the task, consoling touch increased feelings of comfort. Moreover, participants later recalled emotional memories that were paired with touch as being less emotionally painful than those that were not paired with touch. These findings suggest that touch does not decrease the immediate experience of emotional pain and may instead support adaptive processing of emotional experiences over time.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.