
Consensual Hugs Seem to Reduce Stress - LinuxBender
https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/consensual-hugs-seem-to-reduce-stress/
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dTal
Hmm, the study didn't hand out hugs, but merely correlated people who'd
happened to have received them. The study authors already note that
"Individuals who report perceiving the availability of a network of supportive
individuals tend to show better adaptation when faced with stress." People
with a support network are doubtless more likely to be hugged. Therefore it's
not clear to me that the hugs contribute anything, or that any attempt was
made to control for this - a classic case of "study measures correlation,
headline reports causality".

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chosenbreed
Good observation

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kelukelugames
I feel like non consensual anything adds stress. One of my least favorite
things is being hugged by people I work with and I always feel awkward turning
down a co worker.

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rjkennedy98
Why are you hugging your co-workers?

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snegu
Some people lean toward the hug as a greeting or farewell, especially women.
As a woman who doesn't like hugs, it's very uncomfortable for me. I used to
work at an agency, and sometimes we'd even end up hugging clients after a big
meeting.

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tyingq
Hang on for an uncomfortably long time and you'll get fewer hugs in the
future. (assuming the hugger is just a platonic hugger)

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spython
I did some research on hugging and self-hugging for a presentation at a Chaos
Computer Club event. Mainly trying to find out why self-hugs don't seem to
work as well, despite many attempts to replicate a hug through technological
solutions:

[https://rybakov.com/essay/how_to_hug_yourself/](https://rybakov.com/essay/how_to_hug_yourself/)

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coldtea
Because the hug is about the connection with the other, not about something
arbitrary wrapping your body?

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Rebelgecko
Some people—particularly on the autism spectrum— get stress relief from
weighted blankets and things like the Thundershirt (the thundershirt is an as-
seen-on-tv product for dogs, but there's similar garmets for people. I'm just
not sure what the generic term would be).

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coldtea
That's called a "security blanket"

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winchling
If we all hugged each other more would the world improve or would there be
deflation of the stress-relieving value of a single hug?

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camelNotation
We'd go nearly extinct via pandemic long before we had time to find out.

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namenotrequired
Unlikely. There are cultures where people hug a lot more and don’t go extinct
(e.g. Brazil).

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camelNotation
It was intended as a joke, but good point.

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waynecochran
Give back a virtual hug.

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tobr
Well, let’s file this under the category of obvious research findings?

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astazangasta
This is, in my opinion as a wedded empiricist, one of the main problems with
science: it is extremely chauvinistic about forms of knowledge that did not
originate in its chain of authority. A key function of the scientific culture
is to establish the authority of a group who is qualified (according to the
estimation of the members of the group) to rule on matters of evidence and
methodology and, via their general approbation, to pronounce into existence
new knowledge, which we then call "scientific" knowledge. Membership in this
community is mostly through direct descent - graduates of the laboratory
system.

This system, it is my observation, is extremely intolerant of knowledge
produced by other systems. Other sources may be examined, but they must be
interpreted, and more importantly tested, according to the established
"scientific" methodologies (a collection of various inductive techniques, but,
mostly, the use of complex physical and mathematical instruments), and then
presented in the appropriately hallowed place using scientific jargon. Until
such approval is given, the system is unwilling to acknowledge the validity of
other kinds of knowledge. Thus, we have to once again "prove" what is already
well-known to everybody.

A secondary problem is that the "acceptable methodology" criterion of
scientific knowledge is subject to the latest vogue, and people don't read old
papers, so everything we know must be re-proved or re-packaged using
contemporary methodology every thirty years.

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icebraining
Isn't that a bit like saying that chess clubs are extremely intolerant of card
games? I mean, science is science because it follows those methods. Other
methods for producing knowledge may be perfectly valid, they're just a
different thing.

Maybe we need a discipline which has the purpose of merging the knowledge from
science with other source, but I don't think it's fair to criticize scientists
for not doing that work - it's none of their business.

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astazangasta
I'm not necessarily making a criticism, just observing a deficiency in the
structure of the scientific apparatus. Scientists have constructed themselves
and their polity in a fashion that _does not allow_ them to merge knowledge
from other sources. That is, to use your phrase, they have _made it_ none of
their business. This might have certain advantages, if we believed that
scientific methods yielded unequivocally superior epistemological outcomes;
but I don't think this is true across all kinds of knowledge. In this case, I
think what's being demonstrated is that sometimes, those methods go through
ponderous effort to demonstrate what can be learned efficiently through other
means (viz., getting a warm hug when you need it).

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icebraining
I disagree with your premise. I believe there are advantages to having a body
of knowledge built around consistent principles even if we _don 't_ believe
that scientific methods yield unequivocally superior epistemological outcomes
- in fact, even if we believe it yields inferior outcomes.

Scientism is certainly a problem, but the solution is not to jumble the
methods of obtaining knowledge with science in an attempt to bleed some
prestige from it. It should be to valorize those other methods separately,
recognizing their particular advantages (and disadvantages) over science.

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astazangasta
I'm not sure what advantage you think to obtain from inferior, but consistent,
principles. For example, the "like cures like" principle is used to ill effect
in many medical systems around the world. The only reason to support such a
practice is prejudice - the conviction that the conclusions reached are, by
themselves, superior merely because of the methodology used to produce them.

I don't advocate jumbling the methods of obtaining knowledge (although I think
the notion of methodological purity in science is incorrect, I think the
consistent principle in science is the establishment of authority, and not the
methods applied by that authority, which change over time) - naturally every
system must have its own internal consistency, or else it would not be a
system. I advocate instead something close to what you are saying. It is fine
to read scientific literature, but it is also useful to recognize that science
can't tell you everything, and that its epistemology more or less fails at
discovering certain things.

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glup
Maybe it's just me, but I get the implicature that they tested consensual and
non-consensual hugs in their effects on stress, the latter of which seems like
it would be hard to get past an institutional review board.

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perpetualpatzer
I inferred the same and was quite excited to see the results.

In fact, it seems they just asked people about hugs they received generally,
without distinguishing between consensual and non-consensual hugs.

Classic case of popular science reporting over-promising and under-delivering.

