I'm so touched! Self-touch increases attitude extremity via self-focused attention

Abstract

In everyday life, people often engage in behaviors like chin touching, hand clasping, and arm crossing. Such self-touching behaviors have been found to emerge under emotional stress and while performing tasks requiring concentration and focus. In contrast to work examining antecedents of self-touch, the current research experimentally investigates the causal outcomes of self-touch, specifically its influence on evaluative cognitions such as attitudes toward external objects and events. Four studies support the prediction that both instructed and spontaneous self-touch enhance focus on the self, resulting in greater attitude extremity toward evaluated targets. A last study demonstrates that people do not have a fully accurate understanding of the influence of self-touch on consequential outcomes such as self-focus and attitude extremity. Thus, this common behavior may incidentally influence a wide variety of judgments.