There are few greater feelings than strolling with a loved one, hand-in-hand. You could be walking in the busiest of towns or through the loudest of scenes, but the rosy-colored filter of love is a powerful one. Even spotting a couple holding hands is likely to put a smile on your face. And it’s not just you, take a look outside and it’ll be hard not to spot people holding hands nurturing a little pep in their steps. After all, there are scientific reasons why holding hands with someone else feels so darn good.
James Coan—a psychology professor at the University of Virginia—taught a course around the act of hand-holding in 2020, specifically around social relationships and the acts that come with them help keep stress at bay. In his work, he’s found that holding hands can help reduce activity in the brain’s hypothalamus, the region in charge of managing stress responses.
But that’s not it. In an interview with NPR, Tiffany Field, Director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami, shares a bit about what physically happens underneath your skin when you’re touching someone or being touched. The pressure of the touch ignites the pacinian corpuscles, a web of pressure receptors lying just beneath your skin. These receptors send signals to the body’s vagus nerve, which interacts with some of your largest organs (like the heart). It’s this bundle of nerves that’s responsible for slowing the heart and decreasing blood pressure. It’s a simple warm and welcomed touch from a loved one that can have a huge impact on what’s happening in your head and heart.
Hand-holding is hard-wired into our brains—we’ve been doing it since birth. You might notice that a newborn baby will reflexively grip when you touch their palm. According to the National Library of Medicine, this is called the palmar grasp reflex and it’s been observed in our primate ancestors, as well, as a way to more easily hold on to their mothers.
All of this is to say, we humans have been holding hands for a long time. Ahead, we broke down five benefits of holding hands with someone you trust.
Human touch triggers the ‘love hormone.’
First things first, touch can help kickstart oxytocin production, otherwise known as the “love hormone.” According to a study titled “Self-soothing behaviors with particular reference to oxytocin release induced by non-noxious sensory stimulation,” elevated oxytocin levels can help you feel closer and more connected to someone. The orbital frontal cortex, a region located above the eyes, lights up when you’re experiencing a welcome touch like hand-holding. This is the same space that responds to tasting something sweet like chocolate and pleasing smells.
Holding hands offers a sense of security.
Socially, two people holding hands tells the world you’re companions of sorts. There’s confidence that comes with this, whether you’re holding hands with a romantic partner or a best friend. And that’s something to keep in mind: Not all cultures consider hand-holding a romantic activity. Like cheek-kissing among friends, holding hands is another action shared between buddies in places around the world. Even in the most mundane of tasks, like holding hands in the car while stopped at a stoplight or while seated in a movie theater, it can give you a little confidence glow.
Holding hands can help relieve stress.
In a study titled “Self-soothing touch and being hugged reduce cortisol responses to stress: A randomized controlled trial on stress, physical touch, and social identity” published in 2021 in Compr Psychoneuroendocrinol, researchers found that physical touch has protective effects on physiological stress responses. That means you may not necessarily feel your mind completely clear and all of your worries wash away, but your body could start producing less cortisol, a steroid hormone that triggers the “fight or flight” response when elevated.
Holding hands can improve heart health.
If you’re one-half of a couple holding hands, you may be familiar with that little heart flutter that comes with it. There’s more work happening here. In her interview with NPR, Field described a test in which a group of people was asked to do something stressful (think: complete a timed math test). Some received hugs or held hands with their partners—this group was found to have lower blood pressure and heart rate.
In another study titled “Warm Partner Contact Is Related to Lower Cardiovascular Reactivity” published in Behavioral Medicine, researchers dug into the relationship between blood pressure and brief warm, physical contact. What they found was that a group tasked with 10 minutes of handholding while viewing a romantic video and a 20-second hug maintained a lower blood pressure and heart rate when asked to complete a public speaking task than a group that rested for 10 minutes and 20 seconds before completing the same task.
It can take the edge off of emotional pain.
Now, no one is saying holding hands with your beau will completely rid you of all physical and mental strife. But a study titled “The comfort in touch: Immediate and lasting effects of handholding on emotional pain” published in The National Library of Medicine, explored the impact of touch on pain. Study participants were asked to recall emotionally painful memories, some were holding their partner’s hand during this exercise and others held a squeeze ball. Researchers found that hand-holding did not reduce emotional pain immediately during the task, but it did provide more feelings of comfort. The people who participated also shared that the emotional memories paired with touch didn’t feel as painful as those who did not have the physical touch paired with their own recall.
