Moment 110- The Unknown And Surprising Power Of Physical Touch: Dacher Keltner

How would you like to increase you life expectancy, be happier and have less stress? According to Professor Dacher Keltner, one of the world’s leading emotion scientists, the solution is as simple as reaching out. In this moment, Professor Keltner discusses the awesome power of touch and the devastating impacts of living without it. Through evolution humans are built for touch and connection, this can be seen all over our bodies from our hands, skin and brain. However, in the current pandemic of loneliness millions of people are missing out on its benefits. Ultimately Professor Keltner believes we need to remove our suspicions of touch and see it for what it is: a foundational language that all human speak and feel. Listen to the full episode here -https://g2ul0.app.link/04wJkhTdUzb Dacher: https://www.dacherkeltner.com Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business, Marketing & Life' per order link: https://smarturl.it/DOACbook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  I have some breaking news.

• 0:06Steven Bartlett?

  And no, this is an emergency. I've spent the last two years writing a book. And I've written thirty-three laws for business, marketing and life that I derive from all of these conversations I've had here. I travelled the world to write this book. I interviewed some of the most incredible people. I did six months of extensive research on scientific studies and principles to corroborate everything that I wrote into these thirty-three laws. And ladies and gentlemen, that book called The Diary of a CEO, The Thirty-Three Laws for Business, Marketing and Life is now available for pre-order.

• 0:47Steven Bartlett?

  And there are five thousand, only five thousand, signed copies.

• 0:54Steven Bartlett?

  And it's first come, first served. The link is in the bio right now. So if you want that book, honestly, it's the best book I've ever written. It's the book I always should have written. It's the book I also wish someone had written for me when I was starting out in my career.

• 1:07Steven Bartlett?

  I'm really proud of it. I'm really, really proud of it. Really, really proud of it. And I can't wait for all of you to get to read it. It's out in August. I couldn't be more excited about this, as you can probably tell. I don't know what to say, to say, other than the words I've said to emphasise my excitement. Because I think it's important and I think it's really valuable. Link in the description. I was blown away when reading your work and watching videos that you produced about so many things. That one of the real startling things is the power of touch.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39Steven Bartlett?

  I read, I read that if you pat a kid on the back in the classroom, that child is three to four, five times more likely to try hard problems on the blackboard. And that touch can make you live longer and be less stressed, just someone touching you.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55Steven Bartlett?

  Is that true?

• 1:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, you know. Touch in a lot of mammalian species, including humans, is just connection. It's it's identity, it's I'm with you. You know, you think early in life, we are constantly being held and in skin to skin contact with our caregivers. It's foundational. It's where my sense of me and you connection emerges. The physiology of touch is mind blowing. You know, our hands are incredible. They're spectacular. You know, evolutionary adaptations that can do all kinds of things, including touch. Our skin, eight pounds, billions of cells, our immune system is in the skin.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  You know, it registers touch in many different ways, from the sexual to the friendly to the cooperative, goes up into the brain and says, man, you're being touched in this way. And and that has direct effects on your immune system and your vagus nerve and your heart rate and the health of your body. And so, you know, early discoveries, you know, you have premature babies, they're gonna die. And and they used to just put them in these little, you know, sort of units that warm them and had them sort of be comfortable and fed, and they would die. And then they figured out you gotta hold the premature baby. They needed skin to skin contact lately, they need food, right?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  And they live, they gained 47% weight gain. And then, you know, there are there are just studies time and time again, you know, a nice hug, lower cortisol, nice embrace with somebody, elevated vagal tone. The studies that you referred to of, you know, patting kids on the back, they they do better in school. You know, and it's so interesting, parts of English culture, you know, Victorian culture.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Western European culture, they came up with the idea like touch is sexual. It's you gotta get it and it is, but only certain kinds of touch are sexual. There's a lot of friendly touch we need, right? And it just shut it down. And now it's coming back. It's, uh, thank goodness. It's, it's good for us.

• 4:10Steven Bartlett?

  We, we talked before we started filming about the study with the rhesus monkeys.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:14Steven Bartlett?

  I can't remember that, who the researcher was, but yeah, I was saying to you that.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Harlow.

• 4:18Steven Bartlett?

  Harlow, that was it, yeah. How that was mind blowing to me at 16 to learn that they put these monkeys in these cages. They had like a pretend wire mother, so a mother made out of like metal. And then they had another one made out of like cloth.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:32Steven Bartlett?

  And like a mother made out of cloth, which was essentially a teddy bear. And there was huge variance between the outcomes of those kids, right?

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, if you deprive those monkeys of the nice touch, they, they don't learn how to behave socially effectively. You know, if you give them a choice between a wire, uh, monkey mother and that provides milk. And then a terry cloth one, they always hang around the terry cloth one, right? They just love the social contact. If you deprive non-human primates of touch, they, they are almost schizophrenic or psychopathic. Or they're just like.

• 5:07Steven Bartlett?

  Pessnazi disorders.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Aggressive, they can't handle social interactions. You know, orphans deprived of touch, famous orphan studies, you know, and humans, same thing. They're just like, they don't become human in some way, or they are human, but they have trouble with social contact. Yeah, you know, I mean, part of the questioning of that you're engaging in Stephen of the literature is like, well, what can I do? Just to live a more meaningful life. And, you know, from gratitude to kindness to find some awe, man, you know? If you're not hugging people you love, if you're not, if you don't have a rich language of touch with your friends. You know, I learned at playing pickup basketball, basketball, which is the, I believe, the most fascinating sport in human history.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  It has this amazing language of touch, you know, and it's, it's unique to the court, right? You're fist bumping, chest bumping and the like. If you're not doing that with your friends, you're missing out on one of the great languages of human kind, which is to be in contact with each other. So, you know, parents, you know, when you have kids.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  And I hope some of your listeners are doing that, you know, it's this mystery like, should they take naps on my body? Should we, how should I hold them? Should I carry them in public? Am I indulging them? And I think the more friendly, kind touch, the better. So we're moving back to where we began evolutionarily. And I think it'll be a good thing.

• 6:32Steven Bartlett?

  What if I'm touching a dog?

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Same thing.

• 6:34Steven Bartlett?

  Same effect?

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, dogs evolved.

• 6:36Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Because we love them and they love us. And there's all this new amazing dog science where, this is one of my favorite studies and touch releases oxytocin, which is this little chemical that floats in your brain and your blood, and it helps you be kind to other people and cooperate. And there are now studies from Japan showing, you may do this with your dog, Stephen, where if you look into the eyes of your dog, you, your dog will have a surge of oxytocin and you will have a surge of oxytocin. So, so it's like all of this social stuff that's so simple of eye contact and touch brings us good things, even with our dogs.

• 7:16Steven Bartlett?

  It makes me kind of realize two things. The first is that men tend to be stereotypically much worse at that.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:23Steven Bartlett?

  Much worse at touch. We don't, we do the like the macho hug where you like on the back, you know, like when you pat them on the back, it's like get the fuck off me. We're, we're less good at even things like eye contact and sort of emotional engagement. And then you look at the stats around male suicides and all of those, you know, drug addiction and all those things and significantly higher.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:46Steven Bartlett?

  I believe the stats say that the biggest killer of men under the age of 40 is themselves in this country.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:51Steven Bartlett?

  By suicide. And there really feels like there needs to be a reversal of that. The adjacent point is just the one we talked about earlier, which is just loneliness.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:00Steven Bartlett?

  And now it kind of makes sense as to why if you are lonely, you have a Significantly worse health outcomes and a shorter life expectancy because you're not getting the compassion, the touch, you're not, you're probably experiencing less awe, gratitude, et cetera.

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:19Steven Bartlett?

  And I feel like we have to, we have to talk about how we fix that.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:22Steven Bartlett?

  Like, you know, because some of the saddest moments I can, I think about when I've had private conversations are men coming up to me after like a talk on stage and whispering to me that the part I said about me being lonely when I was like twenty three, twenty four, and I'd given everything just for this business, coming to the office every day, sacrifice friendships, family relationships. I'll have men come up to me and whisper to me that that was the part that they

• 8:48Steven Bartlett?

  needed to hear the most, but then asking me what they can actionably do to fix that.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:53Steven Bartlett?

  As if they don't want the, the group around me to hear that they are lonely.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:57Steven Bartlett?

  And they want to do something about it. They are sat on their computers, often playing video games or on the internet, struggling to attract, you know, maybe the opposite sex or the same sex or whatever, whatever they're interested in. And it feels like it's going in one negative direction generally. I mean, the stats kind of support the fact that we're getting lonelier and lonelier.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, those are such deep insights and really worth thinking more concretely about what to do. I, I think that the, you know, kind of the, the gender complexities here are really striking, right? Men live significantly fewer years than women in most Western globalized cultures. And, and I think you're on a really interesting hypothesis, Stephen, which is that, you know, if the gender stereotypes and these rigid concepts and then the lies we lead don't allow us to hug and feel grateful and feel empathetic, it, it countervails that. And there, those are gender stereotypes, right? Oh, if I practice compassion at work, I'll be weak and I won't rise. That's not true.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  That's a gender stereotype and it, it denies men disproportionately this opportunity for these emotions, right? And that's. That, you know, with new conceptions of gender, new ideas about work is changing dramatically. That will shift, and I think it'll be good news for the health of men. And, and then loneliness. Loneliness, in some sense, is the deprivation of everything we've been talking about. It's that you don't get to hug somebody like you would like to every day. And that you don't hear the words of appreciation. William James, you know, the deepest craving we have is to be appreciated by other people. You don't hear it. You don't hear the thank you.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  You don't get to go out and feel awe with somebody or feel kindness. You know, so I think we have to think very actively about building these emotions into those contexts. In the United States, there are 35,000 long-term care facilities. The elderly in the United States, a lot of them live alone, you know. If, when people from India see how we treat the elderly or people from Mexico, it's just like the unhoused. They're like, what are you guys doing? You know, you're taking the vulnerable and, and sort of shunting them off alone. But the, but these emotions point to really direct actionable things to do, right? With awe practices and compassion.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  So it gives me hope, but we've got, you know, I think in part historically, we took these pro-social emotions out of our lives, right? And now we gotta build them back in.

• 11:42Steven Bartlett?

  And if we do, it's good for not just ourselves, but it's good for the recipients of those emotions. You know, hugging, hugging my dad or hugging my mom or hugging anybody is, is a mutually beneficial behavior in terms of all the, you know, life expectancy, happiness, reduction, reduction in stress.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  And not only that, but you know, I just heard 50% of US healthcare expenses are on the last five years of life. When a lot of those people are living alone and feeling lonely, and there are simple ways to address that, as we've been talking about. So it's, there's a bottom line that's really relevant here, too.

• 12:16Steven Bartlett?

  And then the really, the bit I imagine a lot of people will, especially those that I'm much more spiritually inclined will love is the idea of that karma. And how, you know, if I hug one person, or if I'm kind to some person, or express that gratitude or compassion, it has this sort of cascading knock on effect.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:31Steven Bartlett?

  And how they go through the day. So like, in that sense, karma is a very real thing.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  It's very real. Yeah.

• 12:36Steven Bartlett?

  In every respect, even in the, in the, the concept of gossip, where how you treat someone more spread. I think you said in your, your book that when we treat someone badly, people on average gossip that bad treatment to 2.5 people.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:51Steven Bartlett?

  Something to that, which is, you know, which is slightly terrifying. But it's, but it makes sense.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it's, and part of our theme in our conversation is how we're all connected and united in these, these super organisms, some people call them, through practicing gratitude and sharing resources that spreads through these social networks. And then the, the compliment is also true, which is, you know, and, and as much as I don't like gossip, and I didn't like being gossiped about, it's a human universal. It can be horrifying and, and we gotta worry about it. Like online catfights and ah, it escalates. But we study these social groups and, and the thing that people really gossip about is when you're not kind, right? They're like, look at what that, that person just said, these harsh things. That spreads through the network. And it, it tries to keep those problematic tendencies in check.