Wondering about the mystery behind exciting a woman’s emotion? It’s proven now, a man’s touch incites a woman’s skin and body temperature to rise. Researchers delving into the mysteries between men and women often get more than they bargained for, and such was the case for experts out of the University of St. Andrews in the United Kingdom. According to their reports, the touch of a man literally spikes the body temperature of a woman, particularly in the face and the chest. The average temperature increase was approximately 1 degree Celsius. That might not sound like much, but in the terms of facial heat spikes, it’s significant.
The study was initiated as an inquisition into how heat can be used to indicate certain emotions like anger, fear, or stress. Researchers were curious if body temperature responded to other stimuli, so they compiled two groups of heterosexual women for the experiment. The groups were then subjected to interactions with an experimenter of either sex.
The results showed that a casual touch from either a male or a female experimenter elicited a temperature jump of approximately 1/10th of a degree. The body heat spike was not as evident when being touched on the palm or the arms as it was if the participant was touched on the chest or face.
Women with a male experimenter experienced a jump approximately 5 times higher than that with the female experimenter. And while many of the women were aware of their body’s reaction, the majority was not. Such an obvious reaction, at least to heat-sensing cameras, may be the first step in devising a new generation of lie detectors that are “hands free”.
The study did not indicate why women’s reactions were so significant with the male experimenter, just that they were more extreme. It’s possible that more factors are involved, such as the age of the women compared to the age of the experimenter. For example, the group of young women may have subconsciously responded sexually to a younger male, regardless of attractiveness. That same group of women may not have had such a reaction had the experimenter been older and unappealing. Age, though it is a piece of the puzzle, would be overruled by attractiveness in an older man.
The response may not have been positive at all, and may have been borne from a flight reaction within the body. While the proverbial “flush” is often associated with flirting and intimate contact, people also flush when embarrassed or uncomfortable. It is entirely possible the women were more at ease with a female experimenter, and that is why there was not as significant of a body temperature spike.
Regardless of the reasons behind the proven reaction to touch, experts believe this new data demonstrates humans communicate with one another on a much more intricate level.
Just as animals “speak” to one another through body language, more and more evidence indicates humans have not evolved past such a primal practice. In fact, non-verbal communication still makes up the majority of interactions between people.