Catch yourself touching your face more than usual? Your body could be trying to tell you something. — dpa
Have you ever wondered how often you touch your face every day?
Research by a German psychologist at the Ruhr University in Bochum found that it’s an average of 50 times an hour, or up to 800 touches a day.
Some of these touches, according to the researcher Dr Julian Packheiser, serve a practical purpose, such as to fix your hairstyle or rub tired eyes.
But most are done for no apparent reason.
He is conducting research into the health effects of touch and made his findings public in the magazine Spektrum Psychologie.
Touching reduces stress
Dr Packheiser explains that unconscious facial touching could serve an important function: “According to recent theories, unconscious facial touching serves to reduce stress and helps regulate our emotional balance.”
The psychologist explains that touch in general is known to promote good health.
It can alleviate anxiety, reduce sadness, reduce pain, and even lower blood pressure.
This not only applies to contact with others; in a randomised controlled study conducted in 2021, researchers at the Goethe University Frankfurt found that both touching others and touching oneself before a stressful situation had an effect on the stress levels of the participants.
Both those who were touched by others and those who touched themselves had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood afterwards than the third group of untouched people.
Incidentally, not touching your face could sometimes be better, especially if your hands have infectious microorganisms (i.e. pathogens) on them.
But it’s not that easy: “Actively avoiding touching your face to reduce infections requires mental effort,” write the researchers.
So we have to consciously stop ourselves from doing so.
Why the face?
The participants in the self-touching group did not always choose the face though, some stroked their arm or placed their hands on their chest.
Nevertheless, other research suggests that facial touching occurs particularly frequently in stressful or cognitively-demanding situations, Dr Packheiser explained.
This is shown, for example, in a systematic review by a team of researchers from the Paul Flechsig Institute – Centre for Neuropathology and Brain Research at the University Hospital of Leipzig, which was also published in 2021.
“Although there is still little research on self-touching, such evidence suggests that touching one’s own face can alleviate stress.”
Joe Navarro, a former US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) behavioural analyst, explains in the Psychology Today magazine that the reasons for this preference lie in the anatomy of our body.
Our faces are particularly rich in sensitive nerve endings that are directly connected to the brain.
These nerves – in particular the fifth (trigeminal) and seventh cranial (facial) nerves – enable touch on the face to reach the brain faster and more effectively than on other parts of the body.
A gentle stroke across the cheek or a touch on the lips sends calming signals to the brain at lightning speed. This instant effect is crucial because we need quick relief, especially in stressful moments.
Touching your face calms the brain and helps restore inner balance.
It also gives others an indication of what is going on inside, whether someone is stressed and needs support, according to Navarro.
“So the next time your partner or colleague is frequently touching their nose, feel free to ask if everything is all right,” advises Dr Packheiser. – By Bettina Lüke/dpa
