This is Scientific American's 60-second Science, I'm Lucy Huang.When a friend comes to you after a stressful day, how do you comfort them?Do you let them rant? Do you pour them a glass of wine?Those could work. But a new study finds that a very effective technique is also simple and easy. "Hugging."Michael Murphy is a psychology postdoc at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.He wanted to know if people who received hugs regularly could handle stress and conflict better."Individuals who report perceiving the availability of a network of supportive individualstend to show better adaptation when faced with stress."But just because you have a support network does not mean that you definitely feel that support."So some researchers have argued that many of the behaviors we use to support others who are stressed might actually be counterproductivebecause these behaviors might unintentionally communicate to others that they're not competent to manage stress."Murphy and his team interviewed 404 men and women every evening for two weeks."During these interviews, the participants were asked a simple yes or no question―whether somebody had hugged them that day―and a simple yes or no question of whether they had experienced conflict or tension with somebody that day.They also were asked questions about their social interactions―how many social interactions they had that day―and responded to questions about negative and positive mood states."And the researchers found that individuals who experienced a conflictwere not as negatively affected if they received a hug that day as were participants who experienced conflict and didn't get a hug.
