To hug or not to hug, that is the question
This post is dedicated to my sister, Nikki Adshead-Bell, and my brother-in-law, Neil Adshead, as it was their observations on hugging that inspired it.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you will have seen the controversy that swirled in the aftermath of Spain’s Women’s World Cup win, when the (then) Spanish football president, Luis Rubiales, kissed forward Jenni Hermoso during the Spanish team’s on-stage celebrations. As my sister and I watched the media coverage of the kiss, she remarked that the hug that accompanied it – which takes the form of a full-body clinch – seemed far more intimate to her than the kiss itself.
Implicit in many of the dissections that followed was the assumption that a kiss is universally the epitome of intimacy. But this claim receives little support in the ethnographic record. In a study by William Jankowiak and colleagues drawing on the Human Relations Area Files, romantic-sexual kisses were present in less than half the 168 cultures surveyed. Indeed, the HRAF suggests there where kissing is not seen as actively disgusting,1 it’s often a sign of respect (and occasionally, impending death, as we know from The Godfather Part II).
Respect (and death) also features heavily in historical attitudes towards the kiss. For example, according to the historian Mary Brown Pharr, different types of kisses were recognised in Ancient Rome, including contractual kisses, kisses of betrothal and ceremonial kisses, with the latter strictly regulated by law. Roman governors ‘were required to kiss, on application or request, all men of certain well-defined ranks, and the refusal of this right of osculation was considered as sacrilege, punishable by death’.
Clearly, while today we tend to think of kissing on the lips as highly intimate (and sexualised2), this is a fairly recent and culturally-specific shift. Historically speaking, hugging is much more consistently associated with intimacy than kissing is – something evident in the English terms themselves. While ‘kiss’ comes from the Old English cyssan, and literally means ‘to touch with the lips’, ‘hug’ is thought to originate from the Old Norse hugga,3 which means ‘to comfort’, the Proto-Germanic hugr (‘courage, mood’) and the German hegen (‘to foster, cherish’).
Unlike kissing, the association between hugging and intimacy is also evident cross-culturally. For example, the HRAF cites research conducted with the indigenous Tapirapé people of central Brazil, where the anthropologist Charles Wagley found that while kissing was unknown, ‘It was common, instead, to see a married couple walking across the village plaza with the man’s arm draped over his wife’s shoulder. A couple might stand close to each other during a conversation with the man’s arms over his wife’s shoulders and she holding him around the hips’.
Hugging is also a behaviour we share with other primates. As the anthropologists Donna Goldstein and Kira Hall note, ‘hugs, embraces, and clutches are… used by wild apes as a calming gesture to ease social tension and maintain social groups’. Studies of efforts to teach great apes sign language are likewise replete with examples of them using the sign ‘hug’ to ‘request affection, to show gratitude, to express grief’. Indeed, one of Nim Chimpsky’s most famous spontaneous sentences was ‘Me hug cat’ (like all the best people, Nim was a cat lover – as ample film footage attests).
Hugging performs many of the same social functions for humans as it does for our closest primate relatives, although it obviously has additional meanings as well. According to the anthropologist Marjorie Goodwin’s research on intimacy in Californian families, hugs amongst family members occur primarily in five contexts: cuddling more generally, reconciliation after a fight, comforting someone and/or displaying sympathy, celebration, and acts of grooming.
Although hugging in most of these contexts is restricted to close friends and family, celebrations pose a notable exception, given that it’s sometimes acceptable to hug complete strangers – as anyone who’s ever been to a football match can attest.4 But there’s another situation where casual hugs have become increasingly common amongst non-intimates: greetings. As Shelley Bridgeman notes, ‘Hugging as a standard greeting in social situations is increasingly common. So popular is the casual hug, we can find ourselves hugging people we barely know’.
I don’t recall social hugging being a ‘thing’ until I moved to Canada in 2006. For the record, this is not necessarily because Canadians hug more than everybody else, but because I happened to arrive around the time that hugging had become ubiquitous. According the Canadian journalist Adrienne Matei, this happened in the mid to late aughts in western Canada, as she describes someone contemporaneously confessing, ‘I don’t know when it suddenly became the thing to hug all of your friends, but I don’t really like hugging’ (I hear you, sister).
Although social hugging seems to have hit Canada and the USA earlier and more intensively than countries like Australia, New Zealand and the UK, it has become increasingly common across the Anglophone world – at least among the middle class. However, as someone who is not, by inclination, a social hugger, I have long found them to be rather trying. When to hug, when not to hug, how long to hug, how tight to hug: these are topics that non-casual huggers are constantly given cause to ponder. Unlike our touchy-feely brethren, we find the prospect of embracing near strangers both somewhat daunting and deeply awkward.
For instance, I’m fairly certain that some of the hugs I give in greeting are too long and tight, because I haven’t yet figured out the appropriate familiarity-tightness-length ratio for casual acquaintances and people I’ve just been introduced to. Somewhat counter-intuitively, because of my discomfort with casual hugging, I occasionally overdo it – like the person who laughs first to cover the fact that they didn’t get the joke – hugging when people would probably have been perfectly happy with a handshake.5
It’s clear that social hugging is complicated, which is why there are so many online guides and discussions on how to do it right (e.g., Do you give good social hugs?, A guide to avoiding awkward hugs, Your guide to the basics of hug etiquette, and so on), most of which are full of completely contradictory advice. There is also a fascinating body of research on the topic – once, that is, you get past the academic jargon on ‘haptic behaviour’6 (a.k.a. ‘hugs’), ‘tactile intimacy’ (also, funnily enough, ‘hugs’) and ‘couple dyads’ (a.k.a. ‘huggers’).
According to psychologists like Maciej Sekerdej and his colleagues, the relational meaning of hugging ‘hinges heavily on the combination of four characteristics: initiation, reciprocation, type of touch, and situational context’. All of these factors determine how the hug is interpreted – as an expression of unity and communion or as an act of dominance.
For example, while initiating a hug can be an assertion of dominance, especially if there is a perceived status difference between the two parties, reciprocating it theoretically equalises the relationship. Likewise, context matters, which is why hugs at work are potentially more fraught than hugs at a wedding. The type of hug and its intensity also matters; for example, a criss-cross hug is perceived as less intimate than a neck-waist hug, presumably because it enables the bodies to retain some physical distance.
To the surprise of nobody, gender has been found to influence hug style. For instance, Anna Dueren and colleagues report that men are more likely to use the criss-cross hug with each other than women are, although they more readily employ the latter in mixed-sex contexts. In fact, researchers speculate that the fear of appearing gay has led to distinctive genres of ‘man hug’. In addition to the criss-cross hug, there is the back pat hug and the bro handshake-hug, although they are frequently combined – as Videojug’s ‘How to give the perfect man hug’ video attests:7
However, because physical contact initiated by a man is more likely to be perceived as an act of dominance or sexual interest, social hugging can be awkward for men not just in the context of same-sex embraces, but opposite-sex ones as well. This is presumably why etiquette guides frequently advise men to wait for women to initiate social hugs, although others suggest that this is overly simplistic, given that intensity, context and status all have an important role to play.8 (As the comedian Rachel Parris observes, if you get an erection mid-hug and then proceed to grind it against the woman you’re embracing, who actually initiated the hug is kind of a moot point.)
All this would suggest that social hugs don’t sever the natural association between hugging and intimacy when employed as a form of greeting. The fact is that hug initiation, form, length and intensity matter, as you quickly learn in the context of an awkward social hug.9 But while life would probably be easier if we all went back to shaking hands, if the Covid pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that social hugging is not going anywhere, despite all the predictions of its demise. So, even if, like me, you’re not a fan of social hugs, my advice is to learn to love the hug, because it could always be worse: you could be faced with the horror of the combined hug-kiss greeting instead.10
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It turns out that the idea of swapping spit with someone does not hold universal appeal. According to the HRAF, in the 1920s the Tsonga people of southern Africa said of kissing, ‘Look at these [white] people! They suck each other! They eat each other’s saliva and dirt!’ Indeed, in his book The History of the Kiss, the semiotician and linguistic anthropologist Marcel Denesi notes that his interest in the topic was stimulated by a student who asked ‘Why do we experience such an unhygienic act as beautiful and romantic?’
This has been a very recent shift. In Australia, it was considered perfectly normal when I was growing up for relatives and family members to kiss on the lips. However, as if parents didn’t already have enough to worry about, there is now growing anxiety about this, at least judging by all the articles on whether it is or isn’t okay (The Guardian says yes. Bright Side says no: it’s not sanitary! They might start kissing everybody on the lips!!)
This suggests an etymological connection between ‘hug’ and hygge: the Danish concept that became a global home decorating trend circa 2017, leading to a massive uptick in the sales of candles, throw blankets and sweatpants* as everyone tried to reproduce the feeling of ‘cosy conviviality’ in their homes. Hygge was the first in what has turned out to be an endless parade of concepts flogged globally to explain why Scandinavians are ostensibly happier than the rest of us – the latest one being friluftsliv, or ‘communing with nature’, which apparently the Norwegians do differently, and apparently just plain better, than everybody else.
*But they’re not sweatpants, see, they’re hyggebukser. Just make sure they’re oversized, which Country Living insists is ‘way more hygge’.
This occurs primarily in the context of what the anthropologist Victor Turner has referred to as ‘communitas’: a moment of fellowship where differences have been transcended because social structures themselves have temporarily dissolved. In that moment of collective celebration, it’s as if the community of supporters have become family. But the breakdown of social norms around hugging is restricted exclusively to fellow supporters. Try hugging a supporter from the opposing side when your team has just scored a goal and you will probably get a punch in the face for your trouble.
Bridgeman suggests that the hug-averse can instead proffer ‘their hand for a handshake as a pre-emptive strike’, but in my experience that merely serves to exacerbate the awkwardness, especially if everyone else is hugging in greeting. Basically, you come across as a cold, standoffish arsehole – even Jerry Seinfeld can’t pull it off.
Or, as anthropologists love to call it, ‘haptic alignments and entanglements’.
My only quibble with the video is the advice to tilt your head to the left, which belies evidence suggesting that the lead arm and head direction used in hugging follow broader patterns of handedness. Thus, for the most part, huggers’ heads would naturally tilt to the right, not the left, so following the advice would exacerbate rather than resolve the problem highlighted. Arguably, the main context where head injuries are likely is when a lefty and a righty hug. In fact, although I have subjected this topic to no scientific study whatsoever, based on the number of times I have banged heads during a hug, I’m convinced that hugging is a more complicated business for us lefties than for right-handers for precisely this reason. The awkward arms-akimbo-head-shuffle as one person must adjust their stance as they lean into a hug is a move primarily experienced by lefties.
The Rubiales case also demonstrates the significance of these factors in the perception of physical contact. Arguably, more than the fact of the kiss* itself, it was his status as the president of the Spanish football association and his hold on her head when he kissed her that transformed what would otherwise have been deemed an innocuous celebratory peck on the lips into an ‘assault’. Compounded by Rubiales’ initial defiance, the kiss was then transformed – rightly or wrongly – into a symbol of every unwanted advance women had ever received from an unrepentant man.
*Sorry, the ‘osculatory entanglement’; I forgot I was an anthropologist for a minute.
And if you’ve ever hugged me, you’ve probably been the recipient of several. By mutual, albeit unspoken, agreement, my British brother-in-law and I have decided to limit hugs to only crucial settings because neither of us is fond of social hugs.
If I had my way, it would be banned entirely, so great is its potential for social awkwardness – I’m talking ears or eyebrows slobbered on in lieu of a proffered cheek, or, in my case, the very real possibility that the recipient will end up with a black eye. For the record, this is not because I up and punch them, but because my neck is a No Man’s Land of extreme ticklishness. An accidental kiss on the neck in the context of a combined kiss-hug leads to an automatic reflex where I simultaneously raise my shoulder and jerk my neck away. It turns out that if you get the height differential just right, a black eye results.
Jolly good post, and you'll forgive me if I just smile, nod, and hit the "like" button.
Cross cultural research has people from tense countries like France standing much closer, touching much more frequently, and showing much more emotion and aggression to everyday events than people from reserved countries like Sweden. Even informal nonscientists have observed things like this; Gesteland's "Expressive" cultures are mostly Mediterranean/Romance cultures where (I find, in research I may post someday) speech has a high syllabic rate and emotions run high.
In other words, the transition from non-hug to hug norms signifies an increase in tension/expressiveness/emotionality in Anglophone cultures. On the one hand, it may leaves people like us high and dry; on the other, emotional expressiveness probably keeps the heart healthy - or at least, that was the explanation once given by a sociologist trying to explain the French Paradox.
Thank you for sharing this. I love social hugs and hugging in general but I'm not good at social hugs. Reading your article has helped me to make it a personal goal to improve in this area of social etiquette because as lover of the act through background culture this feels like a real shortcoming.