After COVID: Will we ever hug again?

Maintaining your distance demonstrates empathy and respect for others. It's a way of protecting strangers, as well as friends, family and ourselves.

Yet it simultaneously feels wrong to cross the street to avoid contact with others. We refrain from hugging friends and family — at parties, when reuniting after a long time apart, and in general. We even shudder when we see crowds of people in movies, all while we are longing for closeness.

Numerous studies show how much social distancing is negatively impacting us. SARS-CoV-2, while a tiny virus, takes a toll on our immune system and every conceivable area of our lives, especially the psychological one.

Hardly imaginable

The pandemic is like an endless car ride, with the occasional unexpected traffic jam, leaving us wondering, "How much longer? When will we finally get there?"

In the end, we expect relief, the well-deserved rest after an extremely draining time. We expect a return to good old normality — without masks, without keeping a physical distance from one another.

But will we ever get that normalcy back? Steven Taylor, professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and author of "Psychology of Pandemics: Preparing for the Next Global Outbreak of Infectious Disease,"is also concerned with this question. Speaking to DW, Taylor says, "Many people find it difficult to imagine such a return to normalcy, which is due to a cognitive bias."

Anchoring bias, or anchor effect, means that we cling to the first part of a piece of information, and then base subsequent actions — such as assessments, arguments, conclusions — on that.

"Today, in 2021, we have difficulty imagining a future in which we shake hands, hug, and attend concerts because we are psychologically anchored in a present in which such things are forbidden and uncertain," the psychologist explains.

Psychological remnants of past pandemics

Let's take a look at past epidemics and pandemics - for example, the Zika virus emergency and the influenza pandemics of 1957, 1968 and 2009. "There's no evidence of long-term effects on psychological functioning there," Taylor said.

Of course, this could be because they were relatively mild compared to COVID-19.

It was a different story with the "Spanish flu." Hygiene practices such as washing hands, covering coughs and refraining from spitting probably became more common in communities after 1918, but it is notable that there were no other changes, Taylor notes. "Consider, for example, the wearing of face masks in public, which was common and even mandatory in Western countries during the 1918 pandemic. The habit of wearing masks quickly disappeared after the pandemic was over," Taylor says.

With COVID-19, we all had to get into the habit of wearing masks. The situation in Western countries was different than in Asian countries, where mask-wearing had already become an established habit as a way to prevent the transmission of colds. "The 2003 SARS epidemic in some Asian countries (e.g., Taiwan) likely had a lingering influence and prepared those countries to impose lockdowns quickly and early with the onset of COVID-19," Taylor states.

Back to the old version of normal

Shortly after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, there may be a kind of short-lived "Roaring '20s," Taylor predicts. "Those will be characterized by particularly intense sociability, but even that will pass as things return to the way they were before COVID-19."

"The majority of people will again shake hands, hug each other, go to crowded pubs and restaurants, and attend crowded stadium events such as soccer matches," Martin Grunwald, head of the Haptics Laboratory at the Paul Flechsig Institute for Brain Research at the University of Leipzig, is confident.

"At the first signs that contact with another person is no longer dangerous, we will revert to our old behavior," says Grunwald.

We cannot survive without physical contact

Grunwald sees touch as essential for our species . "The human organism develops only in the closest physical contact with the social other. This is, so to speak, a fundamental experience of our species," says Grunwald.

And we're not alone in that — all nesting mammals need physical contact to grow properly.

"Body interaction with the other is, so to speak, in our biological or social DNA. It is shaped by our experiences as children, as infants. We will find our way back to these basic forms of communication," Grunwald says.

In short, we can't exist without touch.

What's in a hug?

Let's assume that Taylor and Grunwald are right, and as soon as there are indications that contact with people is no longer dangerous, we want to hug each other again. But... will we still know how to do it? How to approach one another? How to communicate a desire for closeness, touch, and embrace?

"It's bound to be a bit bumpy at first. You can already see that now when we meet people we don't quite know how to greet them," says Sabine Koch, Professor of Dance and Movement Therapy at the SRH University of Applied Sciences in Heidelberg and Director of the Research Institute for Artistic Therapies at Alanus University on the outskirts of Bonn. 

Koch was already conducting research on hugs well before coronavirus, such as how body rhythms communicate the need for closeness.

She explains that there are different steps in a hug. Embraces pass from an initial giving phase with soft, round movements to the next phase, in which the body is tenser. Then there's usually some kind of tap on the back or shoulder — a release signal that signals the end of the hug and means, "That's enough for me, we can let go." This sequence of events makes for a good hug, Koch says.

However, she also observed an interesting exception during her study: The phases apply to all combinations of women with men and women with women. But it didn't apply to men who hugged men. Their hugs, at least in a public context, began immediately with a pat on the back — which is a combative pattern.

Pay attention and be aware of others' wishes

So: We certainly haven't forgotten how to hug as a result of the pandemic, but Koch assumes that there will be some restraint at first — a kind of transition phase. The decision on "whether and how we hug happens on the non-verbal level as a negotiation. Is it okay to hug you right now or not?"

"Our study also showed that people have very different levels of non-verbal sensitivities," Koch says. That is, some notice immediately when someone starts tapping during a hug and the detachment signal is given, and they take a step back. Others notice much later, and still, others don't notice at all.

After the pandemic, the sensitivity of each individual is especially important: Are there actually signs that the other person wants a hug, too? Sometimes that's not easy to tell. So, when in doubt, consider refraining at first. Or ask explicitly whether they want a hug, too.