Should You Touch Your Clients More?

 There's some very interesting research on the power of touch in business situations.  In this Harvard Business Review post, author Peter Bregman, shares this experiment that found that a brief, light touch affects people's decision making:

In one experiment, as a woman showed subjects to their seats in thelab, she lightly and briefly touched some of them on the back of theirshoulder. Then researchers asked the subjects whether they would prefera certain amount of money or whether they'd prefer to gamble for thechance to win more money, receiving nothing if they lost. The peoplewho were touched were 50 percent more likely to take the gamble. 50percent!

And it's not just any touch. A handshake didn't achieve the sameresult. A handshake isn't comforting, but a touch on the shoulder orback is.

Another study, profiled in the New York Times, found that touch can result in:

almost immediate changes in how people think and behave .... Students who received a supportive touch on the back or arm froma teacher were nearly twice as likely to volunteer in class as thosewho did not, studies have found.A sympathetic touch from a doctor leaves people with the impressionthat the visit lasted twice as long, compared with estimates frompeople who were untouched.

Obviously, good taste and propriety should rule the day when it comes to touch, but perhaps next time, instead of expecting that pat on the back from your client, you should give one instead.