According to a study by McMaster University, women have a much greater sense of touch than their male counterparts.
The study suggests that women’s smaller hands cause their ‘touch receptors’ to be much closer together and therefore touch sensitivity is increased.
The touch receptors are located throughout the hands and are found located around pores within the skin.
The study is based off of an experiment which studied over one hundred women. The study found that women who had smaller hands could notice smaller detailed grooves than those women with larger hands. Those who published the study this may be the reason why heavy hand oriented tasks such as sewing comes much more naturally to women than to men.
‘Our discovery reveals that one important factor in the sense of touch is finger size,’ said one of the researchers, whose work is published in The Journal of Neuroscience.
The study also noted that of the hand’s five fingers, the index finger is the most sensitive.
“Much like pixels in a photograph, each skin receptor sends an aspect of the tactile image to the brain – more receptors per inch supply a clearer image,” says a statement released with the study.
The publishers mentioned they plan to perform a similar study on children who also have small hands.
Women Have Better Sense Of Touch
Women have to have more sensitive touch, biologically,ladies would be genetically formed, to be in (much more constant, regular) touch with the babies, as well as to feel, literally good, and thus feel good (thanks to the heightened sense of touch, of good feeling)about the mate, potential father to the child that could be or is the news. The daddy would not be so softly, tenderly touching, genetically speaking, as at least the ‘usual’ or ‘general’ rule, as the nurturing (role, traditionally speaking) of the mommy. The baby or child will also, how obvious
surely prove to be more sensitive in the touch dept., as the mothers and children rely on the sense of touch to continually reinforce their uniquely special bond — yes, dads can touch, but by design, it’s often the mother and child who communicate, bond, enjoy each other’s reassuring presence, with touch. Being in touch, given the albeit onetime, longtime male roles of heightened aggressive awareness — not an insult, btw, as this refers to an inheritted role functioning — men as protectors, hunters, bread-winning being a civilized equivalent to ancient hunting — anyways,such active on the go kind of focus of the attn/energies do not need to rely on continually being touch-sensitive — more like in moments, in between the more externalized male role plays, the male would rely on his touch senses(throughout most all of human history, and also still done, in much of the world,the masculine roles have much featured less touch, in touch literally, time — the male body is designed differently, which is also a visual clue, about which fingertips would be more touch sensitive, inherently, as well as practiced, encouraged to develop such skill.)
Nowadays, it also depends too, on what sort of work/activities one is engaged in, personal inclination — it’s likely that, say, a hard working thick skinned manually working set of fingertips might have a different degree than a massage therapist, say, regardless of gender — to study the predisposition is very different from the socially molded touch — or..is it
Hope nobody gets touchy, re: these observations. Fun question! Thanks for sharing this.
I’m glad women are softer touchers,I like it.
What a no brainer! I’d love to know how much money was spent to research this. How can a man with calous comepare to a soft touch of a woman. Waste of time even reading this. 2 Min I will never get back.
Did anyone actually read the details of this study? They were VERY clear: touch-sensitivity is related to hand-size, not gender, callouses, nurturing, hunting-gathering or anything else.
A man with small hands will have more touch sensitivity than a woman with hands that are bigger than his, in other words.
Obviously callouses will figure into this, but for both sexes.
The smaller the hands, the closer together the touch receptors are, and the more fine details they can detect, therefore. They will next test children to test this hypothesis further. Children, this study’s results would suggest, should have very good touch sensitivity.
Man with small hands mat not have a woman with soft hands…….
Ok, to Emilia, did you read any of it? You just stereotyped men and women pretty much.
It has to do with the receptors being closer together on smaller hands, generally meaning women. In that study, there probably were some smaller sized men who had better touch sensitivity than some of hte larger women (not meaning weight).
I agree with dan. This didnt even say anything about callouses, and im sure they considered whether it affected the study. Callouses dont affect the location of your receptors.
I like hands!
So women have a better since of touch….
What’s the POINT!
uhhh…. though she did stereotype both genders, she did put a disclaimer in there hoping people would not get mad at the factual evidence provided, so your insensitivities are null and therefore you have not read, nor fully understand the implications put forth by emilia. I have to agree with her though. indeed, if a man has smaller hands then a woman, then they would have a more sensitive touch; That would be what the article is explaining wouldn’t it. Unfortunately, the article states that woman has a better sense of touch than man does, which implies that there is a higher ratio of women with smaller hands then men. That said, I believe what emilia is getting at is the reason why that is. She is stating that because of certain gender roles in our history, men have developed a stronger sturdier build to perform their roles, whereas women have more sensitive slighter builds due to the gender roles inherit to our very brains. She does not stereotype, she is just bringing to the front possible evidence that complies with this article. Thank You
Did this study take into account how many receptors there are in any given hand? It seems like this study is taking for granted that there are approximately the same number of receptors in any hand regardless of its size therefore saying that the smaller hand has a greater concentration of receptors. If they did not look into this then there is a gaping hole in their argument because perhaps women just have more receptors than men who could have comparatively few making the concentration rather moot due to the overwhelming more receptors that women may have. Also genetics may play a role in that their may be a sex-linked gene that occurs more commonly in females which makes their receptors more efficient or allows the brain to synthesize the information from the receptor better etc.