“In this work, participants never speak to each other, and are brought into a large experiment room separated by a curtain. One of the participants is then asked to reach their hand onto the other side of the curtain. The other participant is then asked to deliver physical touch to the extended hand of their partner with the goal of conveying specific emotions to the partner through touch.
Amazingly, people can also reliably and accurately recognize specific emotions expressed through touch in this paradigm. Moreover, certain emotions that people typically can’t recognize very well in the face–such as compassion or empathy–are actually very accurately expressed through touch!”
http://psych-your-mind.blogspot.com/2011/06/channels-of-emotion-not-just-in-face.html?spref=tw
