In 1958, Harry Harlow famously demonstrated, in a still controversial and haunting study, that tactile stimulation can be more desirable than food. Harlow raised infant rhesus monkeys without mothers and gave them a choice between two artificial surrogate mothers. Both were constructed of wood and wire mesh.The difference was that one had a bottle of milk while the other one was covered with cloth. To most psychologists’ surprise, the monkeys bonded with the cloth mother that lacked a source of nutrition. Since then numerous studies from baby rodents to neonates have shown the importance of tactile stimulation. Yet, 50 years on, few architects have studied how a design’s tactile experience might affect its users. In all likelihood, the effects of a design’s tactile properties are probably minuscule when compared to the studies mentioned above; they are categorically different in terms of tactile engagement. Still, the effects could be meaningful and measurable when it comes to a person’s social behavior, self-perception, enjoyment of, and comfort in a building.
It is obvious that tactile stimulation doesn’t matter: At the time Harlow conducted his study, Freudians and behaviorists dominated psychology. Freudians supposed that the baby monkeys would form a bond with the “mom’s breast” due to a lack of “ego-development.” The behaviorists maintained that attachment would arise solely from the positive reinforcement of food. Both were wrong, and yet this underestimation of touch continued in the medical community until the mid 1980s. Then a classic study from the University of Miami School of Medicine showed that premature infants, kept in near-sterile conditions, suffered from a lack of tactile/kinesthetic stimulation. The neonates who received daily sessions of body stroking and limb movements grew 47% faster per day, were more active, and were released from the hospital 6 days sooner than the control group, saving $3,000 per infant. The study illustrated how the correction of a simple oversight can improve healthcare and save billions of dollars a year.
