Get Healthy!

• Posted October 28, 2025

Cunning, Manipulative People Use Touch As A Weapon, Study Says

A friendly clasp on the shoulder. A comforting hug. Holding hands.

All these can be dangerous in the wrong hands, a new study reports.

Manipulative and narcissistic people are more likely to use touch in a calculating manner to influence their partners, researchers report in the journal Current Psychology.

“What’s new about our work isn’t just in identifying problematic uses of touch — it’s linking those behaviors to the type of person who is inclined to use them on a romantic partner,” said senior researcher Richard Mattson, a professor of psychology at Binghamton University-State University of New York.

“Not only are you not getting the benefits of touch in these relationships, but the flip side of that is that they are powerful, so they can actually be used in the service of oneself at the expense of the relationship partner,” Mattson said in a news release.

Much current research is focused on the benefits of touch — how it can soothe the mind, reduce stress and activate release of the “love hormone” oxytocin, researchers said in background notes.

Mattson and colleagues decided to take a different tack.

“It's kind of a hot topic within relationship science, but we took a slightly different viewpoint, noting that not all forms of touch are well-intentioned, even if topographically, they look similar to other types of touch,” Mattson said. “What we were looking at is the manipulative use of touch alongside an individual's preference not to be touched.”

For the study, researchers focused on people with “dark triad” personality traits — narcissism, psychopathy and cunning, manipulative Machiavellianism.

The team surveyed more than 500 college students, asking questions about their overall comfort with being touched and their use of touch upon others. All participants also took a personality inventory to assess their “dark triad” tendencies.

Results showed that those with “dark triad” personalities were more likely to use touch to manipulate their romantic partner.

Men tended to use touch to reinforce their connection with their partner, particularly if they felt insecure in their relationship, researchers found.

Women with “dark triad” traits weren’t comfortable being touched themselves, but likelier to use touch as a means of manipulation, the study found.

People with high levels of “dark triad” traits tend to have short-term, often fraught romantic relationships, Mattson said.

“An assumption is that what's core to these traits is a 'me, first, you, second' orientation,” he said. “And we were examining this as it manifests in something critically important to relationships, which is how individuals orient towards and exchange affection through touch.”

Such findings might one day help people overcome “dark triad” tendencies, Mattson said.

“Touch alone could be palliative for situations in which somebody needs support, and we know that has positive downstream effects on health, even if the person finds physical touch aversive,” Mattson said. “We can potentially leverage touch in these scenarios in order to have frontline, inexpensive interventions for those who haven’t learned to use touch in healthy, reciprocal ways and instead rely on it for control or self-protection.”

More information

The Cleveland Clinic has more on “dark triad” personalities.

SOURCE: Binghamton University-State University of New York, news release, Oct. 21, 2025