Surveilance Reports About Self-Touching
“Most Self-Touches Are with the Nondominant Hand,” Nan Zhang, Wei Jia, Peihua Wang, Marco-Felipe King, Pak-To Chan, and Yuguo Li, Scientific Reports, vol. 10, no. 1, 2020, pp. 1-13. (Thanks to Adrian Smith for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at The University of Hong Kong and The University of Leeds, report:
“Self-touch may promote the transfer of microorganisms between body parts or surfaces to mucosa. In overt videography of a post-graduate ofce, students spent 9% of their time touching their own hair, face, neck, and shoulders (HFNS). These data were collected from 274,000 s of surveillance video in a Chinese graduate student office. The non-dominant hand contributed to 66.1% of HFNStouches. Most importantly, mucous membranes were touched, on average, 34.3 times per hour, which the non-dominant hand contributed to 240% more than the dominant hand. Gender had no signifcant efect on touch frequency, but a signifcant efect on duration per touch.”