Want to give the perfect hug? Scientists in the U.K. have done experiments to determine how to do it.
For their study, a team of psychologists used 103 pairs of friends to give some friendly squeezes and rate the hugs they received for both pleasure and arousal.
Based on those results, researchers find 10-second hugs promote the most pleasure, five seconds gives slightly less joy and as you might expect, a one-second hug brings the least happiness.
As for the arousal factor, hugs where both people criss-cross their arms rate higher, but embraces where one person circles the waist while the other grasps the shoulders rate slightly higher for pleasure.
Researchers say a height difference makes little to no difference to the experience and they also point out that the waist-neck combo is more common with female-to-female and male-to-female hugs.
So if you want to give the PERFECT hug, it should last between 5-10 seconds with criss-crossed arms.
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