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• Hugs ward off illness . In a study led by Sheldon Cohen , the Robert E . Doherty University Professor of Psychology in CMU ’ s Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences , researchers tested whether hugs act as a form of social support , protecting stressed people from getting sick . Their findings were published in Psychological Science , which found that greater social support and more frequent hugs protected people from the increased susceptibility to infection associated with being stressed and resulted in less severe illness symptoms .
• Hugs facilitate growth and development .
Children need sensory stimulation for their brains to grow and develop properly . Studies looking at infants in orphanages who were rarely held found they had severe cognitive impairments , but when they were held for just 20 minutes per day for 10 weeks , they scored higher on brain development assessments . Researchers have also revealed that children who get more hugs have more developed brains .
• Hugs help children regulate their emotions . In a process called co-regulation , hugging helps tantruming or upset children calm down quicker . Cognitive neuroscientist Caroline Leaf , PhD days , “ As you coregulate with someone , the mirror neurons in their brain are activated , and this enables the person in the deregulated state to literally ‘ mirror ’ your calmness .”
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