When I touch you, I can feel you: Unintentional emotional transfer through interpersonal touch

Human beings rely on multiple sensory channels to share emotions, yet whether touch alone can convey specific affective states remains unknown. Previous studies often conflate tactile communication with concurrent visual or auditory cues, or reduce touch to artificial stimulation, leaving its independent communicative role unresolved. Here we introduce a dyadic paradigm that isolates touch as the sole channel of affective exchange. While Senders viewed negative or neutral videos, blindfolded Receivers—deprived of auditory input—were asked to infer the Sender’s emotional state based only on handholding. Across 59 dyads, tactile contact significantly enhanced behavioral alignment, particularly for arousal in negative contexts. Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) hyperscanning revealed that handholding increased inter-brain synchrony (IBS) in prefrontal circuits, with the Receiver’s left inferior frontal gyrus emerging as a central hub. Moreover, trait empathy differentially modulated these effects in Senders and Receivers, highlighting the role of dispositional factors in tactile communication. Together, these findings provide convergent behavioral, neural, and dispositional evidence that touch constitutes a dedicated channel for emotional transmission, advancing a mechanistic framework for its foundational role in human social connection.