Does everyone have smoother skin than you?

When touching someone else's skin, do you feel like they have softer and silkier skin than you? This isn't necessarily true, since your senses might be playing a trick on you.

It has been a well-established fact for some time now that skin contact is comforting, it cuts back on our sense of loneliness, isolation and stress and makes everyone feel good. When you were a little child or a baby, perhaps your mother caressed your face to comfort you, to help you stop crying or to fall asleep with ease and in many hospitals, they place premature infants on their parents' chest several times a day: this contact helps their development and makes them more resistant.

The human touch

Just as in many other subjects, British scientists also conducted clinical experiments on the psychological effect of skin contact.
They asked 133 people to touch various surfaces, including the skin of another human being and to report on the nature of these surfaces in comparison to their own skin. The scientists were surprised to see that the participants of the research consistently felt other people's skin to be softer than their own. This took place despite the fact that no objective examination could prove that the other person's skin was softer or better in any way than their own.

What is the explanation of this phenomenon?

According to researchers, the series of mistakes is due to a sensory trick: people are capable of differentiating and ranking objects with various surfaces based on touch, yet when coming into contact with the skin of another person, a new, emotional factor comes into play.

Touching the skin of another human being assumes a trusting relationship which fills us with a pleasant sense and due to this new form of stimulus, we mistakenly identify the skin of the other person as being more pleasant than our own. According to scientists this is most likely due to some ancient neural chain of reactions which rewards social connections.

Source: https://goo.gl/Y3EPvk