ROMANTIC MEDIA DISCOURSE: GENDER PREFERENCES FOR TOUCHING BEHAVIOUR

Abstract

The purpose is to analyze the influence of gender on touching behaviour in a mixed dyad within romantic media discourse. Thecomparative study demonstrates new insights into gender-neutral and gender-specific touch cues initiated by strangers in face-to-faceromantic encounters.

Methods. A hybrid approach (inductive and deductive) to thematic analysis was used to interpret codes of nonverbal immediacy cues.The thematic analysis covered six stages of the coding process resulted in deriving a codebook. Qualitative interactive sociolinguisticand quantitative analyses, as well as a method of statistical evaluation of hypotheses (Pearson’s chi-square test), were used to revealthe statistical evidence for touch cues functioning.

Results. The sample consisted of 24 groups of touching behaviour, which included 557 feminine and 302 masculine touch cues.The identified nonverbal cues were grouped according to the focus of the object: self-focused (eight groups) and other person focused(sixteen groups). According to the results of the study, the expected gender differences were partially supported, considering the extentof the effect size. Gender-neutral touching behaviour includes eleven groups: four groups of self-focused (clothes straightening, holdinghands in front of one’s body, hair grooming, holding hands behind one’s back) and seven groups of other person focused (hugs, hand-inhand,handshake, kiss on the cheek, clap, dancing, arm link). Thirteen groups of touching behaviour were found to be gender-specific:four self-focused (clap – initiated only by men; hand(s) on the heart, face covering, lower lip biting – initiated only by women) and nineother person focused (hand kiss, lifting up a woman, selfie – initiated only by men; conversely, caress, kiss on lips, couple rubbingnoses, shoulder massage, feeding a partner with one’s fingers, jumping into partner’s arms – initiated only by women).

Conclusions. Comparative analysis of touching behaviour revealed that women tended to communicate the immediacy throughhand-in-hand (φ = 0.35), hair grooming (φ = 0.28), hugs (φ = 0.23), holding hands in front of one’s body (φ = 0.18), pat (φ = 0.12),hand(s) on the heart, and face covering; while men were predisposed to use clothes straightening (φ = 0.1) and hand kiss; handshakeand kiss on the cheek were initiated similarly by both genders. The obtained data are a prerequisite for further analysis of nonverbalbehaviour initiated by opposite-sex strangers in the contemporary media dating context.