What Comes Next: Will coronavirus spell the end of handshakes, hugs, and cheek kisses?

Long before coronavirus was even a blip on our collective radar, there was debate around the ‘correct’ form of greeting when meeting up with someone in real life.

The cheek kiss, popular in France but having crept its way over the Channel, has been hotly debated in terms of both awkwardness and appropriateness, with the #MeToo movement prompting panicked missives from businesses and rants from cheek-kissers proclaiming that pressing your lips against a woman’s cheek as a way to say hello was now unacceptable.

The hug can be too friendly. The handshake, meanwhile, all too often feels immensely formal. But even this ‘simple’ greeting option presents complication. A handshake is ripe for judgement – too feeble and you may be too weak to succeed in a certain environment, too quick and you’ve lost face.

Then the pandemic hit and every form of greeting emerged as even more contentious.

Boris Johnson was criticised for continuing to shake people’s hands despite warnings (an act that was later juxtaposed with his entrance into hospital for treatment for Covid-19). Elbow bumps were proposed as an alternative and then chucked out. The wave from a two-metre distance became the norm.

The sudden panic around the cleanliness of hands and the danger of physical touch has meant that our go-to forms of greeting suddenly seem repulsive. We’re all too aware of the germs lingering on skin and the risks they may pose.

But once lockdown ends, coronavirus cases drop, and things return to normal, will we rush right back into hand-shaking, hugging, and kissing? Or will this experience prompt a complete change in the way we greet people? And what effects could this have if it does?

It’s worth first looking at the history of our greetings and why we feel the need to say ‘hi’ by putting our lips on a cheek or our hand in someone else’s.

Professor Marcel Danesi, of the University of Toronto, explains that while the handshake has long been a sign of trust and familiarity, the cheek kiss is trickier to trace – it’s not clear how, in the UK, we went from viewing kissing as a primarily romantic act to some people using it as a greeting.

Professor Danesi tells Metro.co.uk: ‘While these [forms of greeting] may seem to reach back to antiquity, they emerge much later, at least with the meanings we now give to them.

‘The kiss as a greeting ritual is actually quite old, and is found for example in Roman culture. The romantic lip kiss is likely to come from the medieval period, which is when “famous lover’s kisses” are extolled in tales, such as the Romeo and Juliet and Paolo and Francesca ones.

‘To this day, we do not normally see the lip kiss as a greeting, but as something either romantic or sexual. Interestingly, lip kiss in some contemporary cultures, such as Slavic ones, is a form of greeting. Cheek-kissing is difficult to trace, and, to me, is likely to emerge as a greeting ritual in more recent times.

‘Other cultures, such as in Asia, Africa, and other parts, do not commonly kiss the face anywhere. This suggests that kissing is a sign system that develops through specific historical events, becoming part of rituals over time.

‘Handshaking emerges as a “tie sign,” to show that the hands of the greeters did not hide some weapon, binding them together in friendship.

‘The time frame for this is uncertain but it became common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (as far as can be told). It evolved into a sign of courtesy and contact in more recent times. But it still retains iris original connotations. If someone gives you her hand ass part of greeting and you do not take it, it will be interpreted as conflictual or even a challenge of sorts.’

Hugs seem to be preferred by younger generations as the informal option of greeting, used for friends rather than in workplace settings.

All these forms of greeting have cultural connotations and we follow the conventions in part because of what it would say if we didn’t.

Pre-coronavirus, a rejection of a handshake, for example, would be considered rude for reasons that don’t really make sense without knowing the culture around handshakes. It’s just what we do, and if you don’t engage in these cultural traditions you position yourself as an outsider, not part of the group.

But there are psychological benefits to these small moments of physical touch, outside of the massive cultural significance they hold.

Hand with bacteria reaching to shake hands
Even a simple handshake helps us connect (Picture: Getty)

‘Research shows that touch and physical contact are hugely important in maintaining relationships, with partners, family and friends,’ says Jacqui Gabb, the chair of sociology and intimacy at The Open University.

‘Hugging can reduce stress hormones and release the hormone oxytocin – also known as the ‘cuddle’ or ‘feel-good’ hormone. The more oxytocin you release, the more you want to hug and touch. It’s a snowball effect. It makes us feel connected.

‘Touch is never one way. When we reach out and rest a hand on the shoulder of someone we care about, the action is reciprocal. We feel the weight of the embodied interaction. You are touching them, and they are being touched by you. So touch literally connects us.’

Even a handshake, which seems such a passing, un-intimate form of interaction, prompts the release of hormones associated with physical touch, fostering instant connection and positive emotions.

Humans are social, tactile creatures, and we often crave physical touch without even realising it. Simply the prolonged absence of hugging, handshakes, and hugs can make us feel increasingly lonely.

But the reality is that physical greetings with everyone we meet simply isn’t a hygienic habit. While that quick hug might pose benefits for our social connections and our mental wellbeing, it also poses risks for our physical health.

Microbiologist Nicky Milner, a senior lecturer in biological sciences at Anglia Ruskin University, tells us: ‘Our hands carry large numbers of microorganisms and some of these may well have the potential to make us ill (these are called pathogens).

‘Since we can’t see microorganisms with the naked eye, we are always at risk of picking up or spreading disease-causing microorganisms when we touch any surface, including our own skin.

‘Therefore, when we shake hands with another person, we will inevitably share a number of our microorganism with each other and this can result in us falling ill or spreading infection around a community.’

Purely in terms of preventing the spread of disease, ditching physical greetings entirely is the best way to go – rather than downgrading from a cheek kiss to a handshake or from a hug to an elbow bump.

‘[Cheek kisses and hugs] may still carry a risk with respiratory infections being easier to spread through droplets being released in proximity to our noses and mouths,’ Nicky notes.

‘In terms of spreading infections, the less contact between people the better. This is why social distancing works.’

This knowledge that physical touch can spread disease is why physical greetings have stopped for now – but it’s the fear around that knowledge that may stop their return.

Wearing a face mask to be protect from coronavirus
Even once coronavirus has disappeared, the fear around the illness will linger (Picture: Getty Images)

Professor Paul Gilbert, a clinical psychologist at the Uni of Derby who provides academic advice to Compassion in Politics, worries about how the language around coronavirus – specifically the term ‘social distancing’ – might impact our future social interactions.

He previously told Metro.co.uk: ‘We know that pandemics can increase feelings of paranoia and hostility between people, and long periods of time of social distancing may make people more anxious about physical contact.’

Should lingering fears after witnessing the devastating impact of coronavirus put an end to physical greetings, we could see difficulties in connecting with others, more issues of loneliness, and on an individual level, finding that it takes us longer to feel like we really ‘know’ someone.

But will that fear be immense enough to actually put an end to the handshake, the cheek kiss, and the hug? Or will it eventually become a distant memory, allowing us to seamlessly revert back to our old ways?

Experts aren’t so sure.

Jacqui believes that when lockdown is finally lifted, we’ll likely see a significant rise in physical touch with loved ones – and our appreciation of it – compared to before the pandemic, as we’ve fully understood just how vital touch is to our wellbeing.

‘People are craving the return of physical contact,’ she explains. ‘The fist bump and elbow bop are not replacements for the emotional rewards of physical greetings. Even the formal handshake opens up the connection between two people. You get to know something about someone by the way they shake hands, the feeling of their hand on yours, the weight of their physical presence.

‘Concerns over hygiene may remain when we think about our interactions with strangers, but if you ask most people what they’ll say is that they long to hug their friends and family again. For those who live alone, physical contact is what they’ve missed most.’

But when it comes to greeting new people, the pandemic may have forever changed our instinct to stick out our hand for a shake, go in for a kiss on the cheek, or open our arms for a hug.

That caution may linger, carrying us through the awkward ‘oops, we shouldn’t shake hands’ interactions until these gestures are no longer habits.

‘How we regard strangers and those we don’t know may take some while to return to normal – if indeed things do return to how they were before the coronavirus pandemic,’ says Jacqui. ‘It may take some while for us to lose that sense of apprehension around those who are unknown to us.’

It may be the case that while physical touch remains, it becomes recoded as part of loving relationships and is no longer the go-to for introductions. Any longing for that physical touch we’d miss by scrapping handshakes and cheek kisses would be made up for by increased physical interactions with our loved ones, so we wouldn’t be too bothered by those passing bits of touch.

‘Touch is an important form of expression, communication, and bonding throughout the world,’ says Marcel. ‘But it takes various forms, and thus may not be part of greeting rituals. 

‘If tactile greetings were eliminated from touch-using systems the consequences would probably be negative at first, but eventually touch will reenter human interaction in other ways.

‘For some evolutionary reason, it’s an important aspect of human communication and expression.’

That being said, habits are hard to break – and Marcel doubts that our fears are actually strong enough to change the greetings we’ve been using for years. He believes it’s more likely that, after a period of caution, handshakes, cheek kisses, and hugs will continue to filter through our interactions and become ‘normal’ once again.

Pedestrians in flu masks walking in city
Could this loss of physical touch leave us feeling isolated? (Picture: Getty Images/fStop)

After all, for the handshake to die out, we’d need every single person to stop doing it. The second one person shakes a hand, another person is involved, then they think it’s the norm and go to shake another person’s hand, they shake another’s, and so on.

‘When things go back to normal, or at least, a “new” normal, as they say, greetings will remerge,’ Marcel predicts. ‘Habits die hard – this includes cultural habits.

‘Like words in language, greetings are signs of meaning that may undergo changes, but never really disappear. If they do, then our societies will have changed radically.’

Instead of a dying out of these longheld greeting traditions, we might just see some tweaks to how we do them.

Yes, that might mean the elbow bump becomes more common, which Nicky says is lower risk ‘since clothing, which will not contain high numbers of microorganisms, will act as a barrier’, but also that we’ll simply be more conscious of our personal hand hygiene – meaning that longterm, we may not have to worry that we’ve just shaken hands with someone who doesn’t wash their hands after going to the toilet.

‘By using hand santiser in addition to regular, effective handwashing, the handshake will be more hygienic and this is a reasonable compromise in a world where handshakes and other forms of close contact greetings are cemented into our culture,’ Nicky explains.

‘I am not convinced that handshaking, per se, will stop but I think that the pandemic has highlighted the fact that infections can spread very quickly and easily between people, and that our hands play a significant role in this. It would be wise for people who are exhibiting symptoms of infections, such as sneezing or coughing, to perhaps use alternative methods of greeting as a minimum.

‘I hope that once the pandemic subsides and as we start to go about our usual business we continue to adhere to good, regular handwashing procedures.’

So the future will likely have handshakes, hugs, and cheek kisses – but with greater caution and improved hygiene.

And as with so many of the simple things that made up our lives before the pandemic, physical greetings will take on a renewed meaning now we’ve had to go months without them.

‘Physical tough provides reassurance, and says we’re in this together,’ says Jacqui. ‘I’m here for you. I’ve got you. Without this connection people are feeling physically and emotionally isolated.

‘In these strained and strange times, when we’re feeling alienated, or kept apart from usual routines with one another, the sensation of touch is likely to be even more meaningful.’

What Comes Next?

After months of strict lockdown measures, isolation and anxiety - we're beginning to look to the future.

What will life look like when we emerge into our new normal?

Can things ever be the same as they were? Do we even want them to be the same?

What Comes Next is our series of in-depth features unpicking the possibilities for the future.

Every day for two weeks, we will look at the future of work, dating, mental health, friendships, money,  travel, and all the other elements that make up our existence.

Our lives have been turned upside down, but change doesn't always have to be a bad thing.

Do you have a story to share?

Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@Metro.co.uk.

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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/06/11/what-comes-next-will-coronavirus-end-handshake-12832629/
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