New Study: When NBA Players Touch Teammates More, They and Their Teams Play Better

I've written here before about research on the power of "non-sexual touching," notably evidence that when waitresses touch both male and female customers on the arm or wrist, they tend to be rewarded with bigger tips. Plus I wrote about another study that shows when either women or men are touched lightly on the back by women, they tend to take bigger financial risks.  That second study showed that touching by men had no effect.  Well, there is a new study that shows the power of nonsexual touch among male professional basketball players.  You can read the pre-publication version here.

It is called : "Tactile Communication, Cooperation, and Performance: An Ethological Study of the NBA" and was published by Michael W. Kraus, Cassy Huang, and Dacher Keltner in a well-respected peer reviewed journal called Emotion earlier this year (Volume 10, pages 745-749).

In brief, here is how they set-up the paper; these are opening two paragraphs:

Some nonhuman primates spend upward of 20% of their waking hours grooming, a behavior primates rely upon to reconcile following conflict, to reward cooperative acts of food sharing, to maintain close proximity with caretakers, and to soothe (de Waal, 1989; Harlow, 1958). In humans, touch may be even more vital to trust, cooperation, and group functioning. Touch is the most highly developed sense at birth, and preceded language in hominid evolution (Burgoon, Buller, & Woodall, 1996). With brief, 1-second touches to the forearm, strangers can communicate prosocial emotions essential to cooperation within groups—gratitude, sympathy, and love—at rates of accuracy seven times as high as chance (Hertenstein, Keltner, App, Bulleit, & Jaskolka, 2006). Touch also promotes trust, a central component of
long-term cooperative bonds (Craig, Chen, Bandy, & Reiman, 2000; Sung et al., 2007; Williams & Bargh, 2008).

Guided by recent analyses of the social functions of touch (Hertenstein, 2002), we tested two hypotheses. First, we expected touch early in the season to predict both individual and team performance later on in the season. Second, we expected that touch would predict improved team performance through enhancing cooperative behaviors between teammates.

I love that. As I always tell doctoral students, and I emphasized during the years that I edited academic journals.  A research paper is not a murder mystery.  The reader should know what you are studying and why by the end of the second paragraph -- this is a nice example.

Kraus and his colleagues go onto explain their research method a bit later:

Coding of the tactile communication of 294 players from all 30 National Basketball Association (NBA) teams yielded the data to test our hypotheses. Each team’s tactile behavior was coded during one game played within the first 2 months of the start of the 2008–2009 NBA regular season. Games were coded for physical touch and cooperation by two separate teams of coders.

They explain:

We focused our analysis on 12 distinct types of touch that occurred when two or more players were in the midst of celebrating a positive play that helped their team (e.g., making a shot). These celebratory touches included fist bumps, high fives, chest bumps, leaping shoulder bumps, chest punches, head slaps, head grabs, low fives, high tens, full hugs, half hugs, and team huddles.On average, a player touched other teammates (M = 1.80, SD = 2.05) for a little less than 2 seconds during the game, or about one tenth of a second for every minute played.

They also had coders rate the amount of cooperation by each player studied during that same early season game:

[t]he following behaviors were considered expressions of cooperation and trust: talking to teammates
during games, pointing or gesturing to one’s teammates, passing the basketball to a teammate who is less closely defended by the opposing team, helping other teammates on defense, helping other teammates escape defensive pressure (e.g., setting screens), and any other behaviors displaying a reliance on one’s teammates at the expense of one’s individual performance. In contrast, the following behaviors were considered expressions of a lack of cooperation and trust: taking shots when one is closely defended by the opposing team, holding the basketball without passing to teammates, shooting the basketball excessively, and any other behavior displaying reliance primarily on one’s self rather than on one’s teammates.

Karaus and his coauthors then used these imperfect but intriguing measures of touching and cooperation to predict the subsequent performance of players and their teams later in the season; I won't go into all the analysis they did, but the authors did at least a decent job of ruling out alternative explanations for the link between touching and performance such as players salaries, early season performance, and expert's expectations about the prospects for team performance in 2008-2009.  And they still got some rather amazing findings:

1. Players who touched their teammates more had higher "Win scores," defined as "a performance measure that accounts for the positive impact a player has on his team’s success (rebounds, points, assists, blocks, steals) while also accounting for the amount of the team’s possessions that player uses (turnovers, shot attempts). "

2. Teams where players touched teammates more also enjoyed significantly superior team performance than those where players touch teammates less (the authors used a more complicated measure of team performance than win-loss record, it took into account multiple factors like scoring efficiency and assists, and other measures, which correlated .84 with the number of wins that season.

3. The authors present further analyses suggesting that the increased cooperation among teams where players engage in more "fist bumps, high fives, chest bumps, leaping shoulder bumps, chest punches, head slaps, head grabs, low fives, high tens, full hugs, half hugs, and team huddles" explain why touching is linked to individual and team performance.

Now, to be clear, as the authors point out, this an imperfect study. They only looked at touching in one game for each team.  So there is plenty to complain about if you want to picky.  But I would add two reminders before we all get too critical.  The first is that there is no reason I can see to expect that the weaknesses in this study would inflate the effects of touching; rather, quite the opposite.  The second is that the touching and cooperation were coded by multiple independent coders who did not know the researchers' hypotheses or the patterns they were looking for, and there was very high agreement (over 80%) among them.

As the researchers emphasize. more research is needed, but this study at least suggests that it is worth doing.  It is at least strong enough to increase rather decrease my confidence in the the touching-cooperation-team performance link.   And the way it plays out in different settings might require some careful adjustments in research methods and employee behavior.  For example,  basketball is setting where touch is clearly more socially acceptable than in the offices that many of us work in.  So if you and your sales or project team all of a sudden decide to start doing high-fives, group hugs, and chest bumps, it might backfire given local norms.  Perhaps a more reasonable inference is that, given what is socially acceptable where you work, touching on the high side of the observed natural range just might help.

I would love to hear reader's comments ont his research, as it is quite intriguing to me.

P.S.  No, this is not an invitation for you creepy guys out there to start grabbing your colleagues and followers in inappropriate ways that make them squirm and make you even more disgusting to be around!

 

Comments

[Danny DeMichele Entrepreneur]

I'm partial to this team bonding issue and I feel that it's a terrific tonic to giving up the spirits of players. Thanks for the article and well written.

[Gary Cohen]

Firstly, David, the question of the chicken or the egg was solved this year by some researchers in England. It was the chicken!

As for the issue around touching, this seems to be supported by the recent work of Barbara Hudson on positivity. And how it can become an upward spiral in organizations!

[Jeremy's Bingo Room]

Greetings to everyone, I'm not so much a basketball fan as much as I am a lover all sports. I particularly enjoy Cricket and Rugby - coming from England and I'm particularly drawn to the fortunes of Manchester United FC. But what I have noted - in all sports - is that the bonding that goes on between team mates is imperative to improving playing performance. I know from my days as a fine cricketer, that when players touch one another (appropriately - no funny business) there is a greater feeling of camaraderie amongst us. We feel that we are part of the unit. That's what in the developmental psychology of children that nurturing aspect is so important. I'm partial to this team bonding issue and I feel that it's a terrific tonic to g'ing up the spirits of players. Kudos for the article and well written.

Jeremy Stersky -

Bingo Room player and founder

[Amy Wilson]

Bob - there have been also been a few posts floating through the blogosphere re: the value of hugging http://bit.ly/g4mkNz by Kris Dunn, Trish McFarlane, etc.

It seems to me that there is a general sense that touch/hugging is instrumental in building trust. Meanwhile, trust is the key to success in the social economy (per folks like John Hagel). What I wonder is where this leaves us in a virtual, social economy? We can simulate so many things, but can we really simulate that vulnerability that comes with physically connecting to another individual? Or will we see a sudden rise in live conference attendance? :)

[davidburkus]

P.S. Darn. I was hoping this could be a decent excuse. ; )

[Dave]

It seems like a chicken-egg question to me. Do players who touch more win more or do they touch more because they are winning more?

The talk about team culture, a team "gelling", a team feeling like a bunch of brothers...these statements are made about teams that are often playing very well and it is suggested that the success is due to the camaraderie. They probably have much higher incidences of touching, but it could simply be the by-product of their personal feelings about each other and their shared success. The key test would be to measure the rate of touching for teams that are winning if and when they begin to lose. If the Lakers or Celtics are high-touch, will they continue to be if they are not in the NBA Finals regularly? Also, is the touching really just a by-product of a few, positive people? What happens if the Celtics enter decline and their star players retire or move in via free agency? Does the touching "culture" evaporate? Would simply finding a player who touches more lead to more wins at that point?