Touch Avoidance with Close People and Strangers: Effects of Gender, Sexual Orientation, and Relationship Status

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

I read the paper with much interest. It addresses an original topic using a rigorous scientific method. 

I believe that it can be further improved through some minor changes. 

In the introduction, the authors talk about the social norms associated with gender roles. Since the study is carried out in Italy, I believe that a few more lines about the Italian context on this aspect would be necessary. What are the factors that affect Italian preferences and attitudes about human touch, according to the literature?

In the methodological part, some more information would be appropriate. For example, I read that recruitment was done online through social networks. What was the criterion for selecting the specific sites that were chosen? On what pages or groups was the link disseminated?

Also, the respondents were divided between people with their sexual orientation as same-sex or opposite-sex attraction. However, there are also other sexual orientations (such as bisexualism or pansexualism...). 

I believe that the authors should explain why they did not take into account these other profiles, using a very binary approach. A very large literature exists on the risks of reducing human complexity into dichotomous categories. I expect that in the revised version of the paper some reflection on this aspect will be developed.

Author Response

Comment 1. In the introduction, the authors talk about the social norms associated with gender roles. Since the study is carried out in Italy, I believe that a few more lines about the Italian context on this aspect would be necessary. What are the factors that affect Italian preferences and attitudes about human touch, according to the literature?

Response 1. Thank you to the reviewer for this comment. to our knowledge these aspects have never been investigated in Italian culture. We agree that this is an important area of study and include this suggestion for future studies on page 8.

Comment 2. In the methodological part, some more information would be appropriate. For example, I read that recruitment was done online through social networks. What was the criterion for selecting the specific sites that were chosen? On what pages or groups was the link disseminated?

Response 2. Thank you to the reviewer for this suggestion. We specify in methods that the link was disseminated through social networking sites “using social networks that provide sponsored advertisements together with a snowball recruiting technique.” We confirm that the link was not posted in any social network groups or further pages.

Comment 3. Also, the respondents were divided between people with their sexual orientation as same-sex or opposite-sex attraction. However, there are also other sexual orientations (such as bisexualism or pansexualism...). I believe that the authors should explain why they did not take into account these other profiles, using a very binary approach. A very large literature exists on the risks of reducing human complexity into dichotomous categories. I expect that in the revised version of the paper some reflection on this aspect will be developed.

Response 3.  Thank you to the reviewer for this suggestion. As we specified in the inclusion criteria, we only selected same and opposite sex because the number of other sexual orientations bisexualism, pansexualism was too low in the starting sample and because this is meant to be a preliminary study. More engagement of those with these identities in research design and strategic recruitment of these individuals would be necessary to advance this understanding in a fulsome way. We have now added a sentence in the conclusions that future studies will also benefit from taking into account other sexual orientations in the analysis of touch avoidance on page 8.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you very much for allowing me to review this very interesting article. I indicated a number of changes that should be made to improve the article.

The abstract should briefly explain all parts of the article.  The paragraph at the end: Overall, this paper uniquely contributes to the literature in understanding social touch avoidance with respect to sex, marital status, and sexual orientation in an Italian sample, should be the conclusion of what it implies, not add a justification of the article.

The introduction is brief to provide further theoretical justification which will then be used in the discussion.

Improve the methodology and results by putting the cronbach's alpha of the scale in total and if you want to improve this issue make invariance by groups to know how the scale has performed.

If data were available with other scales used, it would strengthen the study because, since only one scale was used, the results obtained have only one instrument to indicate these findings.

The discussion is very brief and hardly refutes the results with other previous studies. The strengths, limitations, future studies and conclusion of the article are not clear. 

Author Response

Comment 1. The abstract should briefly explain all parts of the article.  The paragraph at the end: Overall, this paper uniquely contributes to the literature in understanding social touch avoidance with respect to sex, marital status, and sexual orientation in an Italian sample, should be the conclusion of what it implies, not add a justification of the article.

Response 1. Thank you very much for the reviewer for recommending we modify the conclusion in the abstract. We have also changed the conclusion to remove the justification for the article.

Comment 2. The introduction is brief to provide further theoretical justification which will then be used in the discussion.

Response 2. Thank you to the reviewer for the comment. We have provided a more comprehensive overview and removed some of the justifications regarding the article. We want to ensure that the reader understands the significance/need for the research. As such, we kept the section where we described the gaps that are filled in the literature with the present work.

Comment 3. Improve the methodology and results by putting the cronbach's alpha of the scale in total and if you want to improve this issue make invariance by groups to know how the scale has performed.

Response 3. The TAQ scale does not have a total score but only the subdimensions so it would be wrong to insert Cronbach’s alpha of the total score (for more information see: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01673). Thank you for the suggestion, but the scale invariance was outside the aims of the current study. Additionally, given the length and the 5-factor structure of the scale, the sample sizes of each subgroups are not sufficient to perform invariance analyses (e.g.,  Kyriazos,  2018 https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2018.98126).

Comment 4. If data were available with other scales used, it would strengthen the study because, since only one scale was used, the results obtained have only one instrument to indicate these findings.

Response 4. Thank you to the reviewer for this suggestion. The proposed one is a preliminary study. We are now analyzing the relationship between touch avoidance and other variables as well; however, due to the distinct theoretical foundation and research aims of this work, it is outside the scope of the current manuscript to incorporate these results here.

Comment 5. The discussion is very brief and hardly refutes the results with other previous studies. The strengths, limitations, future studies and conclusion of the article are not clear. 

Response 5. Thank you to the reviewer for the comment regarding the brief discussion. We have further expanded the discussion substantively, but given that there are few-to-no conflicting results, we have not provided additional conflicting results. Rather, the current work provides a valuable replication and extension of previous research, which we now highlight to a greater degree. We have also provided a summary of the strengths, limitations, future studies, and concluding statement for the discussion.

Reviewer 3 Report

Dear Authors,

you have done a good job on an interesting topic and it would be interesting to compare your test data with other variables such as whether you have children or a job role.

The other suggestion I would move some parts of the discussion to the conclusions.

Best regards.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Comment 1. Dear Authors, you have done a good job on an interesting topic and it would be interesting to compare your test data with other variables such as whether you have children or a job role.

Response 1. Thank you to the reviewer for this suggestion. We will keep this comment in mind for future studies on touch avoidance.

Comment 2. The other suggestion I would move some parts of the discussion to the conclusions.

Response 2. Thank you to the reviewer for this suggestion. We have now moved some parts of the discussion to the conclusions.

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper presents an interesting study on social touch avoidance in an Italian sample, considering differences according to gender, marital status, and sexual orientation. The paper is overall interesting and well-written, and my concerns are minor and mainly related to the presentation of results. 

However, I will also note that the sample - which is of a good size and with a good proportion of individuals with same-sex attraction - seems to have a high proportion of unemployed people. Are most of them students? If not, this could potentially bias the outcomes and should be clarified in the manuscript.

Regarding the variable named 'marital status,' I suggest renaming it to 'relationship status.' The current naming could be misleading as the variable essentially measures whether participants are in a relationship, rather than whether they are married or celibate.

I appreciate the use of estimated marginal means in presenting the results. They offer a more interpretable output compared to ANCOVA. However, I would recommend computing scale scores using averages instead of sums to have all scales range between 1-5, which would make them even more understandable.

Furthermore, the interpretation of interactions presented in lines 170-186 is convoluted. Considering that higher-order interactions are significant, using estimated marginal means (EMMs) to directly compare the eight subgroups - broken down by gender, marital status, and sexual orientation - would be more appropriate. A graph (such as an interaction plot) would also help in this regard. 

Additionally, some findings on gender differences, notably those related to touch avoidance toward same-sex friends, have been previously reported in an Italian sample in [22]. These should be labeled as replications rather than novel contributions.

I found a few minor formatting issues. There are several lines with double spacing, maybe due to the PDF conversion (lines 46, 172, 180 [twice], 199, 201, 206, 208, 211, 220, 227). Also, there's a double comma in line 91, an excessive space in the version number in line 132, and a missing space in line 160. 

Author Response

Comment 1. The paper presents an interesting study on social touch avoidance in an Italian sample, considering differences according to gender, marital status, and sexual orientation. The paper is overall interesting and well-written, and my concerns are minor and mainly related to the presentation of results. However, I will also note that the sample - which is of a good size and with a good proportion of individuals with same-sex attraction - seems to have a high proportion of unemployed people. Are most of them students? If not, this could potentially bias the outcomes and should be clarified in the manuscript.

Response 1. Thank you to the reviewer for this suggestion. Yes, most of unemployed people were students.

Comment 2. Regarding the variable named 'marital status,' I suggest renaming it to 'relationship status.' The current naming could be misleading as the variable essentially measures whether participants are in a relationship, rather than whether they are married or celibate.

Response 2. Thank you to the reviewer for this suggestion. We have now renamed “marital status” with “relationship status” throughout the manuscript.

Comment 3. I appreciate the use of estimated marginal means in presenting the results. They offer a more interpretable output compared to ANCOVA. However, I would recommend computing scale scores using averages instead of sums to have all scales range between 1-5, which would make them even more understandable.

Response 3. Thanks for the suggestion because it is true that each scale consists of a different number of items. However, the ANCOVAs did not compare the scale scores among them. Thus, even in the current form, the contrasted scores are all on the same range.

Comment 4. Furthermore, the interpretation of interactions presented in lines 170-186 is convoluted. Considering that higher-order interactions are significant, using estimated marginal means (EMMs) to directly compare the eight subgroups - broken down by gender, marital status, and sexual orientation - would be more appropriate. A graph (such as an interaction plot) would also help in this regard. 

Response 4. Thank you for this suggestion. We tried to make the result report less convoluted creating different sections and including a table reporting the EMMs for the 3-variable interaction (TABLE 3).

Comment 5. Additionally, some findings on gender differences, notably those related to touch avoidance toward same-sex friends, have been previously reported in an Italian sample in [22]. These should be labeled as replications rather than novel contributions.

Response 5. Thank you very much to the reviewer for your suggestion. We have now labeled as replications rather than novel contributions. This is found in the discussion.

Comment 6. I found a few minor formatting issues. There are several lines with double spacing, maybe due to the PDF conversion (lines 46, 172, 180 [twice], 199, 201, 206, 208, 211, 220, 227). Also, there's a double comma in line 91, an excessive space in the version number in line 132, and a missing space in line 160. 

Response 6. Thank you to the reviewer for this suggestion. we have corrected these errors although, if the manuscript will be accepted, it will be edited by the MDPI office in charge of doing so.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for making the requested revisions.

Author Response

thank you for your suggestions!