Kate Arhel wrote:
> Does anyone know of some research carried out by the University of Minnesota
> into the effect of librarians' body language on their readers'
attitude towards
> the library? It seems the researchers asked some library staff to
> casually touch the hand of readers when issuing their books. Apparently,
> those readers who had been surreptitiously touched on the hand were, when
> later questioned about their visit to the library, more likely to have a
> positive attitude towards the library and its staff than those who had
> not been touched.
Google Scholar comes up with this paper:
Hands touching hands : affective and evaluative effects of an
interpersonal touch.
Jeffrey D. Fisher, Marvin Rytting, Richard Heslin.
Sociometry 39(4), December 1976, pp. 416-421.
--
Owen Massey
Assistant Librarian (Cataloguing)
Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge
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