First Workshop on Social Interaction in Spatially Separated Environments

Social Presence is the concept of `being there', of emotional connectedness to another person. As relationships are increasingly formed by spatially disparate partners, supporting social presence has become more important. As many intimate acts involve touching, this paper investigates the impact that heat, one aspect of touch, has upon social presence. This is presented in the form of a thermal hug. Our findings indicate that there was a significant difference in terms of social presence between those that received thermal `hugs' and those that did not.