{
  "id": 6803090,
  "title": "Roughness or sliminess: What makes a haptic material unpleasant",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/11/roughness-or-sliminess-what-makes-a-haptic-material-unpleasant",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-11T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.05.749471v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "This research seeks to pinpoint everyday materials that most individuals find distressingly unpleasant to the touch, and to determine the perceptual traits associated with this aversion. The study evaluated 79 common materials, each exhibiting various qualities such as fluidity, texture, density, and suppleness, including items like cooking oil, sand, coconut, and silk. Participants were invited to interact freely with these materials using their preferred hand and then provide ratings of their unpleasantness and 23 other sensory characteristics (such as flexibility and tackiness) without the aid of visual or auditory cues. Data collection was carried out in two countries: Germany and the UK. Across these diverse material samples, the range of unpleasantness levels showed a clear link to particular perceptual properties of the materials themselves. Generally speaking, materials that are sticky and easily molded (for example, hair gel and play-doh) were perceived as more unpleasant to touch than those that feel smooth and are not easily deformed. The results held true for both the German and UK samples, indicating a consistent relationship between specific features of materials and the unpleasantness they elicit. These findings provide valuable insights into the ways in which various sensory attributes influence haptic unpleasantness, enhancing our understanding of this topic and offering implications for fields such as product design and affective computing systems, both of which aim to incorporate touch-based feedback for detecting and influencing human emotional responses.",
  "summary": "The current study aims to identify materials that most people experience as being unpleasant to touch and to uncover the perceptual attributes that link to unpleasantness. We sampled 79 everyday materials covering a wide range of sensory properties such as fluidity, granularity, roughness, and softness, e.g., cooking oil, sand, coconut, and silk. We asked participants to freely explore these…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}