Use of Haptics: Ethical Considerations of the Process of Communication in the Family

Abstract

As it consists contact cues and type of touch, “haptics” is always communicative and it is a fairly sound statement which leads all society towards a need of 'be ethical' in use of haptics. Most of the ethical considerations in any society owe an effective level of connection with commensurable practice of particular phenomena in the family, as its attribution is the basic constructional unit of society. Although the family is considered as the smallest unit of the society, it differs sharply from one to next in a complex manner and provides more divisions to the definition of the concept 'family'. In this context, whatever the type that family belonged is not more accountable, but the use of haptics in it. Only for this study of ethical considerations of the use of haptics in the family, mainly the families were categorized into five groups under a simple socio-economic criterion; by names, the families represent ancient folk, rural elites' ancestry, modern middle class, modern rural folk, and modern town folk. Twenty-five families in Kurunegala district were selected as the sample which was accoutred by above mentioned five groups and each group has been contained five families. Various uses of haptics, as one of seven codes of non verbal signals, were taken into the consideration by putting them under eleven types; by names slapping, hugging or cuddling, kissing, beating or punching, kicking, biting, caning or flogging, pushing, pulling, pinching and soft touching. In addition to above types of touch, some of them were more described under a few sub divisions due to some contact cues such as frequency and intensity. Furthermore, as ethics has a relationship with religious and cultural facts, the consequence diversity was also applied to the selected sample. The special attention was paid on how the use of haptics gets differed due to the intra family kinship. Interviews, observations and questionnaires were used for data collection which were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The final conclusion formed a mixture of two aspects namely visible practice, and the family members' attitudes on particular use of haptics