We know what you’re thinking; what does giving the perfect hug have to do with cannabis? Well, nothing, but it sure will keep your heart and mind happy, especially with some help from the beloved green. 

Cannabis aside, if you’re looking to sharpen your hugging skills, you’ve landed on the right article. According to a new study from the Goldsmiths University of London, the perfect hug lasts somewhere between five and ten seconds regardless of arm positioning. 

Psychologists in London analyzed how much pleasure a group of volunteers got from different orientations and durations of a hug. The researchers found that a long hug between five and ten seconds was more pleasant than shorter hugs (under five seconds).

Funny enough, the researchers state that “special care should be taken to avoid extremely brief hugs,” and it was challenging for researchers to find what exactly makes a long or short hug become awkward. However. they did come up with a few tips to help us reach those heartfelt and pleasant hugs, which are the following:

• Hug between five and ten seconds
• Avoid short one-second hugs
• Arm positioning does not matter
• Hugging for longer than ten seconds could make it awkward

Researchers at the Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths, University of London, wrote in their paper that hugging is the most common type of affectionate encounter in our everyday lives. They add that the study will help evaluate how different hugs could affect a person’s mood. 

A similar experiment was conducted by a group of German scientists in 2018. The team of researchers found that a hug on your left-hand side has more of a heartfelt effect than on the right side. During this experiment, German scientists analyzed more than 2,000 hugs in both departures and arrivals at an airport, then compared those to hugs between strangers. 

The team found that when we’re less emotionally inclined to hug someone, we lean to our right, and we lean to the left in more intense and passionate hugs. The researchers noted that this is because of our brain hemispheres.

The study wrote that the right side of the brain controls emotions and the left side of the body, which is why we have a strong need to lean to the left side when going in for an emotional, warm embrace. They also found no difference in results regarding the style of the hug given or the height difference between the two individuals.