Haptics

I found haptics to be interesting, especially in different cultural contexts. I was an exchange student in Korea and there was a Korean TA I was talking to. During the course of our conversation I touched his arm and meant nothing by it, but clearly he was surprised, and even bordered on alarmed for an instant. This, in turn, caught me off guard and I realized how inappropriate my action was in the Korean context. Had the same thing happened in North America, noone would have thought anything of it. This experience underscored for me, the importance of cultural context.