When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

by Daniel H. Pink

For example, a few years ago University of California-Berkeley researchers tried to predict the success of NBA basketball teams by examining their use of this tactile language. They watched every team play an early-season game and counted how often the players touched one another—a list that included “fist bumps, high fives, chest bumps, leaping shoulder bumps, chest punches, head slaps, head grabs, low fives, high tens, full hugs, half hugs, and team huddles.” Then they monitored team performance over the rest of the season. Even after controlling for the obvious factors that affect basketball outcomes—for example, the quality of players—they found that touch predicted both individual and team performance. “Touch is the most highly developed sense at birth, and preceded language in hominid evolution,” they write. “[T]ouch increases cooperative behavior within groups, which in turn enables better group performance.” Touching is a form of synching, a primal way to indicate where you are and where you’re going. “Basketball has evolved its own language of touch,” they write. “High fives and fist bumps, seemingly small dramatic demonstrations during group interactions, have a lot to say about the cooperative