They would say it's a particular character attitude in our culture rather than indicative of anything particularly deep.
I would agree with this, if it's forced
as some of you know, I got in trouble as a kid and spent most of my teen years at a "therapeutic" boarding school based on behavior modification - there's an entire industry of that bullshit in the U.S. (and possibly abroad?) ultimately based - for anyone who's familiar or wants to look it up - on CEDU/Syanon (yeah, the drug rehab/cult) lines
and it put me entirely off the notion that you can really change the behavior of anyone who doesn't want to change their behavior, besides with threat of force. it also inspired my healthy skepticism of the entire mental health field - not that it's all bullshit, so much as it's very hard to distinguish the bullshit from the genuine insights but that doesn't stop people speaking from authority as if they know the difference (I just reread
Trainspotting and there's a pretty good chapter where Renton goes into this in more detail). all I ever learned there was how to game the system until I could leave.
which isn't directly related to hugging, I guess, just the idea that anyone has a handle on what human needs really are outside the obvious