Comment by dTal

Hmm, the study didn't hand out hugs, but merely correlated people who'd happened to have received them. The study authors already note that "Individuals who report perceiving the availability of a network of supportive individuals tend to show better adaptation when faced with stress." People with a support network are doubtless more likely to be hugged. Therefore it's not clear to me that the hugs contribute anything, or that any attempt was made to control for this - a classic case of "study measures correlation, headline reports causality".