Personal Space

Greetings Earthlings! Today we're talking about personal space. I mentioned personal space last time in our discussion of privacy because personal space is a related concept because it's also about regulating other people's access to us. It's about how we maintain physical distance between ourselves and others.

I suspect you've been in a situation where you were talking with someone and you felt uncomfortable because they were a "close talker," that came in a little too close when they were talking to you. I bet you've been in a situation where someone leaned in for a hug that you didn't really want. In other words, we've all had experiences where someone got too close for comfort.

From an environmental psychology point of view, these are personal space invasions. Robert Sommer, one of the founders of environmental psychology and one of the first environmental psychologists to study personal space, defined it as "an area with invisible boundaries into which intruders may not come." These are boundaries around your personal body, almost like an invisible bubble, if you will. These are flexible boundaries though that change based on the interpersonal situation, in other words, who you're interacting with, and what your relationship or desired relationship is with them.

So to put it another way, the study of personal space is about the study of "spatial behavior." Spatial behavior is how people space themselves out in relation to other people. Now environmental psychologists are especially interested in personal space invasions. This is when a person or group enters your personal space without your permission. And in general, personal space invasions make us feel uncomfortable and they increase physiological and psychological arousal, which, depending on the person and the situation, can be quite stressful.

Research finds that when people invade our personal space we tend to attribute negative traits to them like "pushy," "rude," or "aggressive." Men who invade women's personal space are often labeled creepy, so this is clearly something that we don't like! You know, on the other hand, people who don't come close enough can be labeled "standoffish," "cold," or "rude."

Now when people's personal space is invaded, sometimes we verbally ask them to back off and give us more space, but non-verbal responses like increasing our distance, changing our location, reducing eye contact, or changing our body orientation, are more common. People don't like to be rude, and most people have at least some trouble with assertiveness in these types of situations.

Let's talk about personal space zones. In yet another example of how environmental psychology is interdisciplinary, this relies on the work of Edward Hall, an anthropologist. Hall coined the term "proxemics" to refer to the study of human spatial behavior, and you know, when you think about it, proxemics has the word proximity in it, and human spatial behavior is about our physical proximity to other people.

Now according to Hall, there are four different personal space zones: intimate, personal, social, and public. And the size of these personal zones are different, as you'll see... First, the intimate distance zone, which ranges from 0 to 18 inches. So someone is really pretty close to you in this intimate zone. In this intimate distance zone, you're so close you can only see their head and their face, and you're close enough to feel their body heat possibly, and even maybe to smell them, and maybe even feel their breath. Generally, people that are interacting at this distance are in a close relationship, and this distance is for more intimate interactions obviously, like comforting, lovemaking, and whispering. Now some sports, interesting thing about this as far as sports, because of course some sports require athletes to interact in this intimate distance zone, within a strict set of rules of course! And of course, when people are angry they may also interact in this intimate zone--they may be right up in each other's faces. In other words, arguing and fighting also can occur in this zone.

The personal distance zone extends from about 18 inches to four feet, and so touching is still possible. This is a common distance for conversation between friends. Further distances in the 2.5 to 4 feet part of this zone generally indicate that people aren't close friends, although they are friendly.

The social distance zone is about four to twelve feet, with four to seven feet being a common distance between people that work together or are conducting a business together.

The public distance zone is 12 or more feet; it's a speaker-audience distance. It's also used with strangers that you don't want to interact with, and also when approaching high-status others, we tend to keep this distance.

Let's talk about some perspectives on personal space, starting off with the evolutionary-neurobiological perspective. Hall's ideas about proxemics were inspired by ethology, and ethology is basically a type of biology that focuses on the study of non-human animals in their natural habitats, in particular, their social behavior. And it also looks to figure out what the adaptive value to the species is of a particular social behavior. In other words, how does it aid in the species' survival? And the assumption is that social behaviors often contribute to the survival of a species and become to some extent "hard-wired" (genetically encoded). Ethologists studying animal behavior found that many birds and animal species have a consistent flight distance, how close a critter from another species can get to them before they'll flee for safety. Many animal and bird species are also relatively consistent in the space that they maintain between themselves and other members of their species. So a good example of this is a flock of birds on a wire. Have you ever noticed how they're relatively evenly spaced on the wire?

Is personal space, the tendency to maintain personal space distances between ourselves and other humans, biologically predisposed because it somehow contributed to our survival? Maybe. Certainly personal space is a thing in every culture, although there is cultural variation. And it makes sense that, like other animals, humans would have a self-protective flight distance, right? I mean, that does enable self-protection. Personal space does protect us to some extent from physical threat from untrusted others. Maintaining a decent personal space buffer zone around us gives us enough room to escape or fight, so it may be inborn. But keep in mind that in humans, even when a predisposition is hardwired, that learning and culture play a huge role in how that plays out. I should say too that research finds that people choose closer different distances when they feel safe and larger distances when they feel unsafe or fearful, so maybe, yeah maybe, it's biological.

Also interesting is psych research that shows that there seem to be groups of neurons in the brain that fire when our personal space is close to being invaded. Research by neuropsychologists like Michael Graziano at Princeton indicate that our brain automatically and unconsciously computes a body buffer zone that changes based on the context. They've identified specific neurons and neural subsystems that monitor the space around our body and fire when there's a breach. They call these neurons "peripersonal neurons." As a quick example, Graziano gives an example of someone trying to tickle you. You know, think about this for a second. Most of us have been in this situation, you know, someone's threatening to tickle you, and as they get closer and closer your neurons start firing like crazy, and there's a high level of physiological arousal. It's a very intense experience for you; you may even start squealing even though they barely touch you.

Now some environmental psychologists also suggest that personal space evolved to prevent sensory overload, and we've talked about this before. We've talked about Milgram's overload theory in our section on stress. We also mentioned overload in regards to privacy. The closer people are, the more sensory information there is for us to process, and arousal is increased. You know, so when you think about it, a personal buffer zone, having this personal buffer zone around you keeps it manageable, keeps that sensory input manageable. One study tested this with an experimental confederate at an amusement park. They varied how "stimulus rich" she was by varying her clothing. And when she was wearing brighter clothes and also wearing perfume--so in other words, more sensory stimulation in her dress and in her odor--people tended to maintain greater distances from her. So again, the point is that personal space can be used to regulate the intensity of sensory input from other people.

I'm going to offer just a little bit too of a developmental perspective on personal space, and although you know most humans seem to require some personal space, and an argument can be made that maybe this predisposition is hardwired, biology, as I suggested before, only tells part of this personal space tale. Learning clearly plays a role, and research indicates that personal space is a behavior that's learned gradually in childhood. We teach children about appropriate interpersonal distances for different situations and different people through operant learning, that is, reward and punishment, and also by modeling personal space behavior ourselves. Now by age four, this learning is already apparent, and children show an understanding that different interpersonal spaces are appropriate depending on whether it's family versus strangers, and whether the situation is formal or informal. So most of us have been implored to give grandma a kiss but stay away from strangers, etc., and it's interesting too that by 12, children use personal space very similarly to adults, as evidence of that development and learning.

Now from a social psychological perspective, personal space is about our relationships with other people. How people position their bodies in relation to others' bodies isn't exactly random! Spatial behavior reflects relationships between people. For example, spatial behavior communicates status differences. In staff meetings, the boss typically sits at the head of the table, the furthest away from lower-level staff. Personal space distances also vary as a function of the relationship. Just look at Hall's personal space distances and you know what I mean. But generally, closer relationships are signaled by closer personal space distances. So close distances signal greater involvement and higher levels of intimacy. I don't know if you remember this, but when Trump was president, much was made of the spatial behavior between him and his wife Melania, which seemed to suggest that they didn't have a particularly close relationship.

Altman also recognized that personal space was relational. He pointed out that the personal space distances between a couple reflected where they are in their relationship. In other words, relationships start, they grow, they change, and sometimes they even die. And depending on where a relationship is in its development, personal space distances between partners may change. Hall also noted that how people are feeling toward one another at the time is a decisive factor in the distances that they choose. It's no coincidence perhaps that we use phrases like "giving someone the cold shoulder" and "turning your back on someone." Clearly, personal space is used to regulate our interactions with other people, communicating how we feel about them and what our relationship is to them.

I should also mention that personal space distancing can communicate prejudice and bias. Studies find that when interacting with people from stigmatized groups or people from groups against whom a person is prejudiced, the person tends to choose greater interpersonal space distances. So kind of disturbing to know that our personal space distances reflect our prejudices and our biases, but there you go!

The approach-avoidance model of personal space, which also goes by the name of the equilibrium model, emphasizes that personal space is used to balance our social needs (that's why it's called the equilibrium approach). And as we said in our discussion of privacy, sometimes we want to be close to others and sometimes we don't, and personal space helps us achieve our desired balance between our approach and avoidance tendencies--that dialectic thing we were talking about last time. Now the equilibrium model suggests that the discomfort when you experience is because of a discrepancy between our desire to be close to someone and our desire to keep our distance. If it's desired, we approach and reciprocate their efforts to be physically closer to us. If not, we distance or engage in compensatory behaviors like reduced eye contact.

Now before we go on to talk about territoriality, I want to say a bit more about some of the things that influence personal space distances. We've already talked a bit about social influences when we said that the relationships between people and status differences between them affect personal space distances. Generally, attraction, cooperation, and equal status are associated with smaller personal space distances. Individual-level factors like age, gender, and personality also make a difference. So, for instance, women often prefer larger distances when they interact with men. As far as personality goes, extroverted and interpersonally warm people tend to use smaller interpersonal space distances. Trait anxiety and self-consciousness are associated with larger preferred zones. There's also some research on people with untreated severe psychiatric disturbance that finds that they prefer very large personal space distances, but once they receive treatment this changes. That makes sense when you think about it. If you're psychotic and you're hallucinating and you're frightened, you will, for self-protective purposes, desire larger personal space distances.

This is interesting to consider in regards to police shooting of people with mental illness who appear to be, as the police would say, "resisting apprehension." I want to point out that this is actually really complex. You've got all these different factors, and they combine in some complex ways that make it hard to generalize about a particular type of group or situation. Gender, for instance, interacts with social and cultural influences. Gender norms in a culture may influence culturally appropriate distances between men and women, and between members of the same gender. In some cultures, it's unacceptable for men to interact in personal or intimate zones unless it's sports or father and son. In other cultures, it's acceptable for men to be very physically close to each other and even hold hands even when they're heterosexual. In some cultures, religion dictates that women maintain very large distances between themselves and men. Women are also more likely to be victims of sexual violence, and people who have survived violence often prefer larger personal space distances. So this is complicated. Diversity matters, but because people are so diverse it's hard to generalize.

Spatial behavior is also influenced by the physical environment. Obviously, a crowded elevator, subway, airport, plane, or bus limits our personal freedom in choosing our personal space distances. Physical spaces may dictate that people be in our personal distance zone or even our intimate zone even though they're not a friend, a colleague, or someone relationally close to us. Even furniture arrangements can make a difference in how people are spaced in a setting. Physical features of the environment can also make a difference. Dim lighting makes people want larger distances between themselves and others, probably a self-protection related issue. Being seated in a corner makes people want more distance. When they're seated in the corner, they don't want to be cornered, right? Being indoors, generally people need more personal space when they're indoors. This, like I said, points to maybe some of the self-protective functions of personal space distancing.

Well, that does it for our lecture on personal space. Next time we'll be talking about territoriality--another way people claim space. Until next time, may you have all the personal space that you desire.