Personal Space

An overview personal space and communication, including a discussion of how gender and culture effect personal space and communication norms, and a summary of the work done on personal space and communication by behavioral and social scientists and communication experts are presented. The main focus is on Edward Hall's proxemics, which is the seminal work on personal space as a nonverbal communication source. Proxemics is the understanding that all humans have at least some personal space requirements, although these vary based on gender and culture, and that humans use distance-setting mechanisms of which we are not aware. Participant observation and norm breaching are the most common methods researchers use to understand where personal space begins and ends for various groups in various situations. This article also provides a brief look at some applications of what is known about personal space and how people communicate with and about it.

Keywords Eight Dimensions of Personal Space; Non-verbal Communication; Norms; Participant Observation; Personal Space; Proxemics; Proxemic Bubble; Proxemic Communication

Personal Space

Overview

Personal space is the space we keep between ourselves and others; it is the space that travels around with us. It is the space we "claim as our own" (Lefebvre, 2003). Put another way, personal space is the region surrounding each person, or the area that a person considers his or her domain or territory (Hall, 1966). This boundary is established by about age 8 (Guard, 1969). Personal space, and how an individual operates in a given space, is considered a form of nonverbal communication by behavioral scientists and communication experts. Researchers have found that personal space is that space that, when crossed, causes the person to feel threatened by the "invader," who is too close. When personal space is violated, people tend to use subtle messages, nonverbal cues, to let others know they are uncomfortable. We are quite unaware of this much of the time.

Norms of Personal Space & Communication

The norms surrounding the amount of space maintained between an individual and others varies depending on the person's culture, gender, and the relationship between individuals—for example, whether it is intimate or formal. While personal space differs within and across cultures and there is "no fixed distance-sensing mechanism…in man that is universal of all cultures, [but] it is often considered universal that all individuals have a need for some personal space" (Hall, E., 1968, p. 91).

As with most rules for social behavior, humans are not generally aware that they are following them. Our need for personal space, and our need to control this space, is neither conscious nor intentional. What this means is we are not aware that we set distances or that there are rules for how close to stand or where to sit, but each culture has norms people are expected to follow regarding personal space. These norms, or rules, are strictly enforced, but generally only through informal social controls, like giving someone a "funny look" when she gets too close or moving away slightly when someone brushes up against you in a store. These powerful rules, besides being a form of nonverbal communication, are significant to understanding how we communicate with one another.

Sociologists who study personal space are sometimes called social psychologists, or sociologists of everyday life, and are interested in the individual within a society. Because people's definition of personal space is learned and embedded in the individual's culture (Hallowell, 1955) and gender (Hall, J., 1994), social scientists use a research method called "participant observation," in which they watch what people do and record it, to determine what that space actually is in various situations and cultures. Some of the earliest studies of personal space come from sociological thinkers such as symbolic interactionist Erving Goffman (1967), and ethnomethodologist Harold Garfinkel (1967). One of the best ways to find out the personal space rules of a culture is to engage in what are called norm-breaching experiments (Archer & Constanzo, 1997; Garfinkel, 1967), in which the sociologist intentionally upsets the order of things, like sitting right next to someone on an empty bus, and recording the reactions of the subject. Researchers identify personal space by "invading" peoples' spaces and watching and recording their reactions (Archer & Constanzo, 1991; Garfinkel, 1967); in other words, they intentionally break the social rules, or norms, and watch what people do in that situation.

Sociologist Dane Archer studies personal space. He videotapes people making decisions about where to sit in public places—for example, libraries or train stations—and people predictably select seats far away from others already in the space. But when norms about where to sit are broken, the one already in the space makes it very obvious how much he or she dislikes it, although this is done is very subtle ways, like pulling books closer or quietly turning away from the person who has invaded the space (Archer & Constanzo, 1991). Nonverbal communication is powerful because it seems to happen so automatically and feels so natural. But, in truth, the establishment of personal space, and its role in nonverbal communication, is a learned behavior.

Sociologists are not the ones who are best known for developed theories on personal space. These come from outside sociology, namely anthropology, communication, cultural studies, and psychology.

Further Insights

Edward Hall & Proxemics

It was anthropologist Edward T. Hall's 1960s work on personal space that is a benchmark for much of the contemporary work done on personal space. Hall developed the term "proxemics, the study of man's perception and use of space" (1968, p. 83) to describe how humans socially construct personal space. Hall says we communicate through how close we stand to one another. and this is called "proxemic communication" (1966). This work looks at how humans set personal space through a type of "out-of awareness distance-setting" (Hall, E., 1968, p. 83).

Hall uses the term "proxemic space" or "bubble" to describe this unconscious territory. Hall also knows that we cannot determine personal space by directly questioning people; rather, a researcher must observe people carefully as they operate in a normal social setting, listening and watching for tone of voice changes or pitch and stress levels when personal space has been "invaded" (Hall, 1963). Hall says individuals' proxemic bubbles vary, and each culture has different norms surrounding personal space.

Interestingly, Hall's theories were originally informed by a zoologist, Heini Hediger (1955), who observed that animals keep biological social distances; these are the distances animals keep from one another depending on the circumstances of the interaction. Two of these distances, flight and critical, are seen when animals from different species interact, while the other two, personal and social, occur when animals from the same species interact. Hall noticed that humans do not have the first two, flight and critical distance, but only the latter two, personal and social distance. From a series of interviews and observations with humans, Hall developed his notion of proxemics, determined that humans as have four zones of personal space:

• Intimate,

• Personal,

• Social, and

• Public.

These zones are a little different in different cultures, but they always affect how communication works between people in the space.

Four Zones of Personal Space

For Hall, the four zones of personal space are based on distance. In Western societies, generally, the intimate zone is reserved for embracing, touching, or whispering, and ranges from the closest at 6 inches to the farthest at 18 inches. One’s comfort level with one’s friends is a little farther away than with a lover, though, generally from about 2 to 4 feet away, and this is called the personal zone. If one knows someone, but this person is only an acquaintance, Westerners tend to stand between 4 and 12 feet from the person, and this is the social zone. And, finally, when speaking to the public, the normative distance kept is between 12 and 25 feet or more, and is called the public zone. The personal zone, 2 to 4 feet away, is this highly regulated space for the individual in Western society. It is also found in other cultures, although the space is closer. When someone enters this space, Hall says we use an eight-factor scale to determine how we will react to this.

Eight Dimensions to Determine Personal Space

Hall says there are eight dimensions people use to determine how to interpret and communicate with someone in our personal space. We are socialized into, or learn, the rules of our culture, and then we use some communication tools to determine if the rules are being followed. We do not do this on an individual basis, although people do differ within cultures. Rather, broad cultural norms are found based in these eight dimensions:

• Postural-sex identifies how a person's sex and the placement of the body as related to another person's body is part of how we communicate to others about personal space;

• Sociofugal-sociopetal describes whether the space discourages (sociogugal) or encourages (sociopetal) interaction and communication between people in the space;

• Kinesthetic is the distance between people that will or will not allow the individuals to touch one another;

• Touch, really a code, is whether the relationship between the two people allows touch, and what type of touch is acceptable, in a given situation;

• Retinal is how long or short one is expected to hold the gaze of another and how distance from one another affects this;

• Thermal is the affect of body heat given off by those interacting;

• Olfactory is how smell affects not only distance kept from one another, but also expectations about breath and body odor; and

• Voice loudness is how loudly or softly someone speaks to another person as defined by the distance the speaker is from the listener.

Hall also divides the social world into two types: contact cultures, those who stand close to one another and touch others easily and who don't mind being touched, and noncontact cultures, people who stand far apart and don't readily touch one another (Griffin, 1991). Contact cultures are Latinos, Middle Easterners, Mediterraneans, and Southern Europeans. Noncontact cultures are Northern Europeans, Asians, and Americans.

Culture, Gender & Personal Space

Gender

Culture and gender directly affect how one perceives personal space and how others perceive someone's personal space. Gender affects distance setting and the level of threat the person feels if personal space is invaded. Also, the nonverbal cues individuals use are directly related to gender. Research on school-aged children shows that as they mature, their sense of personal space changes depending on the sex of those with whom they are interacting, with younger children standing closer to same-sex peers, but as they grew older, stand physically closer to opposite-sex peers (Guardo, 1969). Some of the earliest work in the area was done by Robert Sommer, who studied Americans' use of space extensively. He found that people are more likely to be comfortable in conversation with others when sitting across from one another, facing one another, and being about five and a half feet from one another, but women sit closer than men (Sommer, 1962).

Deborah Tannen (1990) found that women who are from the same culture and race tend to stand closer to one another than men of the same culture or race do.

Bauer (1973) found that, for Americans, Blacks have the least need for personal space, with Black women being least uncomfortable when someone stands close to them, while White American men required the most personal space; White women required the second most. Hispanics and Blacks tend to stand much closer to one another while conversing; this is particularly true for women of these groups (Romaine, 1999). In a study that looked at how men and women reacted to being casually touched and to steady eye contact during moderate interpersonal distance, it was found that men are much more likely to perceive touching and eye contact to be an expression of sexual attraction than women are (Abbey & Melby, 1986), which helps to explain why men are more comfortable approaching women in public and showing overt sexual interest toward them.

These differences can be a source of a great deal of misinterpretation between men and women. A man may often be unaware of being threatening when he is standing close to or touching a woman. To make the situation worse, the woman may be unconsciously frightened and give nonverbal cues to the man of her fear. Because women are subordinate in most contemporary cultures, the woman is less likely to be open about her discomfort. In one study that looks at the differences between men's and women's perceptions of invasions of personal space by way of touching as sexual harassment in Latin American countries, it was much more likely to be thought of as offensive if the perpetrator was male and older (Hendrix, 2000). Another study showed that women perceive both male and female unwanted touching as sexual harassment, but men so say only when the perpetrator is male and are much less likely to say so if the perpetrator is female (Uggen & Blackstone, 2004).

Gender bias is also linked to seating position (Okpala, 1996) in classrooms. Classroom layout—for example, if students sit at tables in rows or in a u-shape—is a factor in whether males or females are at ease in a classroom and whether the students engage with one another in the classroom (Burgess & Kaya, 2007). This study showed that females were more at ease when in clusters or in rows of table-arm chairs, while males felt more comfortable in rows and u-shaped tables. Females in this study interacted more than males in all classroom setups.

Culture

Culture, as Hall showed in his early work, is the most powerful indicator as to how much personal space is needed for individuals, as well as how people communicate in spaces. When engaged in casual conversation, White, middle-class British males stand several feet apart, but White middle-class Americans stand about 18 inches from one another when in conversation. Also, Nordic groups are likely to stand quite far apart. Another cross-cultural study of personal space showed again that Anglo-Saxons have the largest personal space zones. This study also showed that Latinos and Mediterraneans have the smallest personal space zones. Asians and Caucasians were in between (Beaulieu, 2004).

Within cultures, we also see the effects of gender differences in reactions to personal space invasions. One study looked at South African undergraduate students and their need for personal space if they were not in control of whether someone entered this space. In this study, students were asked to stand in one place, while someone stepped slowly closer and closer toward them and asked at each step if they felt uncomfortable. Both male and female students allowed females to get closer to them than males. Also, both males and females required more personal space in front of them and less behind them. While the expectation was that male students would require more personal space than females, this was not the case (Akande, 1997).

Courses in interpersonal and cross-cultural communication are often based in the idea that when we are aware of the fact that definitions of personal space are learned and are not right or wrong, we are better able to communicate and get along with others that are not like us. In studying various cultures, we can start to see how we are sometimes uncomfortable when someone "invades" our space, and yet we really don't know why or where that space begins and ends. It is only when we see it in others can we become more aware of our own reactions to space and others. Also, there are times when we think people are distant and unfriendly because of how far away they are standing; this may be a misinterpretation, and we may judge the person as cold. Sociologist Dane Archer has created a series of videos that are used to train students and workers to become more aware of cultural differences in communication and use of space. An example of this type of misinterpretation of everyday life interaction is Archer's (1997) example of a Brazilian waiter working in America who told Archer about how he tends to touch his American coworkers; when he tried to be friends with these coworkers, they rejected him. The Brazilian waiter concluded that "Americans hate to be touched." Similarly, in interviews with eighteen American university women who had studied abroad between 2006 and 2010, Rawlins (2012) found that most of them had little cultural knowledge of the social norms, including those for personal space, in their public interactions with men, which they interpreted as having been sexual harassment.

Applying Proxemics to our World

For Edward T. Hall, understanding proxemics is more than an awareness of cultural and gender differences. Proxemics can help us understand how we live, how our houses are designed, and how our towns are created, and are vital to architects when designing public spaces. Understanding personal space can provide valuable information on how people act under situations of crowding. And, finally, we see that the norm of personal space is so powerful and unconscious, we carry with us into the virtual world.

Sociofugal & Sociopetal Spaces

Hall's (1963; 1966) proxemic communication indicator, sociofugal versus sociopetal, can be used to define spaces and help us understand why people act in certain ways in one space and differently in other spaces (Goffman, 1959). Sociofugal spaces are gridlike and discourage social interaction because they keep people apart, such as airports. Architects use what we know about personal space and human interaction to design spaces that "fit" what people should be doing in them. Libraries are often intentionally sociofugal. But sociopetal spaces are concentric, or ringed, so that people circle around and meet and talk to one another. Many parks are designed to have people come back to the center, and Washington Square Park in New York City is an example of a sociopetal space. Thus, whether a space is sociofugal or sociopetal determines what is acceptable in that space.

If you are in a sociofugal space and someone sits or stands near you, you would feel uncomfortable; social scientist would say the order of things have been disturbed and this is causing you difficulty. You are not sure what to expect in this situation, because the norms are not being followed. You may believe the person wants something from you. Conversely, if you are with just one other person in a meeting room that is, by definition, sociopetal and another ignores you or sits in the corner as far away as she can, you would interpret this as behavior that is meaningful in itself (Hall, E., 1963; 1966).

In studying our need for personal space and its role in communication, we might make the assumption that crowding, being in a space with "too many people," has a negative effect on people. While people are threatened when others invade their space, crowding is not necessarily negative. Jonathan Freeman's 1975 work shows that crowding has little negative effect on humans, so long as they have a space they know is exclusively their own. Freeman found no negative effect on human performance under crowding; people are able to perform simple and complex tasks while having only a little less than four square feet each. He also found that crowding does not increase stress in humans. Crowding did, however, affect male aggression, but females became more cooperative. So, it appears that, so long as humans have some space they know is their own, they can live in high-density communities with relatively few negative effects.

Personal Space in the Digital World

Finally, one of the most interesting studies on personal space shows that the need to have a proxemic bubble transcends our ordinary physical world. It appears that people who engage in the virtual reality universe Second Life follow the same norms that surround personal space in real life. In these games, people create digital representations of themselves, or avatars. These representations also follow other rules of nonverbal communication, like not holding a gaze too long (Bailenson, et al., 2001). Some of the most interesting studies look at how social norms of social distance are not only used in face-to-face interaction. A 1995 study by Matthew Lombard looked at how people respond to a newscaster on the television screen; he found that the size of the screen, as well as the distance from the screen affected whether people had positive or negative responses to the person on the screen. The larger the screen, the more positive emotional response the viewer had to the anchor on screen, and the more likely the person was to get into a comfortable position when viewing. These people also said they had a more positive experience, generally (Lombard, 1995).

Viewpoints

Most behavioral scientists and communication experts accept Edward Hall's work as a relatively accurate account of what humans are doing when they are staking their own territory. Still, some find Hall's work to have some problems. The most serious critique of proxemics is that Hall says our need for personal space is biological. He also suggests that we are influenced by one another's chemical makeup and that we influence one another based on the distance separating us. But he was never able to prove this entirely. The argument for biologically determined personal space judgment was bolstered by a 2011 study conducted with schizophrenic patients, in which participants’ accuracy in mere spatial judgments and those for social spaces was very similar (Delevoye-Turrell, Vienne, & Coello, 2011).

One of the most common criticisms of Hall's work is his painting cultures with a broad brush. Hall's categories of contact and noncontact people and claims that certain groups culturally are unaware of others' personal space are problematic. Had Hall's work been done today, it would have been much more influenced for the politics of culture and the greater understanding we have about cultures, cultural domination, and assimilation. But Hall's work stands as the most important and most cited work on personal space and how we communicate.

Terms & Concepts

Eight Dimensions of Personal Space: Norms, or social expectations, that help define distance-setting between individuals in a given culture.

Nonverbal Communication: An important term in interpersonal communication, this includes all the ways we tell others who we are and what we think through gestures, posture, eye contact, and gaze holding, and some say even clothing and material possessions like cars and houses.

Norms: Social rules for behavior. The can be either formal, called “mores,” or informal, called “folkways.” Norms are always culturally defined, and we do not always know we are following these rules. People who do not follow these rules are deviants.

Participant Observation: Research method used by many behavioral and social scientists. The method uses observation and careful documentation of behavior in real social settings to try to understand what people are doing and why. Very common for anthropologists and sociologists.

Personal Space: The space around each of us we call our own "territory." All humans have some version of this, although this space is defined by our culture and gender. Very powerful social norms enforce this space.

Proxemics: The study and understanding of the need for humans to have some sort of personal boundary around our physical bodies. This term was developed by Edward T. Hall, an anthropologist.

Proxemic Communication: Edward T. Hall's idea that personal space, and how we communicate with others who come into it, is a form of nonverbal communication. We send messages to people through how we define our personal space.

Proxemic Bubble: The boundary between the individual and the rest of the world; one’s personal space.

Bibliography

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Rawlins, R. (2012). “Whether I'm an American or Not, I'm Not Here So You Can Hit on Me”: Public harassment in the experience of U.S. women studying abroad. Women's Studies, 41, 476–497. Retrieved October 24, 2013, from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=74490998

Romaine, S. (1999). Communicating gender . Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

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Sommer, R. (1967, May). Sociofugal Space. The American Journal of Sociology 72 , 654–660.

Tannen, D. (1990). You just don't understand: Women and men in conversation. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Uggen, C., & Blackstone, A. (2004, February). Sexual harassment as a gendered expression of power. American Sociological Review, 69 , 64–92. Retrieved August 2, 2008, from EBSCO online database Academic Search Premier. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=12883934&site=ehost-live

Villi, M., & Stocchetti, M. (2011). Visual mobile communication, mediated presence and the politics of space. Visual Studies, 26, 102–112. Retrieved October 24, 2013, from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=61157213

Suggested Reading

Egolf, D. B. (2012). Interpersonal communication. In Human communication and the brain: Building the foundation for the field of neurocommunication (pp. 85–96). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Hall, E. (1969). The hidden dimension. New York, NY: Anchor Books.

Low, S., & Lawrence-Zuniga, D. (2003). The anthropology of space and place: Locating culture. Oxford, England: Blackwell Publishing.

Tannen, D. (1990). You just don't understand. New York, NY: William Morrow and Co.