The Definitive Book of Body Language - Barbara Pease [66]
This chapter will deal mainly with the implications of this air space, how people react when it is invaded, and the importance of sometimes keeping an “arm's-length” relationship.
Personal Space
Most animals have a certain air space around their bodies that they claim as their personal space. How far the space extends depends mainly on how crowded the conditions were in which the animal was raised and the local population density. So personal territory can expand or contract depending on the local circumstances. A lion raised in the remote regions of Africa may have a territorial space with a radius of thirty miles, or more, depending on the density of the lion population in that area, and it marks its territory by urinating or defecating around the boundaries. On the other hand, a lion raised in captivity with other lions may have a personal space of only several yards, the direct result of crowded conditions.
Like most animals, each human has his own personal portable “air bubble,” which he carries around with him; its size is dependent on the density of the population in the place where he grew up. Personal Space is therefore culturally determined. Where some cultures, such as the Japanese, are accustomed to crowding, others prefer the “wide-open spaces” and like you to keep your distance.
Personal space—the portable bubble we all carry around with us
Research shows that people in prisons appear to have larger personal space needs than most of the community, which results in the prisoners being constantly aggressive when approached by others. Solitary confinement, where no others are in the prisoner's space, always has a calming effect. Violence from passengers on aircraft increased during the 1990's when the airlines started packing people close together in the seats to compensate for revenue lost as a result of price discounting.
Zone Distances
We'll now discuss the radius of the “air bubble” around suburban middle-class people living in places such as Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, North America, Northern Europe, Scandinavia, Canada, or anywhere a culture is “Westernized” such as Singapore, Guam, and Iceland. The country in which you personally live may have larger or smaller territories than those we discuss here, but they will be proportionately the same as the ones we discuss here. Children have learned this spacing by age twelve and it can be broken down into four distinct zone distances:
1. The Intimate Zone between six and eighteen inches. Of all the zone distances, this is by far the most important, as it is this zone that a person guards as if it were his own property. Only those who are emotionally close to us are permitted to enter. These include lovers, parents, spouse, children, close friends, relatives, and pets. There is a subzone that extends up to six inches from the body that can be entered only during intimate physical contact. This is the close Intimate Zone.
2. The Personal Zone between eighteen inches and forty-eight inches. This is the distance that we stand from others at cocktail parties, office parties, social functions, and friendly gatherings.
3. The Social Zone between four and twelve feet. We stand at this distance from strangers, the plumber or carpenter doing repairs around our home, the postman, the local shopkeeper, the new employee at work, and people whom we don't know very well.
4. The Public Zone is over twelve feet. Whenever we address a large group of people, this is the comfortable distance at which we choose to stand.
Personal Zone distances
All these distances tend to reduce between two women and increase between two men.
Practical Applications