• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 721 0

from the other. The Japanese, with his smaller ten-inch Intimate Zone, continually steps forward to adjust to his spatial need, but this invades the American's Intimate Zone, forcing him to step backward to make his own spatial adjustment. Video recordings of this phenomenon replayed at high speed give the illusion that the two men are waltzing around the room, with the Japanese leading. This is one of the reasons why, when negotiating business, Asians and Europeans or Americans often look at each other with suspicion. The Europeans or Americans refer to the Asians as “pushy” and “familiar” and the Asians refer to the Europeans or Americans as “cold,” “standoffish,” and “cool.” This lack of awareness of Intimate Zone variations between cultures can easily lead to misconceptions and inaccurate assumptions about one culture by another.

Country vs. City Spatial Zones

As mentioned, the amount of Personal Space someone needs is relative to the population density where they live. People raised in sparsely populated rural areas, for example, need more Personal Space than those raised in densely populated cities. Watching how far a person extends his arm to shake hands gives a clue to whether he is from a large city or a country area. City dwellers typically have their private eighteen-inch “bubble;” this is also the measured distance between wrist and torso when they reach to shake hands.

Two men from the city greet each other; their hands reaching to eighteen inches

This allows the hands to meet on neutral territory. People raised in a country town with a small population may have a space “bubble” of up to thirty-six inches or more and this is the average measured distance from the wrist to the body when the country person shakes hands.

Two people from a country town reaching out to thirty-six inches

Rural people tend to stand with their feet firmly planted on the ground and lean forward to meet your handshake, whereas a city dweller will step forward to greet you. People raised in remote areas can have an even larger Personal Space need, which could be as wide as eighteen feet. They often prefer not to shake hands but would rather stand at a distance and wave.

People from a sparsely populated area keeping their distance

Farming equipment salespeople who live in cities find this information useful for calling on farmers in sparse rural areas. Considering, for example, that a farmer could have a “bubble” of three to six feet or more, a handshake could be seen as a territorial intrusion, causing the farmer to react negatively or defensively. Successful country salespeople state almost unanimously that the best negotiating conditions exist when they greet the rural customer with an extended handshake and the farmer from a remote area with a distant wave.

Territory and Ownership

Property a person owns or a space he regularly uses constitutes a private territory and, just as with his personal bubble, he'll fight to defend it. A person's home, office, and car represent a territory, each having clearly marked boundaries in the form of walls, gates, fences, and doors. Each territory may have several subterritories. For example, in a home, a person's private territory may be their kitchen and they'll object to anyone invading it when they're using it; a businessman has his favorite place at the conference table; diners have their favorite seats in the café; and Mom or Dad have their favorite chair at home. These areas are usually marked either by leaving personal possessions on or around the area, or by frequent use of it. The café diner may even go so far as to carve his initials into “his” place at the table and the businessman marks his territory at the conference table with things such as a personal folder, pens, books, and clothing spread around his eighteen-inch Intimate Zone border.

Studies carried out by Desmond Morris into seating positions in libraries showed that leaving a book or personal object on a library desk reserved that place for an average of seventy-seven minutes; leaving