Personal space & communication
- Personal space consists of the area around yourself that you consider to be ‘out of bounds’ to most people and that only close, intimate friends/partners/family members may enter
- The diagram below shows how most people (in Westernised cultures such as the UK) conceptualise personal space (notice how the space is divided into zones)
Personal space diagram
Personal space can be divided into zones
Culture
- Personal space will differ depending on different factors, one of which is culture:
- The level of formality (which is also relevant for status differences below) in a country such as Japan can be seen in adherence to maintaining more distance between each other, particularly if one person is of higher rank than the other person
- One generalisation is
- that people from the USA prefer to speak to people using an arm’s length distance
- people from Mediterranean Europe prefer to be wrist length apart
- people from the Middle East are happy with an elbows length apart
- Climate may be a factor in personal space, with the idea that people from warmer climates (‘contact’ cultures) have less need for personal space than those from colder, ‘non-contact’ cultures as warm weather makes people feel more relaxed (Sorokowska et al. 2017)
Exam Tip
Remember to challenge the findings and conclusions of research studies: the above research by Sorokowska did not find consistent results - they found that some warm countries such as Pakistan and Turkey required large personal space between people. Thus, it could be that in countries where religion is a strong factor, this overrides the climate-based argument for personal space requirements.
Gender
- Males and females may have different attitudes towards personal space:
- Males are more likely to prefer more distance than females when it comes to same-sex interactions
- Preferences for personal space may be a result of social conditioning:
- females are generally more likely to be encouraged to form close bonds with friends, to be caring, and nurturing, and to focus on feelings and relationships than men are (though this is of course, a rather stereotyped way of viewing gender norms)
- Fisher & Byrne (1975) found that female students responded more negatively to side-by-side invasions of personal space (a stranger sitting next to them in the library) while males responded more negatively to face-to-face invasions (a stranger sitting opposite them in the library)
- Nassiri et al. (2010) investigated personal space in Collaborative virtual environments (CVE)) and found that the gender of avatars in the CVE did not result in either male or female participants experiencing anxiety about having their space invaded (which contrasts to how females particularly might feel about personal space invasion in the real world)
Personal space diagram
Invasion of personal space may be viewed as a threat.
Status
- Status simply refers to the level which confers value or respect on an individual either formally (e.g. a school Principal) or informally (e.g. the leader of a gang of teenagers)
- As mentioned above, some cultures place a high value on social hierarchies and this can be seen in the use of personal space surrounding people of different rank (e.g. in a Japanese company the executive director would be given more personal space than other people lower down the hierarchy)
- People of equal status tend to use a closer distance than people of unequal status e.g. two factory workers will use a closer distance than a factory worker and the factory owner (Zahn, 1991)
- Maher & von Hippel (2005) asked 109 office workers - via a questionnaire - how they felt about working in an Open-plan office:
- their findings showed that participants with low perceived privacy reported lower levels of job satisfaction and enjoyment i.e. a lack of personal space boundaries may be linked to a negative mood
Evaluation of personal space
Strengths
- There are some good applications for the use of personal space in the real world: when travelling to other cultures, when communicating with the opposite sex or the boss at work, even when deciding where to sit on a bus
- Research into personal space tends to use the self-report method which - in the form of a questionnaire - can be replicated in high numbers to check for reliability
Weaknesses
- One of the downsides of using the self-report method to gather data is that participants may succumb to social desirability bias and not answer the questions with complete honesty
- Research on personal space may be overly simplistic as it does not take into account an array of factors which may also contribute to distances between people e.g. personality, upbringing, religion etc.
Worked example
Here is an example of a question you might be asked on this topic - for AO2 and AO3.
AO1: You need to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of key concepts, ideas, theories and research.
AO2: You need to apply your knowledge and understanding, usually referring to the ‘stem’ in order to do so (the stem is the example given before the question)
AO3: You need to analyse and evaluate key concepts, ideas, theories and research.
After each featured question there is a ‘model’ answer i.e. one which would achieve top marks in the exam.
Question: You have been asked to design a questionnaire to investigate male and female attitudes towards personal space.
In your answer outline the following information:
- an example of one closed question and one open question that you would use on your questionnaire
- one thing you would do to standardise your questionnaire and why this would benefit your research
- the results you would expect to find from your experiment [6]
AO2 = 4 marks
AO3 = 2 marks
Model answer:
AO2:
Suggestions for a closed question:
- Do you enjoy linking arms with same-sex friends? Yes/No
- On a scale of 1-7 (1 = high agreement) how far do you agree with the following statement: ‘I feel uncomfortable when a stranger of the opposite sex invades my personal space’
Suggestions for an open question:
- Describe a situation in which you felt uncomfortable about your personal space being invaded.
- How would you feel if a same-sex friend linked arms with you?
Suggestions for how to standardise your questionnaire:
- Ensure that all questions are the same, regardless of who is answering them so that the results are reliable and can be used across different samples.
- Ensure that rating scales are all measuring the same variable e.g. a high rating for one statement may need to be reversed so that a low rating for another statement is still measuring the same level of feeling about personal space. This ensures that the research is valid.
AO3:
Suggestions for the results you would expect to find:
- Based on previous research into gender and personal space I would expect to find that males prefer more distance between themselves and same-sex friends whereas females are happy to include same-sex friends into their intimate space e.g. linking arms and being close.
- I might expect to find that males feel that their personal space has been invaded when someone sits opposite them whereas females feel this way when someone sits next to them.
