How other people affect our interpersonal space
Published: 24 May 2018 at 11:40
PLOS ONE study shows impact of aggressive conversations taking place nearby
Have you ever felt the urge to cross the road or move seats on a train after a conversation taking place nearby suddenly becomes aggressive? Well, for the first time a scientific study has shown how the size of your interpersonal space changes depending on the tone and content of other people’s conversations.The research, carried out by academics from Anglia Ruskin University, University College London, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genoa, has been published by the journal PLOS ONE.The experiment involved participants listening to two recorded conversations between two people, one aggressive and one neutral.After listening to each conversation, the psychologists measured the comfortable level of that person’s interpersonal space using a ‘stop-distance’ technique. This involved participants listening to a recording of footsteps walking towards them immediately after the conversations ended.They were asked to stop the recording as soon as the footsteps were too close to them and they started to feel uncomfortable. By using the sound of footsteps rather than someone physically walking towards them, it removed any visual bias based on physical appearance.After listening to the aggressive conversation the participants stopped the sound of the approaching footsteps further away from their body (on average 7 seconds away) compared to after listening to a neutral conversation (4.5 seconds away), implying that people want to distance themselves more from others immediately after hearing an ill-tempered conversation.Co-author Dr Flavia Cardini, Senior Lecturer in Psychology
“Interpersonal space is the space we maintain between ourselves and others to feel comfortable. In this study, we showed for the first time that the tone of social interactions influences the size of this space, even when we are not directly involved in the interaction.
“We found that the average size of someone’s interpersonal space becomes larger after listening to an aggressive conversation taking place nearby. This is likely to be an attempt to maintain a safety zone around ourselves, and avoid any interaction or confrontation with those involved in the aggressive conversation.”
The full open access paper is available to download from the PLOS ONE journal
thedrewprint on May 27th, 2018 at 14:01 UTC »
This is most likely a defense response so that you can be ready for something to go down.
click353 on May 27th, 2018 at 11:29 UTC »
I always love when research shows us exactly what we already knew intuitively.
mvea on May 27th, 2018 at 10:55 UTC »
The title of the post is a copy and paste from the first and ninth paragraphs of the linked academic press release here :
Journal Reference:
Eleonora Vagnoni, Jessica Lewis, Ana Tajadura-Jiménez, Flavia Cardini.
Listening to a conversation with aggressive content expands the interpersonal space.
PLOS ONE, 2018; 13 (3): e0192753
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0192753
Link: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0192753
Abstract
The distance individuals maintain between themselves and others can be defined as ‘interpersonal space’. This distance can be modulated both by situational factors and individual characteristics. Here we investigated the influence that the interpretation of other people interaction, in which one is not directly involved, may have on a person’s interpersonal space. In the current study we measured, for the first time, whether the size of interpersonal space changes after listening to other people conversations with neutral or aggressive content. The results showed that the interpersonal space expands after listening to a conversation with aggressive content relative to a conversation with a neutral content. This finding suggests that participants tend to distance themselves from an aggressive confrontation even if they are not involved in it. These results are in line with the view of the interpersonal space as a safety zone surrounding one’s body.