Effects of Situational Stress and Sex on Interpersonal Distance Preference

Abstract

The prediction that people prefer greater distance between themselves and others when they anticipate a stressful situation was tested. The sex of the "other" was expected to have an interactive effect on distance preference. Written descriptions of settings in which people anticipated future situations of high and low stress were presented and Ss indicated seating preference. When anticipating more stressful situations, more distance from another person was preferred. Males preferred to sit closer to the opposite sex while females preferred to sit closer to the same sex. These findings are consistent with an interpretation of interpersonal distance as a moderator of stress. The sex of the Ss and of their interaction partners must be considered in studies of interpersonal distance preference.

Stay away from me: Coughing increases social distance even in a virtual environment

“…This study provides several implications about personal distance. First, our experiment results show that the agents’ gender influenced personal distance, like in past studies [ 29 – 31 ] on the relationships between gender and personal distance in physical environments. Our study suggests that the gender of the approaching target has similar effects on personal distance regardless of the particular environment.…”

“…The results did not show any significant differences related to the participants’ gender factors, including the interaction effects (participants’ gender factor: p = 0.360, agents’ gender and participants’ gender factors: p = 0.167, type and participants’ gender factors: p = 0.914, coughing and participants’ gender factors: p = 0.130, agents’ gender, type and participants’ gender factors: p = 0.679, agents’ gender, coughing and participants’ gender factors: p = 0.264, type, coughing and participants’ gender factors: p = 0.275, type, agents’ gender, coughing and participants’ gender factors: p = 0.445). Therefore, the participants’ genders are insignificant as well as the reported results from the past studies [ 27 – 31 ].…”

“…Our experiment results showed that participants kept more distance from male agents than female agents in the virtual environment. Previous studies that investigated personal distance in the physical environment reported that participants maintained more distance from males than females [ 29 – 31 ]. Therefore, since the gender of human beings itself has been shown to make a difference in personal distance, we thought that the gender of the virtual agents affected participants’ personal distance.…”

“…We employed a within-subject design in which each participant was randomly assigned to all eight conditions considering counterbalances. We focused on the agents' genders because several studies in the early stage of proxemics research concluded that the effects of participant genders are insignificant when participants are approached by another person [27][28][29][30][31]. On the other hand, some studies reported that the gender of the approacher causes significant effects in identical situations [29][30][31], e.g., participants PLOS ONE maintained more distance from males than females.…”

Structural linear relationships between job stress, burnout, physiological stress, and performance of construction project managers

“…Hence, in previous studies, both positive (Zajonc, 1965; Meglino, 1977) and negative (Jamal, 1984; Abramis, 1994) linear relationships were revealed between stress and performance. However, as C‐PMs are normally required to manage and control complicated construction projects involving demanding tasks, multi‐stakeholders, and adverse environments, previous stress management studies of construction professionals (Leung et al , 2005; Long et al , 1980; Sidman, 2005) have indicated that the relationships between stress and performance are mainly negatively linear (i.e. deterioration of performance resulting from increase in stress level) in the industry.…”