Physical distancing and the perception of interpersonal distance in the COVID-19 crisis

Welsch, Robin; Wessels, Marlene; Bernhard, Christoph; Thönes, Sven; Castell, Christoph von

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-90714-5

Cited by 45 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…One potential explanation is that COVID-19 specifically impacted active approach, as people were encouraged not to get too close to others in order to protect their own health as well as that of others. There is some preliminary evidence that the preferred interpersonal distance potentially increased during the COVID-19 pandemic [73,74]. Additional research is required to deepen the understanding of the dynamics related to interpersonal distance preferences following COVID-19.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opposing Association of Situational and Chronic Loneliness with Interpersonal Distance

et al. 2021

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Loneliness is a prevalent condition with adverse effects on physical and mental health. Evolutionary theories suggest it evolved to drive people to reconnect. However, chronic loneliness may result in a negative social bias and self-preservation behaviors, paradoxically driving individuals away from social interactions. Lonely people often feel they are not close to anyone; however, little is known about their interpersonal distance preferences. During COVID-19, many experienced situational loneliness related to actual social isolation. Therefore, there was a unique opportunity to examine both chronic and situational (COVID-19-related) loneliness. In the present study, 479 participants completed an online task that experimentally assessed interpersonal distance preferences in four conditions—passively being approached by a friend or a stranger, and actively approaching a friend or a stranger. Results show that high chronic loneliness was related to a greater preferred distance across conditions. Intriguingly, by contrast, high COVID-19-related loneliness was related to a smaller preferred distance across conditions. These findings provide further support for the evolutionary theory of loneliness: situational loneliness indeed seems to drive people towards reconnection, while chronic loneliness seems to drive people away from it. Implications for the amelioration of chronic loneliness are discussed based on these findings.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opposing Association of Situational and Chronic Loneliness with Interpersonal Distance

et al. 2021

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“…The widespread recent practice of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic has greatly influenced the way we position ourselves relative to others. This social distancing has generated renewed interest in interpersonal space regulation 1 , 2 . Historically, the study of personal space is often traced to ethological observations in the middle twentieth century 3 – 5 , related to the ‘fight or flight’ interactions between different animals, including predator and prey species.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychological and physiological evidence for an initial ‘Rough Sketch’ calculation of personal space

Tootell

Zapetis

Babadi

et al. 2021

Sci Rep

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Personal space has been defined as “the area individuals maintain around themselves into which others cannot intrude without arousing discomfort”. However, the precise relationship between discomfort (or arousal) responses as a function of distance from an observer remains incompletely understood. Also the mechanisms involved in recognizing conspecifics and distinguishing them from other objects within personal space have not been identified. Accordingly, here we measured personal space preferences in response to real humans and human-like avatars (in virtual reality), using well-validated “stop distance” procedures. Based on threshold measurements of personal space, we examined within-subject variations in discomfort-related responses across multiple distances (spanning inside and outside each individual’s personal space boundary), as reflected by psychological (ratings) and physiological (skin conductance) responses to both humans and avatars. We found that the discomfort-by-distance functions for both humans and avatars were closely fit by a power law. These results suggest that the brain computation of visually-defined personal space begins with a ‘rough sketch’ stage, which generates responses to a broad range of human-like stimuli, in addition to humans. Analogous processing mechanisms may underlie other brain functions which respond similarly to both real and simulated human body parts.

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“…Besides, the changes in the IPD are also related to blood pressure [30]. Moreover, the study of the IPD plays an important role to understand behavior changes during the current COVID-19 pandemic, which means IPD changes are affected by COVID-19 [31]. During COVID-19, subjectively perceived COVID-19 risk and the related level of anxiety increases the IPD [32], wearing a mask was able to reduce IPD [33], while people still maintain a relatively far IPD from negative emotional people, despite the fact they are wearing masks [34].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Alterations in Interpersonal Distance (IPD) Cognition and Its Correlation with IPD Behavior: A Systematic Review

Huang

Izumi

2021

Brain Sciences

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Background. Interpersonal distance (IPD) plays a critical role in a human being’s social life, especially during interpersonal interaction, and IPD is non-verbal social information and not only provides silent cues but also provides a secure space for personal relationships. IPD has been a research field of neural studies from the recent decade, researches had provided behavior and neural correlates of IPD. Objectives. This review aims to summarize the experimental paradigms of IPD-neural research, to reveal the neural activity processes associated with it, and to explore the correlation between IPD-neural activity and IPD-behavior. Methods. We conducted a standardized systematic review procedure, including the formal search method be adopted to seek out any type of studies related to IPD and brain, then devised them into categories to make a systematic review. Results. 17 articles met the inclusion criteria of the review, 5 event-related potential (ERP) studies measured the amplitude and latencies of ERPs, and 12 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies provided the neural activation during IPD tasks. In addition, the passive IPD experimental paradigm is the main experimental paradigm for exploring neural activity in IPD cognition, with the parietal lobe, motor areas, prefrontal lobe, and amygdala being the main brain areas involved. Functional connections between the identified brain regions were found and have a moderate correlation with IPD behavior. Conclusions. This review provides the neural activity of the IPD interaction process. However, the insufficient ecological validity of IPD tasks and ignore the initiative of people in IPD interaction. Therefore, there is a large research space on this topic. The work of the current systematic review contributed to linking the external performance and inner neural activities of IPD.

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Physical distancing and the perception of interpersonal distance in the COVID-19 crisis

Cited by 45 publications

References 48 publications

Opposing Association of Situational and Chronic Loneliness with Interpersonal Distance

Opposing Association of Situational and Chronic Loneliness with Interpersonal Distance

Psychological and physiological evidence for an initial ‘Rough Sketch’ calculation of personal space

Neural Alterations in Interpersonal Distance (IPD) Cognition and Its Correlation with IPD Behavior: A Systematic Review

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