The shape of personal space

Abstract

The notion of a personal space surrounding one's ego-center is time-honored. However, few attempts have been made to measure the shape of this space. With increasing use of virtual environments, the question has arisen if real-world aspects, such as gender-effects or the shape of personal space, translate to virtual setups. We conducted two experiments, one with real people matched according to body height and level of acquaintance in a large laboratory setting, and one where subjects faced a virtual character, likewise matched to their body height. The first experiment also used a mannequin in place of the second human observer. The second experiment additionally manipulated the perspective of the subject to compare estimates of interpersonal distance between an egocentric and an allocentric perspective (in third-person view). Subjects approached (or were approached) from different angles until a comfortable distance for conversation with a stranger was reached (stop-distance task). Personal space turned out to be rather circular with a radius of about 1 m. Male pairs kept larger distances from one another than female or mixed-gender pairs. All subjects assumed larger distances to the mannequin compared to the real observer. Very comparable distances were preferred to the avatar in the virtual environment. Also, it did not matter whether the subject was engaged in active approach, was approached, or merely adjusted the distance between two avatars. Implications for theories of personal space are discussed.

Sexual attraction modulates interpersonal distance and approach-avoidance movements towards virtual agents in males

“…We hypothesized that sexually attractive stimuli produce shorter IPDs than sexually unattractive stimuli. We expected that subjects, irrespective of sexual orientation, prefer larger distances towards male virtual agents as compared to female virtual agents [20]. Following Uzzell and Horne [17], we hypothesized that this IPD sex effect is reduced in androphilic subjects, due to relatively PLOS ONE stronger attraction between subject and avatar (as measured by peak velocity extracted from the tracking data).…”

“…For purposes of better experimental control, some proxemic researchers have chosen to use virtual environments with virtual persons [18]. In virtual environments, sex effects on IPD are sometimes present [19], sometimes absent [20], and sometimes not modeled at all [2]. With careful choice and good rendering quality of the avatars such effects should surface, if present at all.…”

“…Referring to Uzzell and Horne [17], our findings suggest that sexual orientation and thus sexual attraction may partly overshadow the sex effect on IPD. Previous studies investigating sex effects [17,19,20] have presented a small set of targets, have not measured explicit sexual attractiveness and sexual orientation, or did not use an immersive social interaction scenario, which limited the ability to detect sex effects on IPD and disentangle the effect from sexual attractiveness. Furthermore, although Uzzell and Horne [17] did find an effect of sexual orientation on IPD, they could not reveal any differences between androphilic and gynophilic men, probably due to low statistical power and experimental control.…”

Body image avoidance affects interpersonal distance perception: A virtual environment experiment

“…This might be due to a fundamentally different social norm for distances in interactions with overweight people. Interestingly, the distance we consider to be appropriate between two avatars is very similar to the distance we prefer between ourselves and an avatar (Hecht et al, ; Welsch et al, ). Would ED's who keep larger distances to an obese avatar also estimate larger distances between two avatars (one avatar being obese)?…”

“…Personal space is a key component for social interaction as it extends the body schema to allow for interaction with the environment (Hall, ). As such personal space is strongly influenced by the appearance of the interactants, such as the facial expression, the body height, or sex (Caplan & Goldman, ; Hecht, Welsch, Viehoff, & Longo, ; Pazhoohi et al, ; Ruggiero et al, ; Uzzell & Horne, ; Welsch et al, ; Welsch, Hecht, & von Castell, ).…”