Personal Space and Eye Contact

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Recommended: A personal essay on personal space

Study of personal space is important. Proxemics behavior is not just one form of self-defense, is also a part of the unconscious that controls the behavior and the interaction between humans. Personal space is essential for people because alerts when somebody is too close that could cause some damage to another. Some studies try to explain how proxemics behavior works and what factors can influence it. For example, previous experiments found out that people more distance when they are front of tall people than when they are front of short people. This knowledge about personal space and its operation is important due to shows how to act toward every person and how close a person can be without causing discomfort. Personal space could be defined as the required distance between people when interact with others. Hayduk (1983) describes personal space as a sensible entity which changes according to situation. Therefore, when a person invades another's personal space the infringed comes to feel vulnerable, uncomfortable or irritated as response of its proxemics violation. In other words, personal space is the distance necessary to interaction and it acts depending the situation and factors that influence it. The first factor which affects personal space is height. Previous studies state that proxemics is higher when people are walking towards people of tall stature than they are walking toward people of short stature. This notion is supporting by Harnett, Bailey and Hartley (1974, p. 134) who demonstrated “ Both males and females maintained twice as much distance between themselves and the tall object person than between themselves and the short object person”. Nevertheless the influence of this fac... ... middle of paper ... ...illian, G., & Nowlin, W. A. (1994). Cultural awareness: an essential element of doing business abroad, Business Horizons, 44-50. Buchanan, D. R., Goldman, M., & Juhnke, R. (1977). Eye contact, sex and the violation of personal space. The Journal of Social Psychology, 103, 19-25. Evans, G. W., Lepore, S. J., & Allien, K. M. (2000). Cross-cultural differences in tolerance for crowding: fact or fiction?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(2), 204-210 Harnett, J. J., Baily, K. G., & Hartley, C. S. (1974). Body height, position and sex as determinants of personal space. The Journal of Psychology, 87, 129-136. Hayduk, L. (1983). Personal Space: Where We Now Stand. American Psychological Association, 2, 293-335. Hughes, J., & Goldman, M. (1978). Eye contact, facial expression, sex and the violation of personal space. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 46, 579-584.

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