Perry et al

• Humans use interpersonal distance (personal space) to regulate social interactions in any situation
• Hall (1963)


  Introduced idea of spatial zones that dictate what activities + relationships happen within them but also what input our senses have to process

  
• Interpersonal distance (personal space)

  • Can be affected by culture, social experiences, personality traits, + individual differences
  • Aspects such as social anxiety or being forced to be further away than usual (seen during the Covid-19 pandemic with social (physical] distancing) affect our interpersonal distance (personal space) experiences too + this can affect friendships + intimate relationships that people have
• Amygdala


  • Appears to play a role in interpersonal distance (personal space) in humans
  • People who have lesions in part of their amygdala show quite a dramatic reduction in need for interpersonal distance (personal space) compared to pre-lesion
• Oxytocin


  • A type of social hormone
  • Plays a large role in social behaviour + social cognition in humans
  • Promotes pro-social behaviour and also approach behaviours
• Oxytocin administration


  Increased preferred interpersonal distance (personal space) between a participant + an attractive woman, but only seen in male, monogamous participants when a female experimenter was present + not a male experimenter

  
• Oxytocin had no effect on male participants who were single
• Social salience hypothesis


  • If oxytocin increases attention to social cues, it should have widely varying effects on downstream cognition + behaviour, depending no interpersonal context (such as in presence of an attractive woman for men in a relationship), as well as on how an individual perceives social situations + tends to react in different interpersonal settings
  • For example, 1 person may find a social setting comforting + enjoyable, whereas another may find it intimidating or threatening
  • Social saliency may therefore have opposite consequences for different individuals

  
• Empathy


  • The ability to share someone else's emotional state by imagining what it would be like to be in that situation
  • You may never have directly experienced situation for yourself, but you are able to understand what feelings could be like
  • Refers to us being able to understand feelings of others
• Empathy can affect how we process social cues, which in turn can affect our interpersonal distance (personal space) experiences
• Our level of empathy may 'cloud' the effects of oxytocin on interpersonal distance (personal space)

  
• Interpersonal distance (personal space)


  • A portable, invisible boundary surrounding us, into which others may not trespass
  • Regulates how closely we interact with others, moves with us, + expands + contracts according to situation in which we find ourselves
  • It is like a bubble that surrounds us + changes depending on people around us + situations we find ourselves in
• Social hormones


  • Ones that help in regulation + perception of social interactions in humans + other mammals
  • Appear to help in positive feelings of social interactions between humans + coordinate cause + effect of these interactions
  • One such hormone is oxytocin
• Interpersonal Distance


  The physical space between people during interactions, a crucial aspect of social behaviour that signals comfort and responsiveness
• Oxytocin (OT)


  A hormone that plays a significant role in social behaviours, altering the perceptual salience of social cues
• Empathy


  The ability to understand and share the feelings of others, crucial in shaping social behaviour
• Prior studies highlighted that interpersonal distance plays a crucial role in shaping the dynamics of social interactions
• There has been increasing evidence suggesting that OT functions as a social hormone in humans, altering the perceptual salience of social cues
• Prior research suggested that an individual's ability to empathize might shape how they process social stimuli, including interpersonal distance
• Participants


  • 54 male undergraduate students aged 19-32, divided into high and low empathy groups based on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) scores
• Design


  • Double-blind, placebo-controlled
• Procedure


  1. Participants attended two sessions a week apart, receiving either OT or a placebo

  2. After administering OT/placebo, participants completed the IRI questionnaire

  3. Two experiments followed
• Experiment 1 (Comfortable Interpersonal Distance Paradigm)


  • Participants interacted with a computer-visualised protagonist, indicating when they wanted the protagonist to stop to choose a distance at which they felt most comfortable
• Experiment 2 (Intimacy Context)


  • Participants were asked to choose from several computer-visualised rooms where they would prefer to sit and discuss intimate topics with another participant
• Variables


  • The study measured the effects of OT (treatment), empathy (between-subject factor), and conditions (within-subject factors) on interpersonal distance preferences
• Strengths


  • High internal validity, control of extraneous variables, reliability
• Weaknesses


  • Marginal significance of results, limited generalisability, reduced ecological validity
• This study is on personal space, it's a social approach study and it's one of the five new studies in the new psychology 9990 2024 syllabus
• Personal space/Interpersonal distance


  The distance between two people that an individual is comfortable with
• Factors affecting preferred interpersonal distance


  • Empathy levels
  • Who the person is (friend, stranger, acquaintance)
• Edward T Hall in 1966 proposed four zones of personal space: intimate, personal, social, and public
• Intimate zone


  Used between romantic partners or very close family members, involves all senses
• Personal zone


  Used in everyday interactions, can see, touch, and hear the other person
• Social zone


  Used in more formal interactions, slightly further away, need for louder voices, more body movements, and eye contact
• Public zone


  Used to keep distance from public figures giving speeches, allows for loud voice and body movements
• Oxytocin


  A social hormone that plays an important role in social bonding and pro-social behavior
• Differential effect of oxytocin

  Oxytocin can have different effects on people with high vs low empathy
• Empathy


  Understanding someone else's experience by perceiving it from their point of view
• Social cues


  Expressions, body language used to communicate and send messages to others
• Social salience


  The importance or attention given to social cues from another person