Perry et al

• Personal space/Interpersonal distance


  The distance between two people that an individual is comfortable with
• Factors that can affect preferred interpersonal distance include empathy levels and the relationship with the other person
• Interpersonal distance


  The four zones proposed by Edward T. Hall in 1966: intimate, personal, social, and public
• Intimate zone


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


  • Used in everyday interactions, people can see, touch, and hear each other
• 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 making speeches, loud voice and body movements can feature
• Oxytocin


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


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


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


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


  The importance or attention given to social cues from another person
• Social salience hypothesis


  Oxytocin will increase attention to social cues, with different effects on people with high vs low empathy
• This is a lab experiment conducted at the University of higyi in Israel
• It is also a self-report study as an IRI online questionnaire is used to assess empathy levels
• Interaction effect


  When multiple independent variables combine to affect the dependent variable
• Independent variables in Experiment 1


  • Empathy (high/low)
  • Treatment (oxytocin/placebo)
  • Condition (stranger/authority/friend/object)
• Independent variables in Experiment 2


  • Empathy (high/low)
  • Treatment (oxytocin/placebo)
  • Condition (chairs/table and plant)
• Dependent variable in Experiment 1 is preferred interpersonal distance
• Dependent variable in Experiment 2 is choosing the task of average preferred distance and angle between chairs
• Sample features


  • 54 male undergraduate participants
  • 19-32 years old, average age 25
  • Received course credit or payment
  • 5 left-handed
  • Normal or corrected-to-normal vision
  • No psychiatric or neurological disorders
• Procedure


  1. Oxytocin/placebo administration

  2. Empathy assessment using IRI questionnaire

  3. 45 minute waiting period

  4. Experiment 1

  5. Experiment 2 (1 week later)
• Experiments 1 and 2 are counterbalanced to avoid order effects
• Double blind technique used where neither participants nor researchers know the treatment condition
• Participants are going to be either in a high empathy condition or a low empathy condition and they're going to be administered either oxytocin or a placebo
• Possible conditions


  • High empathy + oxytocin
  • High empathy + placebo
  • Low empathy + oxytocin
  • Low empathy + placebo
• Hypothesis


  People with high empathy will prefer a close interpersonal distance, which will be enhanced further if oxytocin is administered
• Hypothesis


  People with low empathy will prefer a further interpersonal distance, which will be enhanced further if oxytocin is administered
• Experiment 1: Comfortable interpersonal distance design


  1. Participant sees a protagonist (stranger, friend, authority, ball)

  2. Protagonist approaches participant on screen

  3. Participant presses space bar when they feel uncomfortable with the proximity

  4. Repeated for 24 trials with different protagonists and entry points
• Experiment 1


  • Assesses participant's preferred interpersonal distance in an approach-avoidance context
  • Expects closer distances for friends, further distances for strangers, with oxytocin enhancing these effects based on empathy level
• Experiment 2: Choosing the rooms


  1. Participant shown pairs of rooms that differ in chair distance/angle and table/plant distance/angle

  2. Participant selects preferred room for intimate discussion

  3. Assesses preferred interpersonal distance in an intimacy context
• Experiment 2


  • Focuses on preferred interpersonal distance for intimate discussions
  • Expects participants with high empathy to prefer closer chair distances, enhanced by oxytocin
• Participants are not actually going to have an intimate discussion, this is deception
• The table/plant distance/angle is a control condition, not expected to significantly impact preferences
• Participants will either do Experiment 1 first and then Experiment 2 a week later, or vice versa
• nce when you select um based on the difference in distance between chairs rather than the plant and the table so although the plant and table have a difference in their distance the chairs don't have any difference in their distance or in the angle so there shouldn't be really a big um difference in selecting these two selecting one image that you prefer from these two
• let's look at the top left and the bottom left in the top left we see that the chairs are again at a 45° angle with a 60 cm difference and the table and plant are at a 260 CM distance um at a 90° angle and in the bottom left picture the chairs are now even closer at a 40 CM distance and their angle is 90° and the difference between sorry the distance between the table and the plant is 320 cm and they're at a 45° angle
• participants who have high empathy are more likely we're expecting at least more likely to pick the bottom picture as opposed to the top top picture when comparing it to the other conditions to the low empathy condition
• we can basically come up with multiple combinations of pictures because the chairs can be anything from 20 to 12 140 cm apart and they can be at either a 0 45 or 90° angle similarly the tables can be any table and plant can be anything from 200 to 320 cm M apart with um again an angle of 0 45 or 90° so this gives you multiple combinations and based on these combinations we have a total of 84 pairs of images that will be shown to the participants and the participant simply has to pick the one image that they prefer from each pair and this will be repeated twice so that basically means 84 times done twice 84 time 84 trials done twice so that is um 168 trials
• the idea is that people with high empathy and oxytocin they are the ones who should prefer a closer personal distance of the chairs and people withow empathy are the ones who should prefer a further distance of the chairs