The Messages in DistanceI. People from dif

The Messages in Distance
    Good morning, everyone. Have you ever known that a man’s sense of self isn’t bounded by his skin? He walks around inside a kind of private bubble, which represents the amount of airspace he feels he must have between himself and other people. In today’s session, I am going to talk about personal space and distance.
    There are four parts. First, the different understandings towards personal space lead to culturally different behaviour. Second, genetically speaking, it is an animal’s instinct to have personal bubbles. Third, the closeness of people decides personal relations. At last, men and women sense differently about the crowding.
    All right, let’s get down to the first part. The misunderstandings can develop because people from different cultures handle space in very different ways. For two unacquainted adult male North Americans, for example, the comfortable distance to stand for conversation is about two feet apart. The South American likes to stand much closer, which creates problems when a South American and a North American meet face to face. The South American who moves in to what is to him a proper talking distance may be considered "pushy" by the North American; and the North American may seem standoffish to the South American when he backs off to create a gap of the size that seems right to him.
    If Americans and Latins have misunderstandings about maintaining a sociable distance, Americans and Arabs are even less compatible in their space habits. Arabs thrive on close contact. The Mediterranean Arabs belong to a touch culture and, in conversation, they literally envelop the other person. They hold his hands, look into his eyes, and they bathe him in their breath.
    North Americans who had lived overseas had been highly distressed by cultural differences so subtle and so basic that their effects were felt for the most part at a preconscious level. Such distress is usually referred to as culture shock.
    Now, we shall have a close look at how animals deal with space. Animals also react to space and in ways that are predictable for each species. For example, many have both a flight distance and a critical distance. If any creature sufficiently threatening comes within flight distance of the animal, it will run; but if the animal is cornered and the menace continues to advance until within critical distance, the animal will attack. A lion tamer apparently manipulates a lion by knowing to a han-what the beast’s critical distance is. The trainer steps across this sensitive boundary and the lion springs at him, landing on the stool that stands between them. Instantly, the man backs off until he’s beyond critical distance. And the animal stays where it is, no longer impelled to attack.
    A human being’s personal-space bubble represents the same kind of margin of safety. Let a stranger breach the bubble and the need to flee or to strike out usually surfaces immediately. One police textbook recognized this when it advised the detective, while questioning the suspect, to sit quite close to him with no table or other obstruction between and to move even closer as the interrogation progressed.
    As a matter of fact, the degree of closeness can convey messages far subtler than a threat. The third part tells you how the distance reflects personal relationship. It neatly expresses the nature of any encounter. In fact a whole scale of distances, each felt to be appropriate in America for a particular kind of relationship. Contact to eighteen inches apart is the distance for wrestling or lovemaking or for intimate talk, even a discussion of the weather becomes highly charged. At this range, people communicate not only by words but by touch, smell, body heat; each is aware of how fast the other is breathing, of changes in the pallor or texture of the skin. One and a half to two and a half feet is the close phase. It approximates the size of the personal-space bubble in a noncontact culture such as North Americans. A wife can comfortably stand inside her husband’s bubble, but she may feel uneasy if another woman tries it. Personal distance is still for most people, within arm’s length, the limit of physical domination. It’s appropriate for discussing personal matters.
    Four to seven feet is close social distance. In an office, people who work together normally stand this far apart to talk. However, when a man stands four to seven feet from where his secretary is sitting and looks down at her, it has a domineering effect. Far-phase social distance, seven to twelve feet, goes with formal conversation, and desks of important people are usually big enough to hold visitors to this distance. Above twelve feet, one gets into public distances, appropriate for speechmaking and for very formal stiff styles of speaking. Choosing the right distance can be crucial. A young woman I know, proposed to by a man who thought she was in love with, turned him down on the spur of the moment. What decided her was the fact that he did this proposing while sitting a chair eight feet away.
    Lastly, the gender difference will also result in different reactions towards crowding. Crowding definitely influences behaviour, and it influences men and women differently. Men, crowded together in a small room, become suspicious and combative. Women in the same situation become friendlier and more intimate with each other; they’re apt to like each other better and to find the whole experience more pleasant than they would if the group were converted in a larger room. In a small crowded room, an all-male jury gives a tougher verdict, an all-female jury a more lenient one.
    So much for today’s session. I shall reemphasize the importance of personal space and distance between people. Please remember that it is a truth anyone can easily demonstrate by moving in gradually on another person. At some point, the other will begin, irritably or just absentmindedly, to back away. Goodbye!