Personal space

Scientific trail blazers are routinely treated roughly. Apparently contempt is viewed as a perfectly normal and appropriate response to anyone who thinks outside the box. 

FIGURE 6.11.1 A standing human occupies a personal space of four stacked cubits. (Redrawn from Scheflen, A.E. and Ashcroft, N., Human Territories How We Behave in Space-Time, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1976.) 

Even caterpillars are territorial. They scrape their teeth on leaves, and the resulting vibrations deter rivals. 

FIGURE 6.11.3 Privacy is very important for some people. (Courtesy of Hi and Lois, King Features Syndicate, 

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Evaluation of memory and orientation is critical to the differentiation of a psychiatric versus a nonpsychiatric medical disorder. Memory for immediate, recent, and remote events can be readily tested, as well as orientation to time, place, person, space, and situation. Assuming the level of anxiety is not sufficient to impair responses to questions in these areas, deficits usually imply some impairment of brain functioning, which may or may not be reversible. 

Sommer, R. "Personal Space," Canadian Architect, February i960, 76-80. 

School lockers can be quite dull on the outside. (4) Each one looks just like the one on either side of it. (5) There isn t much you can do about that putting things on the outside of your locker is usually frowned upon in most public school systems. (6) The inside, however, is your own personal space and one can decorate it in many unique ways to reflect their distinct individuality. 

The inside, however, is your own personal space and one can decorate it in many unique ways to reflect their distinct individuality. 

Liben, L. S., and Downs, R. M. (1993). Understanding person-space-map relations cartographic and developmental perspectives. Developmental Psychology, 29, 739-752. 

Another strategy includes respecting people s personal space. There is a prescribed area that surrounds a person and should not be entered. This space decreases with your knowledge of the person. It may be disconcerting for coworkers when you stand over their shoulders, but may feel normal to close friends. People can be put on the defensive when you invade their space. 

Consider the behavioral phenomena of maintaining personal space. Psychologist Robert Sommer at the University of California at Davis and others have shown that people have a semiconscious or unconscious sense of the space about them and get uncomfortable if others move into that space. People space themselves a certain distance apart for conversation, for instance. If one approaches, the other backs off. This behavior is usually completely unconscious, automatized, not requiring conscious attention. The body just maintains the proper distance without bothering to inform consciousness about it. The cultural hypnotist has, in effect, suggested, Normal people stay feet apart (unless the other is an intimate friend or loved one and the situation is defined as an embrace). You want to be normal. ... 

This is a minor example of automatized behavior, as, in most cases, personal space behavior can readily be made conscious by calling people s attention to it and asking them to observe themselves. When a conscious action becomes automatized, though, it may be difficult to make it conscious again, especially if there were unpleasant emotional experiences associated with the action. For example, suppose a boy was called a clingy wimp for frequently hugging and hanging around his father, and was pushed away by his father. There may be an unconscious equation that Too close = unloved by Daddy. ... 

This personal spacing behavior has characteristics like hypnotic suggestion. The stimulus of someone standing too close or too far activates the nonconscious, conditioned, automatized parts of the mind to correct the distance. 

Gurdjieff stated that our movements are quite automatized. We have a fixed number of characteristic movements, gestures, postures, definitions of appropriate personal space, and the like, each keyed to certain situations and subpersonalities that bring them out. We will examine subpersonalities in later chapters. 

The results were quite fascinating. Some subjects experienced personal space as an actual sense of touch, others as a dim light or fog around them. The implicit, the automatized and unconscious, became a direct sensory experience. It wasn t really a sensory experience of course, but was now being simulated that way, that was its internal reality. 

Ask permission to invade the personal space to perform a procedure. 

Household chores will be completed without complaint, in a timely and satisfactory manner, and personal space shall stay picked up, open for parental inspection at any time. 

Otherwise, you re so different it s astonishing that you ever got together at all. Sagittarius collects frequent-flyer miles, wants more than the usual amount of personal space, and hungers for stimulation Taurus gardens, needs loads of cuddling (and a cozy den), and loves to stay home, making this a difficult combo. 

Moving objects can be tracked using pursuit eye movement. Considerable neuron intercoimections are required to follow objects that are continuously displaced from one point to another. Two other types of eye movement occur. Continual small movements are needed to destabilise the image and prevent the retina adapting to a continuous stimulus, and larger short movements permit the eye to scan the visual environment. Three distances appear to be relevant within this depth perception. These concern the personal space occupied by our body, peripersonal space within reach, and extrapersonal space beyond (Tovee 1996). 

Maintain the patient s personal space. Always ask permission to invade the personal space to perform a procedure. In some cultures, patients don t want anyone standing or sitting too close and they feel uncomfortable if... 

The choices were tough continuing to live with the tried and true roommate in a less-than-choice setting, giving up privacy for the potential fun that the sorority house offered, or taking the open room at the apartment, which was further from campus but offered some personal space not often found at college. 

Don t crowd your interviewer by sitting too close to him or her respect personal space... 

The human personal space is made up of cubical cubits about 46 cm on a side (at least for British and Americans). When standing, a person is about 4 cubits high (Figure 6.11.1), stacked one on top of the other (Scheflen and Ashcroft, 1976). When sitting in a chair, the four cubits include one to the front (Figure 6.11.2). This is the space that is considered to be violated if another person comes... 

The design of enclosures for animals or humans should account for the potential stress induced by crowding (Aiello and Baum, 1979). There is a need to provide a means for individuals to relieve the stress of close proximity (Figure 6.11.3). Room dimensions should be appropriately sized. Males need more personal space than females, and children need more space than adults. Indoor space... 

Psychology is the study of the mind and any of its aspects, including the phenomena of consciousness and behavior. While the study of consciousness is not completely relevant to the technologist who wishes to manipulate biological systems, the study of behavior is relevant. We have already considered emotions, personality, and personal spaces. Each of these can influence an engineering or architectural design for structures to enclose humans or animals. 

Estimate your own personal space. What considerations do you use to make this determination Do you think your personal space is more, less, or about the same as average ... 

Cattle feeding on both sides of a bunk feeder are positioned similar to a natural head-down, aggressive posture, encroaching on each other s personal space. This should be avoided. 

Sommer, R., 1969, Personal Space The Behavioral Basis of Design, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 

Burgoon, J. K. (1978). A communication model of personal space violations Explication and an mrda. test. Human Communication Research, 4, 129. 

Conceive workspaces enable students to envision new systems, reach understanding of user needs, and develop concepts. They may include both team and personal spaces in order to encourage conceptual development and reflection. 

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