Violating Personal Space Essay

When some random people try to violate ones personal space, he or she can be very uncomfortable by that violation. "The violation of personal space increases tension levels enormously," says Robert Sommer, a psychologist at the University of California-Davis and author of the book "Personal Space." Average comfort levels of personal space distance in the U.S.:

Also, the environment represents the interpersonal distance between the two people. For those who are having a blind date, it is neither proper for them to stay closely like the official couples, nor to keep long distance like acquaintances. Sense of awkwardness can also appear when the two stay too close to each other at the first date. According to Expectancy Violations Theory by Judee Burgoon, a communication scholar at the University of Arizona, personal space is invisible and variable that defines people’s preferred distance from the others (Griffin, Ledbetter, Sparks, 2015). Edward Hall, an anthropologist at Illinois Institute of Technology attached great significance to respecting others’ personal space and adjusting nonverbal behavior

To date, a variety of scholars has already conducted researches of all kinds devoted to the investigation of the human’s problem of social interaction. As an example, the article Salvaging the Self can be named. This scientific work was written by David Snow and Leon Anderson in 1992, and it was aimed to explore the nature of interaction between homeless and settled people.

The way people interact with these objects is as important as the arrangement they are set in. The relationship humans and non-humans have is significant because they change the way one feels towards a certain space. Since the barriers demand authority, the way humans interact with them differs. I questioned the barrier’s necessity and the officer responded by telling me, “it is a way to separate the crowd and cause a distortion to the crowd, and if things began to get out of hand we are able to add more barriers.” By phrasing it in this manner the police officer gave me the impression the barrier is beneficial for protecting groups on both sides of the barrier. If there have been previous notions that make humans feel as if they are threatened because of the object, negative

An airport lounge once felt rich with possibilities for spontaneous encounters. Even if we did not converse, our attention was free to alight upon one another and linger, or not. We encountered another person, even if in silence. Such encounters are always ambiguous, and their need for interpretation gives rise to a train of imaginings, often erotic. This is what makes cities exciting.

them. They are a protection from outside threats. Sometimes people erect emotional walls to protect themselves from the encroachment of others upon their personal space. They are afraid that if someone enters their personal space, that someone might cause harm or dominate them. But if there is no threat from another, there is no need to erect these emotional walls. In fact there is joy in allowing someone to share one's own personal space. Sharing this space in a non-threatening way is called intimacy. It is natural for a rational, free person to long for intimacy and to rejoice in it. Intimacy requires no emotional walls, yet intimacy still implies consideration of personal borders, that is, the point at which one person leaves off and another begins. Recognizing and respecting these boundaries goes to the very heart of a person's sense of identity and self-worth.

This experiment used between-participants, experimental design as all the participants were in three separate conditions which were then compared. The Independent Variable in this experiment was the different condition, whether they were in the surprise memory condition, the forewarned memory condition or the copy condition. The Dependent Variable is the extent to which they could correctly recall/copy the clock.

Before we get to what the exact job of the three hundred and one participants are, let’s describe how the research will be conducted. In this experiment there are two main elements

Active space is essential for all human beings. The activities in a lifetime are closely linked with the space, and cannot be separated from each other. The design of our environments, as Christopher Alexander discusses in ‘A Pattern Language’, shapes our societies. “People are different, and the way they want to place their houses in a neighborhood is one of the most basic kinds of difference.” That means some people want to live where the action is, while others want to live where is away from the action. As a result, we can make a clear distinction between all these different homes into a sequence as public, private and in-between which can be called intimacy gradient. The layout of space of a building or the community starts with the most public parts and then leads into the in-between areas, and finally to the most private domains. And in this way, it shapes our communities and societies.

There are a multitude of types of crowds, from open crowds to invisible crowds to double crowds. As stated by Elias Canetti, the dominating two kinds of crowds in our world are the open and the closed crowd. An open crowd is defined by its ability to continuously grow. Once the growth of the crowd comes to a stop, the open crowd disintegrates. A closed crowd is defined by having a boundary, it accepts its limitations, and puts an emphasis on permanence. Although the closed crowd is an extremely common and prevalent form of crowd, the truest and purest form is the open crowd. All crowds carry a dichotomy of fascination and attraction versus fear and repulsion, not unlike Rudolf Otto’s mysterium tremendum.

participation in the experiment. Subjects were run in groups of 3 to 6 and were

In this way, the “outside” has become an uncanny and sublime taboo which people belonging to certain groups may be extremely frightened to touch, considering the complete strangeness and the unpredictable power of the

Claustrophobes: those afraid of small spaces. A fear often dismissed as irrational anxiety, claustrophobia is often viewed as an illegitimate fear. In theory however, isn’t everyone afraid of confining spaces in some way? Perhaps not confines of the physical space, rather confines of the mind and limits on rights and behaviors. The very foundation of the United States is based off of the elimination of such social barriers. Gender conventionalizations are an example that well manifests the enclosing walls that society imposes on some cultures. Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner can be analyzed through a lens focused on Gender as Afghanistan culture creates confining stereotypes.

A study conducted by Mackinnon, Jordan, & Wilson (2011) examined how seating preferences are affected by physical similarity in strangers. The researchers proposed that people would sit closer to physically similar others even when those physical similarities are unrelated to important markers of social status, such as sex and race. The study states that without the opportunity to interact facilitated by physical proximity, a relationship is less likely to form (Mackinnon, Jordan, & Wilson, 2011, p. 879).

From Whyte (1980) idea, people’s perceptions of public space which are located indoors is same as private space, traditionally public spaces are located outdoor space and be visible from different aspects for visitors, three has been a kind of fear of being enclosed space for people that can be diminished by using glasses walls and open entrances. Bringing vibrancy of street life in the enclosed area or keeping several doors open to make a clear imagination of that space are helpful for welcoming of the space (Gehl 1987; Whyte 1980).