Body Language and Space
Interpersonal space refers to the psychological "bubble" that we can imagine exists when someone is standing way too close to us. Research has revealed that in North America there are four different zones of interpersonal space. The first zone is called intimate distance and ranges from touching to about eighteen inches apart. Intimate distance is the space around us that we reserve for lovers, children, as well as close family members and friends. The second zone is called personal distance and begins about an arm's length away; starting around eighteen inches from our person and ending about four feet away. We use personal distance in conversations with friends, to chat with associates, and in group discussions. The third zone of interpersonal space is called social distance and is the area that ranges from four to eight feet away from you. Social distance is reserved for strangers, newly formed groups, and new acquaintances. The fourth identified zone of space is public distance and includes anything more than eight feet away from you. This zone is used for speeches, lectures, and theater; essentially, public distance is that range reserved for larger audiences.
Read more about this topic: Communication In Small Groups
Famous quotes containing the words body, language and/or space:
“Just getting in the pool for seven straight hours is unbearable to me.... It’s grueling. There’s nothing physically pleasurable about it. If you’re doing a hard workout, you’re throwing up in the gutter. At night you cling to your pillow and just hope that your body revives before you have to go back and do it again.”
—Diana Nyad (b. 1949)
“While you are divided from us by geographical lines, which are imaginary, and by a language which is not the same, you have not come to an alien people or land. In the realm of the heart, in the domain of the mind, there are no geographical lines dividing the nations.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“... the movie woman’s world is designed to remind us that a woman may live in a mansion, an apartment, or a yurt, but it’s all the same thing because what she really lives in is the body of a woman, and that body is allowed to occupy space only according to the dictates of polite society.”
—Jeanine Basinger (b. 1936)