Personal Space & Territoriality

Personal Space
Personal Space is the dynamic spatial component of interpersonal relations. It is the changing distance and angle of orientation between two people (e.g. Side by side or face to face). Personal space regulates things like food gathering and mating. Interpersonal distance tells the individuals and outside observers about the nature of the relationship. There are four personal space zones that are used for different purposes. These zones include the following:

1. Intimate Zone: The closest distance is the intimate zone and is used for comforting, protecting, sex and other full-contact activities. People who interact in this zone are intimate, adhering by a strict set of rules (wrestling) or are expressing strong negative emotions like anger.
2. Personal Zone: Just outside the intimate zone is the friend zone and is used by people who are familiar and friendly with one another. Good friends or happy couples often use this distance to talk to each other. If a member of the opposite sex enters this zone and they aren't your wife then people will notice.
3. Social Zone: The social zone is used for interaction between acquaintances or those transacting business. This is also the zone that you would use when interacting with a cashier at a store or being introduced to a friend's mom. We often interact with others and give "civil inattention" in this zone. This occurs when you notice someone, make quick eye contact and then look away to indicate you are giving them privacy.
4. Public Zone: The last zone refers to the space between a speaker and their audience. Some examples would include a professor giving a lecture or a politician speaking before a large crowd.

When someone else is too close or too far away, we feel uncomfortable and we attribute unfavorable traits to the person violating our space. We might believe that the other person is pushy, rude,
cold, or aggressive. We tend to feel negative emotions whenever our space is violated and are motivated to leave. In one study, men took longer to urinate when someone stood beside them as the personal space violation caused them to tense up.

Personal space is often measured in the following three ways:

1. Relational Distance Index measures the use of distancing tactics in personal relationships.
2. Stop distance method: The participant is asked to stand some distance away and then to walk slowly toward the experimenter and to stop at the point of discomfort
3. Naturalistic Observation: This simply involves observing personal space in the natural environment.

There are numerous other factors that influence our personal space preferences that will now be examined:

1. Gender: Male-male pairs keep the largest distances, followed by female-female pairs and then male-female pairs.
2. Age: Personal space increases with age until early adulthood. By age 12, children use personal space approximately the way adults do.
3. Personality: Extraverts need smaller personal space while disagreeable people need more. Trait anxiety and Type A people need more personal space.
4. Self-Construal: Those who think of themselves as social and interdependent (including those who are primed by a situation to think that way) choose closer distances than those who think of themselves as personal and independent.
5. Mentally Ill: People who are mentally ill or who have been abused usually need more personal space.
6. Attraction: Attraction draws us physically closer. Emotional displays also affect personal space. Women who see either happiness or sadness in someone's face move relatively close. However, men move closer to happiness than to sadness. Both genders choose a larger distance when they see fear in the other person's face.
7. Fear-Security: People choose closer distances when they feel secure and larger distances when they feel unsafe or fearful. Unfortunately, disabilities or other visible stigmata often lead to greater distancing by others.
8. Cooperation vs. Competition: Cooperation is associated with closer interpersonal space.
9. Power and Status: Personal space is related more to differences in status than to the amount of status; the greater the difference, the greater the interpersonal distance.
10. Physical Influences: Close distances are more uncomfortable when lighting is dimmer. Generally, we prefer more space between us when the overall supply of physical space is low.
11. Culture: Different cultures have different personal spacing. In one study, those of differing religions had more space between them than those of the same religion.

There are at least 5 theories that attempt to explain personal space behaviors:

1. Social Learning theory: Personal Space norms are taught and reinforced by parents and authority figures (stay away from strangers).
2. Affiliative-Conflict theory: We sometimes want to move closer to someone but also move away. An equilibrium is formed and if one person violates it the other compensates through other channels (eye contact, etc..)
3. Social Penetration: As intimacy levels change in the relationship each person engages in compensatory and reciprocal behaviors. Moderate distances are most comforting and anything outside this zone is considered uncomfortable.
4. Arousal Cognition: When you get too close to somebody you become aroused and label it either negative (anger) or positive (pleasure-sexual). We then reciprocate or compensate.
5. Approach Avoidance: Discomfort comes when we don't balance approach-avoidance in relationships.

And finally settings can be distinguished between those that encourage social interaction and those that don't. Sociopetal settings facilitate social interaction. Circular rooms are sociopetal. This is good for dinner tables and such. Sociofugual settings discourage social interaction. Hallways are sociofugal. This is good for settings where social interaction isn't desirable (library). People don't fill libraries to capacity and they prefer sitting back to back.

Territoriality

Territoriality is a pattern of behavior and attitudes held by an individual or group, based on perceived, attempted, or actual ownership or control of a definable physical space, object, or idea that may involve habitual occupation, defense, personalization, and marking of it. Territoriality involves psychological ownership, which helps fulfill three human needs: for efficacy (to be efficient and competent), for self-identity and for place identity (having a place of one's own).

Marking and Personalization are both part of territoriality. Marking means placing an object or substance in a space to indicate one's territorial intentions. Personalization means marking in a manner that indicates one's identity.

According to Altman's model, there are seven types of territory that differ in terms of degree of privacy, affiliation and accessibility allowed by each. These seven territories include:

1. Primary territories are spaces owned by individuals or primary groups, controlled on a relatively permanent basis by them, and central to their daily lives.
2. Secondary territories are less important to us than primary territories, but they do possess moderate significance to their occupants. A person's desk at work, favorite restaurant, locker in the gym, and home playing field are examples. They are more likely to be rotated with strangers.
3. Public territories are areas open to anyone in good standing with the community. Beaches, sidewalks, hotel lobbies, trains, stores, and ski slopes are public territories.
4. Objects meet some of the criteria for territories-people mark, personalize, defend, and control their books, coats, bicycles, and calculators.
5. Ideas are also, in some ways, territories. Creators defend them through patents and copyrights. Perhaps objects and ideas are the most human of all territories, in the sense that they are based in cognitive processes that are more developed in humans than in any other species.
6. Interactional territories are areas temporarily controlled by a group of interacting individuals. Examples include a classroom, a family's picnic area, and a football game in the park. Little overt marking of these territories may occur, yet entry into them is perceived as interference, rudeness, or "crashing.
7. Body Territory: This is not the same as personal space, because the boundary is at one's skin rather than some distance away from it. Individuals mark and personalize their bodies with make-up, jewelry, tattoos, and clothing, and they certainly defend and try to control access to their bodies.

Territory can be violated in three major ways:

1.) Invasion: Someone from the outside physically enters the territory usually to take control of it.
2.) Violation: This is a more temporary incursion into someone's territory. Usually, the goal is not ownership but annoyance or harm. Vandalism, hit-and-run attacks, and burglary fall into this category. Playing loud music would also be a violation of another's territory.
3.) Contamination: The person puts something foul in the other person's territory.

When territory is violated, people try to defend it in three major ways:

1. Prevention: This involves using markers like signs or fences or coats to stop anticipated infringement.
2. Reaction- This could involve slamming doors, using aggression or issuing court orders.
3. Social Boundary: An example here would be a customs office at a border that separates wanted from unwanted visitors.

One study found that if you want decisions to go your way, you should try to get others to discuss the decision on your territory.

There are numerous factors that influence territorial behaviors.

1. Personal: Kids can't own territory so they do graffiti as a way of marking what is theirs. Males want more territory and think they own the home while the wife usually owns the kitchen.
2. Social: Homeless-kids-poor-rich in this order from those who are least territorial to those that are most territorial.
3. Competition: When resources are scarce people will be more territorial. In contrast, the cost-benefit theory of animal territoriality predicts that territoriality is greatest when resources are abundant, because that is when the benefits of territoriality are worth the effort of defending them. We deny outsiders access when resources are low.
4. Defensible Space: There is more crime when nobody controls an area and when there is less lighting. Stores with smaller parking lots that don't sell gas are robbed more. Surveillability helps defend houses but fences and symbolic barriers (being well kept) apparently don't. Cul de sacs are better to defend and you should increase people walking in neighborhoods.
5. Culture: French don't even like territoriality but Germans do. Americans think the sidewalk is part of their territory but Greeks don't.
6. Home Field advantage: It does exist and is due to fan support in closed buildings with more fans cheers/boos having more effects than when outside. Refs are influenced as more noise made their calls less certain and they give fewer fouls against the home team.

There are at least 3 functions of Territoriality

1. Ethological Approach: This approach suggests that evolution predisposes territoriality and emphasizes aggression and defense. There is no proof this is an inherited behavior and great apes show little territoriality.
2. Interaction organizer: Territoriality serves to organize human behavior so that violence is not necessary. It gives a sense of control and order to an environment. It fixes individuals in one place and allows for control of social and physical resources. Identity is increased and familiarity with a place enhances efficiency.
3. Functions: Territoriality reduces conflict by spreading out the species and increases commitment to certain settings. Antisocial behavior is a rarer result of territoriality.

You want to give people primary territories, block off streets in neighborhoods and live on a culs de sac. In hospitals, you should try to give patients control when possible and use visible markers to separate patients.

Privacy
Privacy is selective control of access to the self or to one's group. Access to self may mean information about or interaction with oneself. Sometimes we want privacy with select people. The words access to self also refers to a range of sensory avenues. Some allow us visual and auditory access but not touch. We can have cognitive privacy.

The key word is control. A person who has optimal privacy is not a recluse, but someone who is able to find either companionship or solitude easily (social interaction management) and who is able to either share or halt the flow of self-related information (information management).

Privacy can be a behavior, value, preference, need or expectation. Privacy has four faces: solitude (being alone), intimacy (group privacy), anonymity (wants to be among others but not identified) and reserve (limiting communication about yourself to others). Five other forms of privacy include:

1. Solitude: includes seclusion (living away from others) and not neighboring (disliking contact with neighbors).
2. Intimacy: includes friends and family intimacy or only sharing things with certain groups or people.
3. Isolation: means solitude with no one else nearby, whereas solitude means being alone in the midst of others.
4. Individual cognitive freedom is the opportunity to do more or less as you please and to pay attention to whatever you like.
5. Social cognitive freedom emphasizes freedom from the expectations of others, such as your family, boss, or friends. Both might be described as privacy in the sense of "free to be the real me."

There are a range of factors that influence how much privacy we want:

1.Personal: Males want more privacy and want to escape more while women seem to create social regulations. More reserved and introspective people want more privacy.
2. Social: People are more upset when information about personality is obtained without their consent and given to outsiders.
3. Physical: People want walls at work but at home open spaces are ok. People want insulated rooms for auditory privacy and want distance from neighbors. Soft rooms lead to more self-disclosure. Having to share small areas leads to more disclosure.
4. Culture: Cultures differ in how they regulate privacy, either through physical or social means. Some cultures rely more on social means and have taboos of violating privacy.

Privacy is also related to communication, control and our sense of identity.

1. Communication: Solitude and intimacy are used to evaluate our lives and allow emotional release (talking to self, off the record comments, crying). It's used for contemplation, rejuvenation, creative expression, recovery and concealing oneself.
2. Control: People want control over access to themselves and information about themselves. Wilderness solitude gives us some more control over what we pay attention to and allows us to get away from it all. Hospital patients who have control over diagnostic information cooperate more and experience less stress.
3. Identity: Privacy allows us to contemplate our behavior and see whether 'this is the real me.' Place attachment is enhanced with privacy.

Some studies have shown that when people have less privacy they adapt by thinking they don't need as much. Those who know how to regulate privacy do better in school. Those who have more privacy desire more while those who have less desire less. Crowding is a failure to obtain privacy and too much privacy is loneliness. When desired privacy=attained privacy the
optimum results. Privacy might mean social and informational access while territoriality might be spatial access.

There are three major theories that attempt to explain our need for privacy. These theories are:

1. Selective Control to access of Self: Privacy is a boundary control process as it lets us include and exclude others. It balances our need to be alone and with others. Privacy is an optimizing process by which we match reality with desired level of interaction.
2. Life Cycle: The development of the self is based on a gradual realization that self and non-self are distinct; this distinction is closely related to the individual understanding of privacy and the availability of privacy. Privacy has a time dimension, we don't always want to be alone or we become lonely. People at different stages don't appreciate privacy needs of other stages.
3. Hierarchy of Needs and Status: The higher status you are the more privacy you usually demand. At lower status jobs, people want social control, at mid status jobs people usually have offices and then at the top they want confidentiality and protected communication.

People construct environments with privacy in mind. The physical environment-can impede or facilitate information flow. Some settings give visual privacy, others don't. Insufficient space can also hurt privacy. Buildings with long corridors and having to pass more strangers in one's building leads to less privacy. The privacy gradient suggests that designers should put the most public rooms in front and private ones in the back of a building. Not every job requires solitude (brainstorming) and not everyone wants an office and different people want different types of offices.

Crowding

Crowding refers to a person's experience of the number of other people around and is personally defined as opposed to density which is an objective measure. Crowds-used to be seen as formation of large, temporary and emotional groups (lynch mobs). The key characteristics of crowds, insofar as their potential destructiveness is concerned, are:

i.) Anonymity of crowd members
ii.) Suggestibility of the crowd members and the
iii.) Unpredictability of the crowd's behavior.

If a crowd does turn to anti-social activities, research suggests that the best ways to disperse it are to:

i. Create new stimuli that are stronger than whatever formed the crowd.
ii. Shift the crowd's attention.
iii. Make the participants realize their personal identities and values.
iv. Divide the opinions of participants.
v. Isolate the leaders

Density is an objective measure of individuals per unit of area. Density is an objective measure, but it can be measured at different physical scales. The room, building, neighborhood, city, region, and nation in which an individual is located probably all have different densities.

Crowding, on the other hand, refers to a person's experience of the number of other people around. Rather than a physical ratio, crowding is a personally defined, subjective feeling that too many others are around. Crowding may correspond to high density, but often the connection is not as strong as one might think. Crowding is related to too many demands on a person and loss of privacy.

Social Physics Theory is based on gravity and suggests that the effects of crowding are based on mass (number of others present) and their distance. Closer and higher mass exert more influence.

Many studies have shown that crowding has at least three aspects:

1. Crowding is based on some situational antecedent and includes feeling constrained, being interfered with physically, discomfort or having other expectations not met.
2. Crowding implies emotion or affect, usually negative, but positive if we overcome crowding.
3. Crowding will produce some kind of behavioral response, from assertiveness, finishing quickly, psychological withdrawal, physical withdrawal or adaptation.

There are at least six variables that influence crowding that include:

1. Personal: Grouping others into categories (in a setting) reduces crowding. If we expect crowding we aren't as affected and those with experience in crowding adapt better. It's more aversive in primary rather than secondary environments. Men handle it worse, women share distress with others but this may harm them in the long run. People feel more crowded in a negative mood.
2. Culture: Asians prefer social barriers while Mediterranean's want physical barriers. Asians deal with high density better than Europeans. Cultures gradually learn to deal with high density by adapting. Some cultures encourage psychological distance, allow more times for escape and develop strict norms about who can say what to whom. Others have rules around restricting movement in a home, encouraging interaction with acquaintances outside the home.
3. Presence of others: Touching leads to more crowding, especially for men. We feel crowded when others around us do things we don't like or if they are trying to interfere with us or believe things we don't.
4. Carry over: Feeling crowded at one point in time can carry over to other times (even if density is no longer high).
5. Giving information: People who are told how long a wait will be, while in line, feel less crowding. Telling people to expect a crowd aslo helps them adapt to it better. Expecting fewer people in a place but finding out this isn't true also leads to a sense of crowding.
6. Physical: Long-corridors, high rises, higher temperatures and darker rooms lead to more crowding. Higher ceilings makes people feel less crowded.

Crowding has real effects on health. Specifically, high density affects blood pressure and other cardiac functions, skin conductance and sweating' as well as other physiological indicators of stress. High density can precipitate illness merely based on the ease with which disease organisms can move from person to person. Those who want more distance experience more health problems when crowded. It's worse when you have to physically interact as well. Other variables include:

1. Psychological stress: Mental health declines with high density. However, social support can mediate these effects. Too much or too little density can cause low social support.
2. Alcohol: People in high-density groups tend to drink more.
3. Expectations: In one study, expecting one level of crowd density and getting another reduced performance but those used to high density crowds performed better.
4. Antisocial behavior: Robbery and car theft increase with population density, and there are increases in aggression for males with long term exposure to crowds. Increased social density often means fewer resources per person. Fear of crime also increases with high density populations.
5. Dislike and helping: Anticipating high density can lead to liking others less. High density crowds predict lower levels of helping in individuals.
6. Humor-High density crowds enhance humor. It may be through contagion or through releasing tension that high density crowds create.

There are several long-term consequences to too much crowding that includes an exaggerated stress response, learned helplessness, antisocial behavior, reactance (restoring freedom) and
withdrawal.

There are several theories that seek to explain the effects of crowding. These theories include:

1. Personal Antecedents- This theory suggests there are many personal factors that predict a greater sense of crowding. These factors include being: male, being in a new culture, being unfamiliar or very familiar with a setting, being a non-screener, having an external locus of control, preferring low density populations, anticipating a different density than exists all predict crowding.
2. Similarity theory: This theory suggests that crowding occurs when we meet dissimilar people doing things we don't like.
3. Physical: The ecological approach says resource shortages lead to a feeling of crowding. Hence, control of resources must be restricted through line-ups or lists.
4. Personal Control: Feeling out of control leads to a sense of crowding. There is cognitive, behavioral and decisional control. Cognitive control would be knowing about wait times, behavioral control would be being able to reach a goal and decisional control is the amount of choices available.
5. Overload- This theory suggests that a sensory overloaded person's control is impaired. Adaptation levels can be compromised.

In order to design a physical space to reduce crowding you should provide more space, reduce the length of long corridors, divide up spaces with partitions, allow personalization and do
behavioral zoning in camp sites so that people with similar activities are near each other.

Source: Gifford, R. (2007). Environmental Psychology: Principles and Practices (4th ed). Canada: Optimal Books.