by Thalma Lobel
Those who stayed sitting at the front of the room chose the T-shirt with the orange logo more often when their personal space was invaded. In contrast, movers were less likely to make a unique choice when they sat close to their neighbors. These results suggest that people want to assert their individuality in a crowded place only when they feel that their space is being invaded by others. The study itself was conducted in Hong Kong, and it is related to consumer behavior rather than to individuality in general.
Similar results were obtained in a second experiment, in which participants volunteered for an ostensible marketing study and were divided into two groups. Participants in one group could sit where they chose, while participants in the other group were told where to sit. In each group, some participants crowded close together and others did not. As in the first experiment, participants were asked to imagine that they were shopping online and were presented with four pictures, this time of coffee cups, three very similar and one different. Again, among those who were told where to sit, those in the crowded condition chose the unique cup more often than those in the uncrowded condition. The reverse was true when participants chose their seats—they wanted to sit close to others and therefore felt the need to assert their individuality not when they sat close but rather when they sat far from each other.
These results suggest that there is a difference in purchasing patterns if customers decide to enter a crowded place as opposed to entering a relatively empty space that suddenly becomes crowded. Think of going to a big sale: people who stand in line and wait for the store to open generally know they are going to shop in a very crowded place. In this case, they do not necessarily feel that their personal space is invaded and they are likely to want to buy what everybody is buying, the bargains or the new iPhones. By contrast, when someone enters an empty store and suddenly a group of people come in, all looking at the same rack, there is a good chance that the first person will go to a different store. That person feels that her space is invaded and wants to reassert her individuality.
The desire to be individual is also evident in other domains, such as expressing opinions. It would be interesting to examine what happens in the boardroom of a company, for example, if people sit very close together and feel that their personal space is invaded. The results suggest that in some cases, people might express more varied, unique opinions and perhaps even vote differently.
Our personal space is so psychologically important that even computer scientists and engineers who are building robot assistants are using psychology to improve their designs. It’s important that a robot is given good manners. When we imagine robot receptionists, tour guides, office assistants, and attendants that will help the elderly, we see them integrating into the human environment with respect for simple cultural practices like personal space.4 We need our personal space, even if it is only with a robot.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind?
Over the last two decades, long-distance communication has gotten dramatically easier thanks to new technologies. The Internet, e-mail, Skype, Facebook, video conferencing, and text messaging allow for immediate communication and enable conversations between people who are thousands of miles apart. Many people work from home and communicate with their coworkers, superiors, employees, and customers without being in the same room or even in the same state or country. Negotiations over sales, salaries, and contracts are increasingly conducted by parties who have never seen each other in person. Even friends and family members talk much less and send text messages or e-mails when they could talk to each other on the phone. We often do this in order to save time and money, but how does remote communication affect us? Does physical distance put psychological and emotional distance between us?
Communicating at a distance is usually less emotional than communicating in person. Less hostility is manifested in e-negotiations than in face-to-face negotiations due to the absence of nonverbal cues.5 However, since tone is so difficult to read in e-mails, statements might be interpreted as being more hostile (or less so) than they would be if communicated by phone or in person. The fact that we can now communicate so easily via e-mail and Skype with people who live and work very far away from us flattens the world, as Thomas Friedman has written, bridging the distance and giving us the sense that physical separation is not so important. Nonetheless, there is still a big difference between remote and face-to-face communication, and distance still matters.
I was a member of the executive board of Tel Aviv University for several years, one of three professors who represented the university senate, along with the president and the provost of the university. The other members of the executive board were people outside the university and included high-tech entrepreneurs, businesspeople, industrialists, lawyers, bankers, and journalists—all very successful and well known in their fields. Board meetings could be somewhat intimidating, but I felt I could express my opinions freely, even if some of the people did not agree with me. When I sat physically close to these people, I felt emotionally closer to them and therefore less intimidated.
When I relocated for a few months to San Diego and New York while on sabbatical leave, I still regularly attended the board meetings, but via telephone. I was very attentive and heard everything that was said, but it felt completely different from being in the same room. I felt psychologically distant. Videoconferencing would probably have been better, but I believe that there is no substitute for a good old-fashioned meeting in which everyone is in the same room.
I also know this from experience with my family. My four granddaughters live thousands of miles away from me, in California. Naturally I miss them a lot and use every opportunity I have to talk to them, preferably via Skype, with which I can not only hear them but also see them. Skype is better than talking on the phone, because with Skype I can detect more nonverbal cues. Still, it is not the same as being with my granddaughters in the same room. I feel the physical distance. I can’t touch them, and I can’t really get close to them.
In the 2009 movie Up in the Air, based on the novel by Walter Kirn, the protagonist, Ryan Bingham, portrayed by George Clooney, flies all over the United States for his job, which is to fire people employed at various companies face-to-face. A newly hired young woman colleague proposes that they fire people via videoconference rather than traveling to meet them, pointing out that communicating via video would be much more efficient and cost-effective. But Ryan believes the firing should be done in person. This disagreement represents a larger issue that we face in the modern world. Does it matter if we talk face-to-face, or is it preferable to depersonalize communication and do everything via conference calls, e-mails, and so forth? Does physical distance still matter in a world of digital communication?
More and more people interact virtually, shop and listen to lectures online, and talk via the Internet and Facebook. But while our social life has a significant online component, many of our most important social relationships occur in real physical space. We live in the same house with our family and interact with partners, children, parents, and siblings; go to work, attend lectures, meet friends at restaurants, attend plays and concerts, and pick up our children from school. We’re also supposed to break off relationships in person, whether that’s firing someone or ending an intimate relationship. It is still considered rude to do this via text message or e-mail—or even by mail or phone. In one episode of the popular television series Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw wakes up to find that her boyfriend Berger has broken up with her by leaving a Post-it note stuck to her laptop. Carrie and her friends are furious. There is a clear consensus among them that the only decent way to end a relationship is face-to-face.
The question I want to raise here is whether metaphors that use physical distance to describe psychological distance are grounded in our physical experiences.
Physical and Emotional Distance
What characterizes an emotionally distant person? When I posed this question to my students, they described som
eone whose emotions are not easily affected by events occurring around him or her—whether happy, frightening, or distressing. People who are emotionally distant cry less at movies; they don’t react emotionally to tragic or exciting events around them or reported in the news; they are less involved in the lives of other people. They tend to show less empathy and compassion.
In order to examine whether physical distance evokes feelings of emotional and psychological distance, researchers asked participants to mark two points on a Cartesian plane.6 Here is what the plane looked like:
The researchers divided the participants into two groups. One group was asked to mark two relatively close points; the aim was to induce in this group an experience of physical closeness. The other group was asked to mark two points that were relatively far apart; in this case the aim was to induce an experience of physical distance. The only difference between these two groups was marking relatively close or distant points.
Participants were then asked to read a passage from Good in Bed, a popular novel by Jennifer Weiner, in which the heroine discovers a magazine article that her ex-boyfriend has written entitled “Loving a Larger Woman.” The article turns out to be about her and understandably provokes a range of emotions in her. Participants were asked whether they enjoyed the excerpt, whether they found it entertaining, and whether they would like to continue reading the book. The researchers expected that the plotting of physical distance on the graph would influence how emotionally distant the participants felt. The results confirmed their predictions: those who were asked to mark two points relatively far from each other liked the embarrassing passage and found it more enjoyable than those who were asked to locate two close points, who found it uncomfortable and embarrassing.
This amazing influence of physical distance on psychological distance was demonstrated again, this time using a violent passage. Researchers asked participants to read about two brothers injured in a car accident in which one brother is so badly hurt that he begs the other to kill him. This time, instead of asking the participants whether they liked the text (in the hope that no one enjoyed such a terrible story), the researchers asked them to rate their emotions, giving them a list of positive and negative emotions and mood descriptors, such as enthusiastic, upset, distressed, and excited. Those who had marked close points reported significantly more negative emotions than those who had marked far points. Remember, all they had done before reading was to mark two points.
These two studies demonstrate clearly that there is an association between spatial cues and our emotions, and that exposure to certain physical concepts triggers the cues for the related concept in our minds, affecting our outlook and emotions.
The Closer the Better? It Depends . . .
These results enable us to see ways of using our environment to affect others and ourselves. I am sure that at some point in your life, you have needed to have a serious conversation with your partner, children, parents, friends, colleagues, or boss. In the future, spend a couple of seconds before beginning an important conversation by positioning yourself at a distance that best suits the message you are about to deliver. Consider how you should sit next to a date or across from a job interviewer. Sometimes you want the people with whom you are negotiating to be logical rather than emotional, and sometimes you want them to be influenced by their emotions. It all comes down to the type of conversation you are having.
For example, if you talk with your boss about a raise, is it better if the boss is emotionally close or distant? The answer might depend on the reasons you use for asking for the raise. If you bring to the conversation your personal difficulties and how much you need the money, then it might be better that the boss is prompted to feel emotionally close. That way, she will better understand your needs and perhaps show more empathy, increasing your chance of getting the raise. By contrast, if you tell the boss that another company has offered you a higher salary and you would like her to match or exceed it, then it might be better that the boss is not emotionally close, since you want her to make a logical decision and not be influenced by emotions such as anger or jealousy. In this case it might be better to sit a bit farther than usual from the boss.
Imagine you want to have an important talk with your spouse and bring to her attention that she is not spending enough time with you. In this case, you want your partner to be emotionally close to you. You want empathy. You want your partner to understand how difficult it is for you that she is rarely there. This conversation will be much more effective if you sit close to each other. On the other hand, if you want to tell your boss that you’re quitting your job, you would probably prefer him to be emotionally distant and might take a seat that puts more space than usual between you. Similarly, if you want to tell your parents that you intend to marry someone for whom they don’t care much, or that you are going to major in a subject of which they don’t approve (“Philosophy? What’s wrong with business administration?”), do not sit too close to them. By increasing the physical distance, you increase the emotional and psychological distance. Your parents may still be upset, but by giving them some space you will make it easier for them and you to look at things more objectively.
If you are going to have one of these meaningful conversations in a restaurant, decide beforehand whether you want the other party to be psychologically distant or close, and choose a table accordingly. For some conversations you might be better off picking a restaurant with relatively large tables, where you’ll have a bigger expanse of table between you. For other conversations, you may get better results by sitting at a small, intimate table or even side by side. If you are going on a first date, decide beforehand whether you want the other person to feel emotionally close or distant, then pick a restaurant accordingly. At home, think about how to foster more closeness in your family. Is your dinner table long, keeping distance between family members, or do you crowd together around a table, elbows touching?
The psychological distance between couples is demonstrated dramatically in many movies, especially the classics, where husband and wife are at opposite ends of a formal, very long table. This physical distance symbolizes their emotional distance. Even if a dinner table is not large, when family members are seated far apart in a relatively formal arrangement, it reflects a lack of intimacy in the home. This is portrayed very effectively in the now iconic dinner table scene in American Beauty.
Architects who design work spaces and public facilities can use these findings to develop a better understanding of the psychological influence of interpersonal distance. If proximity is indeed related to emotional closeness, then there should be places where coworkers can actually stand close to one another and talk and gather together comfortably to brainstorm. A workplace with cubicles in which each employee has a personal space lends itself to individual effort, but a larger room where several people are sitting next to one another can promote group effort. It all depends on your intention for the space.
You can use this same knowledge when remodeling your home or buying furniture. Think carefully about where you place the chairs and the sofas, and how to decorate your office. If you have a very long table at home that can easily seat twelve but you have only four people over for dinner, consider whether you want each one to sit on one side of the table, or whether to use only half of the table so that all the diners are seated closer together. This will surely influence the atmosphere and the intimacy of the conversation. There is no right answer in any of these decisions. It depends on who the guests are and whether you want them to feel emotionally close or more distant. The studies cited here showed that just marking close or distant points on a Cartesian graph influenced psychological distance. It is possible then that not only the distance between people, but even the distance between the plates and the serving dishes on the table influences our psychological states.
Consider these findings also when you are deciding where to live. I grew up in an apartment house that belonged to my grandparents, who lived in a
different apartment in the same building, as did two of my father’s brothers. I remember it as a negative experience rife with tension, which I believe could have been avoided were we not so physically close. By that, I do not mean to say that physical closeness is bad. I mean to say, rather, that it is related to emotional closeness that can be good or bad, depending on the people involved and on the circumstances. In our case, emotional distance would have been much better.
Many couples maintain long-distance relationships and live quite far from one another. Studies of these kinds of relationships indicate that physical distance can have both a detrimental and a beneficial effect. While some couples find the distance stressful, others report feeling that “absence makes the heart grow fonder” and that while in close proximity, they miss having more personal space.7
More studies are needed to investigate other areas in which physical distance influences psychological distance, and whether physical distance has greater influence on some people than on others. The results of the studies cited in this chapter nevertheless strongly suggest that just experiencing cues of physical distance not necessarily related directly to us can be enough to evoke an emotional reaction. Emotional distance is related to physical distance.
High and Mighty: Vertical Position, Size, and Power
In the previous chapter we talked about physical distance and learned that this aspect of our location in space influences emotional distance. In this chapter I will talk about two additional dimensions of space—vertical positioning and size—and how they influence our thoughts, feelings, judgments, decisions, and behaviors. As we shall see, all the evidence indicates that we intuitively link height and size to power. Occasionally, but not always, vertical positioning and size overlap; for instance, a tall person may be perceived not only as being high up on the vertical scale but also as being large.