Proxemics and Personal Space
Lorrie King
ENG223
Kim Aulbach
20 January 2018
Proxemics and Personal Space
In this assignment, I will be discussing Proxemics and Personal Space and how it affects our interpersonal relationships in everyday life. How we close we choose to stand next to someone when communicating or how close we let them come near us depends solely on the personal space we have set for ourselves to feel comfortable in a social situation or in any setting. The ‘bubble’ is often what most of us call the personal space that we have around us and when someone crosses into it uninvited we begin to get uncomfortable.
According to the website “Proxemics is a theory of non-verbal communication that explains how people perceive and use
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This space is usually for our most trusted friends and our loved ones, like a life partner or sibling. Although we tend to reserve this space for our closest relationships, we usually don’t get offended by the simple things like a hug from a friend as we know it won’t last long but will be brief in duration. When an uninvited person enters this zone, we tend to automatically go into what is known as flight-or-fight mode, which will cause us to either run away from the situation or stand and take back what is ours. An example of this would be when an ex-boyfriend decides that he wants to hang all over you and you no longer feel comfortable with him doing that, so your mind automatically tells you to run away or you need to stay and fight and get back your …show more content…
The amount of space will vary and often does vary with cross cultural situations. According to the website “typical North Americans personal distance clocks in at about 18 inches. Western Europeans tend to be a bit closer at 14 to 16 inches while the Middle Easter cultures move even closer at 8 to 12 inches” (Selwyn, 2011). As we can see culture plays a big difference in our personal space as someone may invade our personal space because theirs differs from ours. When this is done they don’t mean to offend anyone they just are unaccustomed to having a different personal space than theirs. It is often good to look for social cues on personal space when you are talking to someone. If you walk up and start talking to someone and they take a step back, it doesn’t mean that you have something wrong with you, but could mean that you have invaded their personal space and they needed to step back to reestablish their comfort and to regain their personal