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SPACE by: Sanne van Sijl Space is something that is important to all of us. Space can be seen as the environment we are surrounded by. For example, this can be our home space or our workspace. However, there is a different kind of space that is important to us, although you might not directly think of it. This is our personal space or the space around ourselves everywhere we go. Some people also see this space as their aura. It is a space that is around you and where you feel uncomfortable if certain people come to close to you. They are then stepping into your personal space, a space that is hard to define but is always surrounding you. With this personal space, there also comes interpersonal space. This kind of space is the amount of space where two or more people feel comfortable standing close to each other. We also refer to this as interpersonal distance. The branch of knowledge that deals with interpersonal distance, the amount of space that people feel is necessary to set between themselves and others, is referred to as proxemics. Proxemics have been studied a lot, and it has become clear that interpersonal distance differs among culture. Some people stand in line close when waiting for something, while others are separated by way more distance. This meme might be something you have seen before. In this image, it becomes clear that the Swedes like a big interpersonal distance: they stand on their own and are separated from others by a big distance.
Then this meme came as a response to the Swedish waiting for the bus. You see the huge difference between the pictures. Of course the differences might also be due to how busy a certain station is, but it also depends on culture if people are even comfortable standing so close to each other while waiting for a vehicle. Besides culture, there are some other individual parameters that define how close you will be to the person you are having the conversation with. These are: - Degree of intimacy - Social class - Gender - Age However, it has been found that culture has a more important role than al individual parameters together: between groups there are more differences than within a group. On average, European Americans have a conversational distance of 46-51 cm. With African Americans this distance is approximately 51-55 cm, Europeans tend to stand a little further from each other with a conversational distance of 60-65 cm. In the Eastern Asian cultures, the interpersonal distance while having a conversation is among the biggest, with Thai having a conversational distance of 80-85 cm and Japanese of 90 cm. In the Arabic world people tend to stand really close to each other during conversations, probably the closest of all cultures. As you understand now, it mostly depends on your culture how comfortable you are when someone comes standing next to you. If you are from Asia, you might be much more uncomfortable standing directly next to someone waiting for the bus than when you are Arabic. This can also explain why we would feel uncomfortable when an Arabic would come talk to us and stand directly next to us while we do not even know him or her. Because of this it is important to understand that people will not always feel comfortable when you come up to them and stand next to them. Some people will find you rude when standing to far from them; others will find it uncomfortable when you stand to close to them. Therefore, it is important to always feel for yourself what you are comfortable with and look how comfortable another person is with your presence. That way you can be still comfortable in your own space and the other person in his or her space. Not invading each other’s space will help you establish good relationships with others while also being comfortable in your own space.
Page 1 and 2: Physical Communication
Page 3: But does this mean that emotions ar

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