Just like a sovereign nation with airspace above its territory, our brains unconsciously create such buffers. It claims to possess a space that extends beyond the skin.
Surely you have experienced it, a situation where your privacy is seriously violated: Parents suddenly enter the room without knocking, rush hour has to stand on the bus, a strange old woman approaches you at the diner with a basket of gum in hand…
But the sense of personal space is something more sensitive than that, so much so that your unconscious can dimly sense when it is being stolen.
Think back to your school days, we all know exactly when a proctor in the exam room is approaching us. During the writing test, you are writing fluently when the teacher comes behind and reads your work. At that time, you will naturally feel confused and do not know what to write next.
And then that hunch of privacy has followed us as we grow up, letting you know someone was glancing at your phone in an elevator, someone at the gym is paying attention to you, and again, when your boss stay behind watching you work.
“Our unconscious understanding of personal space is not only our basic means of protecting ourselves. It’s also one of the forces that govern us [for a lifetime], shaping our behaviour. interpersonal behavior and how we judge others ,” said psychology professor and PhD, Michael Graziano, a neuroscientist from Princeton University.
But what is private space? Why did we evolve to need it? What are the levels of your personal space that others need to respect, and so should you?
Our physical body has a clear boundary, separating what is inside that belongs to us, and what is outside, which we do not possess. That’s your skin.
But just like a sovereign nation with airspace, the space above its territory, our brains also unconsciously create such buffer zones, expanding the claim to possessing an outer space. skin.
You don’t have to wait for someone to touch you to see your sovereignty violated. Just the feeling of someone approaching, a flying object, even a glance is enough. So where does that sense of privacy come from?
In the book “The Spaces Between Us” (roughly translated as “The distance between us”) , professor Michael Graziano said that there are two brain regions responsible for the extension of bodily sovereignty into outer space. It’s the parietal cortex, which processes sensory information, and the premotor cortex, which plays a role in your every movement.
” These areas of the brain contain nerve cells that, once activated, tell you if something or someone is getting too close to you? If so, two areas This area of the brain will direct you to respond by squinting, leaning your shoulder toward your ear, or moving away from danger,” Graziano wrote.
” I call them ‘bubble’ neurons . They adjust your sight, hearing, and touch to build a multi-sensory spatial map that helps you create a safe bubble. around my body”.
The brain then goes on to process this information about the bubble in two ways:
Proprioception is a compound of the Latin words “proprius” meaning “individual” and “capion” meaning “capture” . Currently, Vietnamese does not have a word that can literally translate “proprioception”. But I will explain this concept to you with an experiment:
First, put a glass of water in front of you. Next, touch the side of the cup with your hand a few times with your eyes open. Now, close your eyes.
If I asked you to touch the side of the cup with your hands while your eyes were closed, chances are you would. That’s because when we close our eyes, our sense of the world and of our body’s position in space doesn’t go away.
An invisible feeling remains that locates where your hand is and where the side of the cup is. This sensation is called proprioception, which allows us to perceive the body’s position in space.
Proprioception tells you where the coffee cup is on the table, then you can reach for it without looking. It helps you subconsciously measure the position of your chopsticks relative to your mouth while you’re eating, so you don’t have to worry about your chopsticks poking your mouth. Without this sense, you are literally “lost” in your world.
What’s even more special about proprioception, however, is that this sense can be activated before both sight and hearing. It will help you realize someone is approaching you, trespassing your safety bubble. It even tells you if it’s a stranger or an acquaintance, before you even see or hear the person’s voice.
In short, with the spatial planning of the parietal and premotor cortex , along with the anticipation of proprioception, your brain is creating a region of space that you have control over more than just your mind. consciously but also unconsciously. As Professor Graziano explained, it’s the space that you claim, having an awareness of what is encroaching on. This is your private space.
Let’s take an example. Suppose you are standing at a party when a stranger approaches you. Although reason may tell you that a Homo sapien, in a black suit and tie in the 21st century, won’t hide a big bone behind your back to hit your head, unconsciously, your brain still prepare for a scenario where that could happen.
We have inherited this instinct from our ancestors, even distant ancestors on the branch of the evolutionary tree with reptiles, birds, and mammals. This was confirmed in the 1950s, by Swiss biologist Heini Hediger when he observed animals in his zoo in Zurich.
Hediger found that animals were only comfortable if their cages were large enough to create a watchful space for the animals in the adjacent cage. This space has even been established invisibly outside the natural environment. For example, when a wildebeest sees a lion, it will not immediately run away.
Instead, the animal appears to be performing a geometric estimate . The antelope remained calm until it realized the lion was creeping into its space. After that, it jumped out for a bit and recovered its distance from the lion.
Hediger has experimented with many animals to confirm their safe space. Imagine him holding a tape measure (or maybe a basket of gum) and approaching the grazing antelopes. As they jumped, Hediger simply measured the length of the distance he had reached. Just like that, many times adding and dividing the average, Hediger will have himself a table of numbers.
He realized that the larger the animals, the larger the safe zone. For example, a wall lizard has a safe space for a few meters before it realizes the threat and runs away. But for a crocodile, this zone would expand more than 10 times, up to 50 meters.
Domesticated animals such as cattle, poultry, pet animals have a smaller safe zone. Because they were so used to humans, the numbers Hediger measured in this case were usually no more than 1 meter.
Heini Hediger’s work then attracted the attention of American psychologist Edward Hall. Hall argues that humans actually have the same instinct to establish safe distances as animals. Only, we’ve tamed each other so that a stranger is less of a threat than a lion.
With the rule of law, ethics and mutual respect in place, we now allow a stranger to approach us, depending on the situation and circumstances. This distance can be reduced to a few meters to a few tens of centimeters like domesticated animals.
But what are those exact numbers? Hall now wants to repeat Heini Hediger’s experiments to find them. He recruited pairs of volunteers who were family members, friends or strangers and asked them to move closer together until they felt uncomfortable.
By repeating these experiments many times, Hall established four levels of human insecurity. He described them in “The Hidden Dimension” in 1966. To this day, after much testing and repeated experiments, the scientific community still agrees with Hall’s 4-level scale:
Of course, these distances are just averages. For each individual, it can vary by gender, life experience, culture and personality. As Hall suggested, Arabs often have a smaller 2nd level of personal space. They can stand crammed together to talk. But the British do not do that, they keep a great distance from unfamiliar strangers.
Studies show that introverts, those with trauma or anxiety, tend to expand their comfort zones. Meanwhile, extroverted, confident, and powerful people often have behavior that narrows their buffers without realizing that their actions can upset others.
Opposition also occurs with women and men. For example, women tend to expand their personal space when a man approaches them. According to behavioral studies, women tend to protect the space next to them, while men want to protect the space in front of them. One explanation for why you want to sit next to her on a first date but she’ll be more comfortable if you sit across from her.
But there is one thing that is true for almost everyone, and that is that emotions govern our perception of these private spaces . Basically, when we feel anxious and stressed, we have a need to expand our safe space. And when we’re happy, especially when we have dopamine in our brains, you tend to narrow down that comfort zone to let people in.
“Think of these individual bubbles like a volume knob,” says Professor Graziano. ” As your emotional volume increases, your buffer zone expands further. When the volume is lower, it contracts.”
Now that you have the basics of private space, you know you can control your behavior – not just intuitively, but rationally.
For example, just because a girl is willing to dance with you at a fun party the day before, doesn’t mean she will be comfortable if you approach less than 45cm the next day. Remember the effect that dopamine can narrow the comfort zone?
Likewise, never get too close to a stranger if you have a sense of respect for their personal space. In this way, the old women selling gum can effectively “up-sell” , just by keeping a distance of 1.2 meters from their potential customers.
But on the contrary, what if someone intentionally attacks your private space? In some force majeure cases, establishing your space sovereignty is not possible. Here are some tactics you can use, according to psychologists:
Body language: You can subtly use your instincts to warn someone that they’re getting too close. A shrug, a step back or even a run. Some smarter strategies even help you proactively prevent a breach, before it even happens.
For example, if someone wants to hug or kiss you on the cheek but you don’t want your intimate space (level 1) to be violated, reach out to catch them, keep them in personal space (level 1). 2).
If you think a neighbor or coworker has a tendency to approach you too closely, try to talk to them in a place where there is a barrier, such as a mailbox or office chair to keep social space (level degree 3).
“Often you can avoid unwanted touch or closeness just by saying ‘Back off!’ with her body language ,” says Jane Adams, PhD, psychologist and author of Boundary Matters.
Speak politely: What if you get annoyed when someone doesn’t know your own space, and they don’t even understand your body language?
Tanya Menon, PhD, organizational psychologist and professor at Ohio State University, says the next option is to speak up politely. “You could say something like ‘I’m a microbiologist,'” Dr Menon suggests in case someone wants to hold your hand and you don’t.
Similarly, if you feel that the proctor is standing too close in the exam room for you to pass, say honestly that you need space to think.
Sometimes you have to compromise: In some situations, trespassing on your personal space is unintentional, not of a sexual nature, but just out of cultural differences. For example, when you meet a foreign partner and they are greeting each other by hugging and kissing both men and women on the cheek, Dr. Menon says you should compromise.
In those cases, you can say a mantra to help you stay calm, or simply remind yourself that the contact was harmless and that it was only a brief cultural interaction. .
If trespass is inevitable: On a bus ride or in a rush hour elevator, you won’t be able to protect your less than 45cm intimate space. Dr. Adams says one easy way to accept this is to imagine yourself in a bubble, which can help calm you down and make you feel more secure.
Another tactic of pretending that the people around you are just inanimate objects , such as walls or trees, can also alleviate anxiety about strangers getting too close.
When do you need a drastic response? That’s when you realize your personal space is being unreasonably invaded. For example, when a colleague of the opposite sex deliberately comes to give you a shoulder massage without you asking for it. A person standing too close to you on a bus even though the bus is still empty or someone following you even though keeping a distance of more than 3.6 meters is difficult to understand.
“If you’re not happy with someone’s touch or proximity, you can ask that person to step back ,” says Dr. Adams. React aggressively, even calling for the help of others, in case you feel blatantly attacked into the space you have a right to possess.