Personal space - your bubble or mine?
Firstly, your going to want to know what personal space is (if you don’t allready know).
Kinesphere (More commonly known as Peronsal Space) is the invisible bubble that surrounds us at every angle, above below to the left ect ect.. It is the bubble inwhich we protect ourselfs from others, by maximising the distance at which we feel comfortable communicating with them.
Personal space is something that I love to experiment with.
Now most people know the basics of personal space, in that they shouldn’t stand too close to people they don’t know. But many people are completely un-aware of the solical impact of your personal space bubble, and how it relies on many factors.
Below I am going to list 6 of the factors, and I want you to tell me how many you know.
- Where you live massively changes the size of your personal space bubble
- Some people’s personal space bubbles can be up to 3 meters around them.
- There are different stages to the personal space bubble.
- 86% of people will invade the personal space bubble of another person without knowing it.
- People’s personal space bubbles in cars increases by up to 120% taking it up to anywhere between 3 and 15 meteres surrounding their car.
- Most people will not tell you when you are invading their personal space.
The thing that you need to realise is that you will have to analyse body language, to effectively know if you are invading someone’s personal space. Below I am going to list a few ways of telling this:
- The person will step back one or two spaces.
- They will cross their arms accross their chest in order to subconciously protect themselfs.
- They will stand with their legs closer together to protect against attack.
- They will breath in heavily. Generally this only applies in combination with another tell.
- (perhaps the most obvious) the person will combine all of the above tells.
What to do if you spot this:
The first thing you are going to want to do is step back. No more than 1 or 2 small paces but it puts them back in control.
Secondly, think about why you might have invaded their personal space. Ask them where they are from. Generally people who grow up in the country compared to those growing up in the city have much bigger personal space bubbles.
Why are these “personal space” bubbles so important?
They are important because subconciously people will judge you on the way in which you stand, what you say, and most imporantly in this case. How far away from them you stand.
There are several distances that you should maintain, and although they do vary from person to person, they are quite easy to get to grips with.
- If you don’t know the person that you are talking too, then you are ok to stand around 1.5 meteres from them. This is a social distance between 2 people who are just meeting eachother or maintain a simply working relationship, and are generally not sexually attracted to eachother.
- If you mutually solically accept the other person, then the standing distance will be around 0.8 - 1.2m
- If you are mutually sexually attracted to eacother the distance can be anything from 0m to 0.5m it generally depends on how deep the attractions goes, and how well you know eachother.
- People’s personal space bubble could be completely different from yours. You may feel comfortable standing 1m away from someone you don’t know, but they might only feel comfortable at around 3m
Your personal space bubble is all about trust. Who you trust to stand close to you, who do you trust not to hurt you. As humans we can ovveride basic drives. However personal space is one of the hardest to live without.
Next time you are in a club or a party, look at people as they talk. Watch them do a slow style walk around the room with one another, attempting to avoid eachothers bubbles.
–Tom
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