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Personal space increases during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to real and virtual humans

Personal space is the distance that people tend to maintain from others during daily life in a largely unconscious manner. For humans, personal space-related behaviors represent one form of non-verbal social communication, similar to facial expressions and eye contact. Given that the changes in soci...

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Autores principales: Holt, Daphne J., Zapetis, Sarah L., Babadi, Baktash, Zimmerman, Jordan, Tootell, Roger B. H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9515568/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36186356
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.952998
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author Holt, Daphne J.
Zapetis, Sarah L.
Babadi, Baktash
Zimmerman, Jordan
Tootell, Roger B. H.
author_facet Holt, Daphne J.
Zapetis, Sarah L.
Babadi, Baktash
Zimmerman, Jordan
Tootell, Roger B. H.
author_sort Holt, Daphne J.
collection PubMed
description Personal space is the distance that people tend to maintain from others during daily life in a largely unconscious manner. For humans, personal space-related behaviors represent one form of non-verbal social communication, similar to facial expressions and eye contact. Given that the changes in social behavior and experiences that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, including “social distancing” and widespread social isolation, may have altered personal space preferences, we investigated this possibility in two independent samples. First, we compared the size of personal space measured before the onset of the pandemic to its size during the pandemic in separate groups of subjects. Personal space size was significantly larger in those assessed during (compared to those assessed before) the onset of the pandemic (all d > 0.613, all p < 0.007). In an additional cohort, we measured personal space size, and discomfort in response to intrusions into personal space, longitudinally before and during the pandemic, using both conventional and virtual reality-based techniques. Within these subjects, we found that measurements of personal space size with respect to real versus virtual humans were significantly correlated with one another (r = 0.625–0.958) and similar in magnitude. Moreover, the size of personal space, as well as levels of discomfort during personal space intrusions, increased significantly during (compared to before) the COVID-19 pandemic in response to both real and virtual humans (all d > 0.842, all p < 0.01). Lastly, we found that the practice of social distancing and perceived (but not actual) risk of being infected with COVID-19 were linked to this personal space enlargement during the pandemic (all p < 0.038). Taken together, these findings suggest that personal space boundaries expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic independent of actual infection risk level. As the day-to-day effects of the pandemic subside, personal space preferences may provide one index of recovery from the psychological effects of this crisis.
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spelling pubmed-95155682022-09-29 Personal space increases during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to real and virtual humans Holt, Daphne J. Zapetis, Sarah L. Babadi, Baktash Zimmerman, Jordan Tootell, Roger B. H. Front Psychol Psychology Personal space is the distance that people tend to maintain from others during daily life in a largely unconscious manner. For humans, personal space-related behaviors represent one form of non-verbal social communication, similar to facial expressions and eye contact. Given that the changes in social behavior and experiences that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, including “social distancing” and widespread social isolation, may have altered personal space preferences, we investigated this possibility in two independent samples. First, we compared the size of personal space measured before the onset of the pandemic to its size during the pandemic in separate groups of subjects. Personal space size was significantly larger in those assessed during (compared to those assessed before) the onset of the pandemic (all d > 0.613, all p < 0.007). In an additional cohort, we measured personal space size, and discomfort in response to intrusions into personal space, longitudinally before and during the pandemic, using both conventional and virtual reality-based techniques. Within these subjects, we found that measurements of personal space size with respect to real versus virtual humans were significantly correlated with one another (r = 0.625–0.958) and similar in magnitude. Moreover, the size of personal space, as well as levels of discomfort during personal space intrusions, increased significantly during (compared to before) the COVID-19 pandemic in response to both real and virtual humans (all d > 0.842, all p < 0.01). Lastly, we found that the practice of social distancing and perceived (but not actual) risk of being infected with COVID-19 were linked to this personal space enlargement during the pandemic (all p < 0.038). Taken together, these findings suggest that personal space boundaries expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic independent of actual infection risk level. As the day-to-day effects of the pandemic subside, personal space preferences may provide one index of recovery from the psychological effects of this crisis. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-09-14 /pmc/articles/PMC9515568/ /pubmed/36186356 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.952998 Text en Copyright © 2022 Holt, Zapetis, Babadi, Zimmerman and Tootell. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Holt, Daphne J.
Zapetis, Sarah L.
Babadi, Baktash
Zimmerman, Jordan
Tootell, Roger B. H.
Personal space increases during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to real and virtual humans
title Personal space increases during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to real and virtual humans
title_full Personal space increases during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to real and virtual humans
title_fullStr Personal space increases during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to real and virtual humans
title_full_unstemmed Personal space increases during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to real and virtual humans
title_short Personal space increases during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to real and virtual humans
title_sort personal space increases during the covid-19 pandemic in response to real and virtual humans
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9515568/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36186356
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.952998
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