What is "Personal Space" that humans that glimpse from President Trump Shake hands unconsciously develop?

byJennifer Murawski

People are just right distance feeling when communicating with others "Personal spaceI have unconsciously. The concept of personal space was advocated more than 50 years ago in the psychology world, and various things have come to light as a result of enormous psychological experiments and advancement of brain science research advanced, accompanied by an example of President Trump 's handshake Michael Graziano, professor of psychology and brain science at Princeton University, explains.

Personal Space Is an Elaborate, Unconscious Dance - The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/05/personal-space-is-an-elaborate-unconscious-dance/561170/

At the UN Conference in 2017, President Donald Tramp was talked about shaking the handshake with President Emanuel Macron of the French "too hot". Mr. Grazian argues that this handshake attracted the attention of people because President Trump 's personal space is quite extreme.

This is a pretty intense handshake between Macron and Trumppic.twitter.com/nseTdcpXkX

- Colin Jones (@ colinjones)May 25, 2017

A zoologist known as "father of zoo studies"Haini HedigerIn conducting research on wild animals, "Animals take a vigilance stance when other animals come closer than a certain distance, escape away from the place" "When approaching further, defense posture from one line I will take a counterattack, I noticed that. Hediger named the distance each individual animal has as "escape distance" and "marginal distance", respectively.

byOrias 1978

According to Hediger's research, in general, the larger the size of the wildlife, the longer the escape distance will be. For example, the lizard sticking to the wall can approach several meters, but the large crocodile The flight distance will be close to 50 meters. Also, it is said that the breeding animals may shorten their flight distance and may not exceed 1 meter.

Hediger's findings that "Animals are inherent in escape distances and marginal distances" attracted the attention of psychologists. In 1966, an American cultural anthropologistEdward T. HallArgued that "interpersonal distance" is inherent in the same way as the getaway distance in animals, and proposed the concept of "personal space". Some of the arguments made by the Hall at that time, such as "the interpersonal distance changes greatly depending on the country and culture", were partly lacking in scientific grounds, but until today the idea of ​​personal space and interpersonal distance is social psychology It is treated as an important theme in academic study.

Hall roughly categorized the personal space as "close distance" "individual distance" "social distance" "public distance" in order from the closest distance.

The close distance is 15 to 45 cm, it is a very narrow range that is permitted only for lovers / families / close friends.


Individual distance is about 45 ~ 120 cm, it is about distance to reach just by reaching out. Everyday conversation is possible because we can read each other's facial expressions.


Social distance is 1.2 m - 3.5 m farther than the length of the arm, it is just a good distance for work meetings and conversations with less familiar people


Public distance is the largest area with radius much longer than height. It can be said that it is a sense of distance that you can look over multiple opponents, such as when presenting in front of people.


Looking at President Trump 's handshake, we are bringing President Macron close to the range which can be said to be a closely spaced distance in general, this will force the opponent to be pulled in to his personal space. Mr. Grazian argues that self-confidence, such as President Trump, tends to be particularly small personal spaces.

Many psychologists have undertaken various psychological experiments to confirm the Hall's assertion since the Hall announced about the personal space. A huge amount of experimental results and papers were published, and among them I learned that "Personal space spreads with uneasiness". People become stressed when their personal space expands and will shrink as soon as they feel calm. Also, in some studies it has been pointed out that women will expand their personal space as men approach.

In the 1990s, it became clear that neuroscience in the brain developed greatly, neurons in the brain formed a complicated network, and it turned out that neural cells in the brain are also involved in the personal space . When something moves in the surroundings, the brain cells respond actively and the warninginess around the head and torso is strengthened.

Although it can be said that closely related physical space surrounding the body and social behavior are closely related as social life shifts to on-line more and more rapidly in recent years, Mr. Graziano said "Personal space concept by online communication It will not be lost ". Certainly, Twitter, Facebook, etc. are losing the framework of communication "to match face and face in reality space". However, like the development of virtual reality (VR) games that can be played while maintaining the sense of space and distance, Mr. Grazian points out that the social behavior of humans has been fundamentally restructured I will.