Studies in Personal Space

Abstract

Surprisingly little is known about the way people use space. Social scientists in the field of human ecology have been concerned primarily with the distribution of such things as social classes, economic institutions, and mental illness. An almost unexplored area is microecology or the way that people in pairs or small groups arrange themselves. In the studies of Hediger (5), Howard (6), and Von Uexkull (15), has had two different meanings. The more familiar of these refers to in the geographic sense, i.e., as area. It is most commonly discussed with reference to the animal's territory or home. However, some writers have applied the concept of territory to human behavior. W. F. Whyte (16) and Thrasher (14) have studied the territories of adolescent gangs. W. H. Whyte (17) also has studied the groupings of people within a housing development. Probably the most intensive investigation thus far has been that of Barker and Wright (2) in the Midwest. Yet this still remains relatively unexplored territory for social scientists. The second way in which the term is used can be called of the organism. Although it has its roots in the work of zoologists and ethologists, it is an entirely different concept from that of territory. Personal is the that the organism customarily places between itself and other organisms. This may vary from species to species and individual to individual. Hediger speaks of this as flight distance and has measured this for hundreds of animals. This concept would seem to have relevance for the study of human behavior, although it has never been studied empirically so far as we know. It seems obvious that people feel uncomfortable when they talk to others who either stand too close or too far away. The concept itself has been used several times in the literature. David Katz (8) used the term space and compared it to the shell of a snail. Von Uexkull used the graphic analogy of people surrounded by soap-bubble worlds. Stern (13) developed the concept of personal world. He noted that the physical world was without a center, but the