I was very excited to these activities because my friends are always messing with me so I was glad to pay them back. For the first part of the activity, I chose to do this experiment on a good friend who I figured would understand what was going on after I debriefed her. For the 2-minute sustained eye contact part, I had some very interesting results. For about the first 15 seconds, maintaining eye contact was easy and I did not have to move. After that it became very difficult to maintain eye contact with my friend. She looked over to the side at which point I had to dart over to get back in her line of vision. We then maintained eye contact for another couple seconds until she looked away. Again, I had to move to get back in her eye sight. This pattern continued for the rest of the two minutes during which time she kept looking at me more and more strangely and at one point even asked me if something was wrong. After the two minutes, I debriefed my friend and asked her what she thought. She said she felt very nervous and uneasy that I wouldn’t break eye contact with her. It also made me feel very awkward to maintain eye contact that long. It felt very unnatural.
I did the second activity on another friend. I chose a casual conversation to do this so that she wouldn’t think I didn’t care about her problems. In the beginning of the conversation, she did not seem to notice that I wasn’t making eye contact. After about 30 seconds of not making eye contact, she stopped conversing with me. It was left up to me to work to keep the conversation going. After it was over as I was debriefing her, I asked her how she felt about me not maintaining eye contact with her. She told me she felt that I was very uninterested and distracted and that is why she stopped talking. The combination of these first two activities shows just how important the nonverbal communication of eye contact is. Too little eye contact may cause a person to think you are not listening to what they are saying, and too much eye contact may make the other person feel very nervous.
For the last activity, I chose a third friend to be my victim. I found this experiment to be the most difficult to do correctly. I started to close the space between us and once I got to within a foot of her, she took a small step back. I was worried I wasn’t moving slowly enough, but it must have worked because I was able to back my friend up a few feet. When I was done, I asked her if she noticed that she had backed up and she said she hadn’t. This activity shows just how much personal space is valued in our culture and that we will maintain it at a subconscious level if necessary.
Why do you think we value our personal space so much that we will subconsciously move to keep it?
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I think it's just something we've been taught since childhood and we associate physical proximity with certain levels of relationships. Obviously in a boyfriend or girlfriend relationship the proximity would be much closer than with two people who have just met each other. I don't think it's necessarily human nature to do this but it's what we've been taught is socially acceptable and when someone breaks this unspoken rule people will do whatever it takes to make themselves comfortable again.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very good question so props to that for starters. I don't really think we realize how important our personal space is until it is invaded. If someone attempted to move closer and closer in on me in a conversation I think I would stop right away and question what they were doing. If I didn't realize it, obviously my natural reaction would be to move back. I think personal space has just always been granted to us for some reason and we all obviously enjoy having our own personal space, when it is invaded some get a little more aggravated than others!
ReplyDeleteGood question Jordan. Personally, I think we value our "space" because of our preference to feel in control. For instance, if a person is very close to me, such as on a bus, I don't feel as safe. In other words, I don't feel in complete control of my surroundings. I suppose this relates back to our book in that America is a heavily individualistic culture compared to a collectivistic culture. More to the point, Katie began alluding to an interesting concept in regards to our natural reaction to "space." One of the first things I think about when the word "space" pops into my head is the idea of freedom. "Freedom" has historically been linked to the idea of furthering ones space between another group of people, such as through migrations.
ReplyDeleteGood points guys. I also don’t feel safe when a stranger sits too close to me on a bus or in a waiting room. This kind of goes back to the activity with unwritten rules. I think there are very few places where it is not against the unwritten rules to sit very close to someone you don’t know. I like the comparison between space and freedom; I definitely think there is some validity in that.
ReplyDeleteI think we value our personal space when it comes to specific people. I know there are certain people that I would inch away from as they inched closer to me and there are others that I feel completely comfortable being centimeters away from. It all depends on who it is. I think we feel this way because it feels akward or uncomfortable when someone you are not familiar with is invading your personal space.
ReplyDeletePersonal space is personal space. It is a comfort level for everyone and some people are okay with others being one foot from them and some are not even okay with people being 5 ft from them. Personal comfort for sure and everyone needs a bit of it.
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