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THE VIOLATION OF PERSONAL SPACE AND THE AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOUR

 

In each zone individual has to follow different use of touch, smell, and hearing which are concerned as most important to some cultures that others. What is considered comfortable distance for conversation varies from culture to culture. Watson and Graves (1966) by observation concluded that people in South America and Arabia is more direct face to face and touch one another more easily. They are thought to be high contact cultures while the Scotch Swedes are thought to be low-contact cultures.
             Fellipe and Sommer (1966) did a "library study", which was an observational study on personal space. The participants were women who did not know that were being observed. The women were studying in the library and the experimenter tried to violate their personal space by sitting next to them. The possibility for women to leave was greater when the experimenter was sitting next to them than when sitting two chairs away. A way for the students to keep their personal space was by putting books next to them as a barrier. (Gross pg386).
             Argyle and Dean (1965) has pointed out that all individuals have a tendency to want to stay alone and independent from others. This is balanced, non-verbally in each social situation in which individual find him self, so that an acceptable level of intimacy is tried to be found. In Sommer et all study the women felt discomfort because the situation became too intimate. (Gross pg. 387)According to Sommer women have smaller zones of personal space than men have. When the personal space of an individual is being violated can cause discomfort. As Sommer says: The violation of personal space increases tension levels enormously. As Jacobs pointed out social situation individuals require a comfort zone of 6 to 8 square feet per person, and any violation of that space will cause a reaction (Sommer pg.27).
             The aim of this research was to observe whether lone individuals would behave in a avoidance way quicker if their personal space was violated by one person than when it was violated by a number of people.


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