Proxemic Behavior: A Study of Extrusion
Rationale: Cheryl Albas decided to conduct a study that was an examination of comfortable proxemic distances between female Canadian students and a male interviewer. This study was kept so both the subjects and interviewer was from the same ethnicity. Instead of having different cultures, the problem of this study was that the interviewer would retreat from the original distance that he started at. The hypothesis for this study was that in an intra-ethnic group interation, if one person backs away, the other will follow to a position that would then establish the new comfortable distance.
Patients and Methods: Those that participated in this study were a group of 70 female students from a Canadian university that were aged between 18-25 years old. They also had to identify themselves as being Anglo-Canadian. They were approached by a 25-year-old male Anglo-Canadian student who went to the same university who was a stranger to all the women. The man conducted this study in the quad of the university where there were many students walking through, and an observer was standing on a balcony.
In order to pick people to interview, he would try and catch the women’s attention nonverbally with eye contact approximately 10 feet away from them. Then after he got their attention, he went up to them and greeted them verbally. During the interview, he would ask if they were Anglo-Canadians and if they were, they would be invited to participate in the survey.
This survey was just a set up. What they were really looking for was how close/far away random people felt comfortable talking to each other. In his head, the interviewer gave the women random numbers. 35 subjects were part of the controlled group, and 35 subjects were part of the experimental group. In the experimental group, the interviewer would back up progressively from the subject. In the controlled group, he stayed in the same place. He did this to try and recreate what Hall said which was “I stood my ground, letting her set the distance.” The distance between the interviewer and the women were measured by the floor tiles. Each tile was 5 inches
Results: The average comfortable distance for the study overall was 12.34 inches which was about 2.5 floor tiles. For the controlled group, the average distance was 12 inches, about 2.4 tiles. The average for the experimental group was 23.4 inches, which is a little over 4.5 floor tiles. The subjects were asked at the end of the survey how they felt. The reason that the experimental group had a greater distance than the controlled group was because those in the experimental group felt like the interviewer wanted to have a greater distance between them, so the women let him have his distance.
Discussion: This study supported the hypothesis that the comfortable distance of interaction between two people that don’t know each other is negotiable and changes during the process of interaction. It did not matter that both of the subjects were from the same ethnic group. Aligning actions apply to this study, Aligning actions is a term that is used to explain the behavior that is used by two people when they find themselves in any situation that is out of their type for their identities.
Reflection: For being two random people, we feel like it was normal that when the interviewer kept backing up, the female did not try to get any closer. Normally when this happens, the person that is backing up does not feel comfortable with how close they are standing to each other. We did find it interesting though that when the interviewer stayed in his same spot, the female didn’t try and move back, in fact, she may have even gotten a little closer. This may be a little weird because, as stated before, they were two random people that had never met before.
Application: We can and probably do use this in everyday life. If we are talking with someone and we see them fidgeting around and starting to back up, that usually means that they are feeling uncomfortable. If they start backing up, we most likely won’t keep getting closer and closer to the person. Just as we would not do that to other people, other people should know not to do that to us. We need to know that not everyone is comfortable with people being so close to them.