第五期1/5

Good morning, everyone. Have you ever known that a man's sense of self isn't bounded by his skin? He walks around inside a kind of private bubble, which represents the amount of airspace he feels he must have between himself and other people. In today's session, I am going to talk about personal space and distance. There are four parts. First, the different understandings towards personal space lead to culturally different behavior. Second, genetically speaking, it is an animal's instinct to have personal bubbles. Third, the closeness of people decides personal relations. And lastly, men and women sense differently about crowding. All right, let's get down to the first part. The misunderstanding can develop because people from different cultures handle space in very different ways. For two unacquainted adult male North Americans, for example, the comfortable distance to stand for conversation is about two feet apart. The South American likes to stand much closer, which creates problems when a South American and a North American meet face to face. The South American who moves in to what is to him a proper talking distance may be considered "pushy" by the North American; and the North American may seem standoffish to the South American when he backs off to create a gap of the size that seems right to him.