The Definitive Book of Body Languagewhere he grew up. Personal Space is therefore culturally deter-
mined. Where some cultures, such as the Japanese, are
accustomed to crowding, others prefer the 'wide open spaces'
and like you to keep your distance.Personal space — the portable bubble
we all carry around with usResearch shows that people in prisons
appear to have larger personal space needs
than most of the community, which results
in the prisoners being constantly aggressive
when approached by others. Solitary con-
finement, where no others are in the
prisoner's space, always has a calming
effect. Violence from passengers on aircraft increased during
the 1990s when the airlines started packing people close
together in the seats to compensate for revenue lost as a result
of price discounting.
Zone Distances
We'll now discuss the radius of the 'air bubble' around subur-
ban middle-class people living in places such as Australia, New
Zealand, Great Britain, North America, Northern Europe,
Scandinavia, Canada or anywhere a culture is 'Westernised'
such as Singapore, Guam and Iceland. The country in which
you personally live may have larger or smaller territories than
those we discuss here, but they will be proportionately the
same as the ones we discuss here. Children have learned this
spacing by age 12 and it can be broken down into four distinct
zone distances:
- The Intimate Zone between 6 and 18 inches (15-45 cen-
timetres). Of all the zone distances, this is by far the most
important, as it is this zone that a person guards as if it were