Personal space

There is the certain area around us that we consider to be the personal one and we irritate if someone gets into the limits of our area. In other words we hate when people get to us closer than we want them to be.

There was an interesting experiment put once. After training a girl was asked to sit down near the studying man in the library. She was trying to get to the reader closer as she could. But every time the man was getting closer to the window. Almost everybody of us tried once to keep our area with the help of different nonverbal methods such as for example pushing the elbow, turning the back, hiding the head.

It is possible to see the distance keeping in the transport. It was noticed that people sit alone in the pair seating in the empty bus. If there is no such seating, people take the seating with the neighbour that is worth the trust turning away from him/her.

Another example of nonverbal communication is the park where people take places on the benches. If there is only one person sitting on the bench, another one will come up to him and will ask to sit down next to him/her, usually he/she gets the agreement. But soon he/she leaves the first searching for the bench where there is no people sitting.

Because of the compact city population the personal territorial space is narrowed to minimum and it doesn't stop the free communication, but people who come from villages to cities feel the certain discomfort as people have wider personal space in villages and not very populated places.