Bias in assessing the credibility of a witness narrative
27 October 2014
How to detect lies – interview with Diego Ingrassia
30 October 2014
Edward T. Hall1 coined the term proxemics, a discipline that studies the space and distances between interlocutors during a communication. Hall observed that the distance between people (in psychological terms: affinity, complicity, degree of confidence, interpersonal feeling) correlated with physical distance. Hall defined and measured four interpersonal ‘zones’:
- The intimate distance (from 0 to 45 cm): this is the distance between people in strong intimacy and trust (think of people in love).
- The personal distance (from 45 to 120 cm): is the distance that characterises communication between friends.
- Social distance (1 to 3.5 metres): this is the distance used during communication between acquaintances, or in the formal teacher-pupil relationship (very limited confidence and informality, communicative interactions however frequent).
- The public distance (over 3.5 metres): is the distance usually used in interactions between complete strangers.
Edward Hall emphasises, however, that these distances are ideal, influenced by culture and not universal: the optimal closeness in which a person feels comfortable with other people is often subjective, varies according to different degrees of familiarity, and is strongly influenced by factors related to the person’s temperament and culture. For example: people of Arab ethnicity and culture prefer to stand very close to each other when conversing; North Americans, Europeans and Asians, on the other hand, generally maintain a greater distance during a communicative interaction; in India, social norms dictate that people of different castes must maintain specific inviolable distances. According to Hall, gender also affects proxemics: males are more comfortable to the side of a person, while females are more comfortable in front. Substantial differences also exist at the level of intra-gender aptic: females are generally more prone to proximity and physical contact, whereas males are often refractory to displays of affection that involve unsolicited physical contact.
According to the author, the violation of these ‘zones’ by one of the interlocutors leads to a series of behavioural and emotional reactions in the other: the person who sees himself being ‘invaded’ may feel immediate discomfort (the reaction is ancestral: It is due to the activation of the Sympathetic Nervous System, which triggers often unconscious ‘attack-escape’ mechanisms); the person may try to conceal the annoyance he or she may feel by acting as if nothing were the matter (but at the muscular level, a postural and facial stiffening may be observed), or he or she may react: ‘attack’ the person and firmly demand respect for distance, or ‘escape’, moving back a few steps, discreetly (so as not to offend the other).
On a cross-cultural level, the use of different distances in interaction is often a source of misunderstanding between people of different ethnicities: those who are used to proximity may feel offended by the other moving back (<But… is he ‘rejecting’ me? ), and conversely, those accustomed to greater distances may not like the excessive proximity imposed by the interlocutor at all (<Respect my space! Who gave you permission to get so familiar with me?!?>).
Ethological and psychological studies have demonstrated the devastating effects of overcrowding, in humans and animals. Research that studied the behaviour of anthropomorphic primates subjected to extreme conditions (in which the specimens were crammed and piled up without judgement inside tiny cages) revealed the tremendous effects of overcrowding on physical and psychological well-being: Some specimens exhibited stereotypical, highly dysfunctional self-harming behaviour; some subjects, those most passive in relation to the situation, had over time developed attitudes correlated with apathy and dysphoria, probably due to the sense of powerlessness they perceived in relation to the coercive situation: in the most extreme cases, they lost all interest in living and literally let themselves starve to death. Similar attitudes have been observed in human beings, especially in the context of imprisonment and forced detention (think of the terrible examples we can count simply by looking at the History of the last hundred years).
In conditions certainly less extreme than those mentioned, people still react with aggression or anxiety when forced for a long time in an overcrowded place, where the invasion of one’s personal and psychological space is inevitable: think of standing in line for an interminable time, in order to obtain a good or a service; leaving a concert, badly managed in terms of organisation; or being in the middle of a crowd, without having the possibility of leaving.
When we inadvertently happen to pass in front of a person, we often apologise: it is certainly a rule of good manners, but it is aimed at preventing our spatial invasion from causing discomfort or annoyance in the other person.
But if we have no a priori information about a person, do not know their ethnicity or what kind of distance they like in case we have to interact with them, how should we behave? If we notice a facial expression of contempt, disgust or anger, who is to say that this facial expression is due not so much to what we say to the person (or how we say it to them), but to the context in which the conversation itself takes place (where, perhaps unconsciously, we approach or distance ourselves from the interlocutor)?
Our analysis must consider the macro and micro context in which the conversation takes place (culture of reference and specific family upbringing; current context), and if we do not have enough information, we must focus our attention on universal non-verbal signals, which are certainly more valid and reliable.
Diego Ingrassia
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1 Hall, E.T..
- (1963) “A system for the notation of proxemic behaviour”. American Anthropologist, 65(5), 1003-1026.
- (1989) Beyond culture. Random House LLC.
- (1990) The hidden dimension (Vol. 1990). New York: Anchor Books.
- (1990) The silent language. Anchor.
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