Mirror game as a tool to influence interpersonal spontaneous behavior after performance.

Mirror game (MG) is an exercise in which participants imitate each other. Our study explored its spontaneous behavioral consequences after performance. In a baseline (BL) phase, two participants performed a joint Simon task. Then, they performed a lure task during which we measured the interpersonal distance they spontaneously adopted. The BL phase was followed by two phases (in counterbalanced order). The MG phase started with a MG, before a procedure like the BL phase. The individual movement (IM) phase started with movements performed alone before a procedure like the BL phase. Interpersonal distance analysis suggested that MG enhanced spontaneous approach toward the partner, whereas IM induced spontaneous avoidance. Moreover, the joint Simon effect (JSE) tended to be smaller after IM, suggesting a decreasing inclination to integrate the partner's response in one's own action plan. Furthermore, in IM phase, JSE decreased as interpersonal distance increased.

Autistic adults exhibit typical sensitivity to changes in interpersonal distance.

The visual processing differences seen in autism often impede individuals' visual perception of the social world. In particular, many autistic people exhibit poor face recognition. Here, we sought to determine whether autistic adults also show impaired perception of dyadic social interactions-a class of stimulus thought to engage face-like visual processing. Our focus was the perception of interpersonal distance. Participants completed distance change detection tasks, in which they had to make perceptual decisions about the distance between two actors. On half of the trials, participants judged whether the actors moved closer together; on the other half, whether they moved further apart. In a nonsocial control task, participants made similar judgments about two grandfather clocks. We also assessed participants' face recognition ability using standardized measures. The autistic and nonautistic observers showed similar levels of perceptual sensitivity to changes in interpersonal distance when viewing social interactions. As expected, however, the autistic observers showed clear signs of impaired face recognition. Despite putative similarities between the visual processing of faces and dyadic social interactions, our results suggest that these two facets of social vision may dissociate.

Body shape rather than facial emotion of others alters interpersonal distance in patients with anorexia nervosa.

OBJECTIVE: The study investigated interpersonal distance in patients with anorexia nervosa (AN), focussing on the role of other's facial expression and morphology, also assessing physiological and subjective responses. METHOD: Twenty-nine patients with AN and 30 controls (CTL) were exposed to virtual characters either with an angry, neutral, or happy facial expression or with an overweight, normal-weight, or underweight morphology presented either in the near or far space while we recorded electrodermal activity. Participants had to judge their preferred interpersonal distance with the characters and rated them in terms of valence and arousal. RESULTS: Unlike CTL, patients with AN exhibited heightened electrodermal activity for morphological stimuli only, when presented in the near space. They also preferred larger and smaller interpersonal distances with overweight and underweight characters respectively, although rating both negatively. Finally, and similar to CTL, they preferred larger interpersonal distance with angry than neutral or happy characters. DISCUSSION: Although patients with AN exhibited behavioural response to emotional stimuli similar to CTL, they lacked corresponding physiological response, indicating emotional blunting towards emotional social stimuli. Moreover, they showed distinct behavioural and physiological adjustments in response to body shape, confirming the specific emotional significance attached to body shape.

Longitudinal study of personal space in autism.

The size and regulation of personal space are reportedly atypical in autistic individuals. As personal space regulates social interaction, its developmental change is essential for understanding the nature of social difficulties that autistic individuals face. Adolescence is an important developmental period in which social relationships become complex. We conducted a three-year longitudinal study of interpersonal distances in autistic and typically developing (TD) individuals aged 12-18 years at Time 1 and 15-21 years at Time 2. Their preferred interpersonal distances were measured when an experimenter approached the participants with and without eye contact. The interpersonal distances of autistic individuals were shorter than those of TD individuals at both Time 1 and Time 2. Furthermore, the interpersonal distances of autistic individuals at Time 1 and Time 2 were highly correlated, but no such correlation was found in TD individuals. The results suggest that the interpersonal distances of autistic individuals are stable and that the shorter preferred interpersonal distances in autistic individuals compared to those of TD individuals are maintained during adolescence.

Larger comfortable interpersonal distances in adults exposed to child maltreatment: The role of depressive symptoms and social anxiety.

Previous studies report a preference for larger comfortable interpersonal distance (CIPD) in individuals with child maltreatment (CM) when being approached by others. Yet, research on approaching others, as opposed to being approached, as well as on potential effects of social anxiety and depression is lacking. We investigated if CM and depressive symptoms influence CIPD and if social anxiety mediates the possible association of CM and CIPD when approaching a female stranger. One hundred ten participants with CM (CM) and 58 participants without CM (non-CM) experiences performed the stop-distance paradigm and stopped first when feeling uncomfortable (D1) and again when feeling very uncomfortable (D2). CM experiences were associated with a preference for larger CIPD, independent of depressive symptoms. All CM subtypes were associated with a larger D2. The relationship between CM and CIPD was partially mediated by social anxiety. These novel findings can help to develop interventions strengthening socially relevant skills and processes in those affected by CM, targeting alterations in social anxiety and depression.

Interpersonal distance in schizophrenia: A systematic review.

BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESIS: Schizophrenia is often associated with severe difficulties in social functioning, resulting in increased isolation and subsequent loneliness. Interpersonal distance - the amount of space around an individual's body during social interaction - can signal such difficulties. However, little is known about how individuals with schizophrenia regulate their interpersonal distance during social encounters. Summarizing the current empirical findings of interpersonal distance regulation in schizophrenia can bring novel perspectives for understanding interpersonal difficulties observed in this clinical population. STUDY DESIGN: This systematic review examined empirical studies indexed in Web of Science and PubMed based on a-priori-defined criteria. 1164 studies were screened with the final review consisting of 14 studies. They together included 1145 adult participants, of whom 668 were diagnosed with schizophrenia or psychotic disorder. STUDY RESULTS: The studies clearly showed that patients maintain greater interpersonal distances than do controls. Furthermore, a larger distance was linked to more severe positive and negative symptoms. More specifically, the link to symptoms was more pronounced when patients were being approached by someone else during interactions. On a neurobiological level, the increased activity and functional connectivity of the dorsal inferior parietal sulcus and increased subjective state-dependent stress are further indicated as being potentially related to increase interpersonal distancing in schizophrenia. CONCLUSIONS: We provided information about the aberrant modulation of interpersonal distance in schizophrenia. Studies showed substantial heterogeneity in tasks used to measure interpersonal distance. Future studies should look at links to social functioning, underlying neurobiology, and neuroendocrinal regulation of interpersonal space in schizophrenia.

Perception of interpersonal distance and social distancing before and during COVID-19 pandemic.

Since COVID-19 is easily transmitted among people in close physical proximity, the focus of epidemiological policy during the COVID-19 crisis included major restrictions on interpersonal distance. However, the way in which distance restrictions affected spatial perception is unclear. In the current study, we examined interpersonal distance preferences and perceptions at three time points: pre-pandemic, early post-pandemic, and late post-pandemic. The results indicate that following the pandemic outbreak, people perceived others as farther away than they actually were, suggesting that the distance restrictions were associated with an enlargement of perceived interpersonal distance. Interestingly, however, people maintained the same distance from one another as before the outbreak, indicating no change in actual distance behavior due to the risk of infection. These findings suggest that COVID-19 was associated with a change in the way distance is perceived, while in practice, people maintain the same distance as before. In contrast, COVID-related anxiety predicted both a preference for maintaining a greater distance and a bias toward underestimating perceived distance from others. Thus, individuals who were highly fearful of COVID-19 perceived other people to be closer than they actually were and preferred to maintain a larger distance from them. The results suggest that subjective risk can lead to an increased perception of danger and a subsequent change in behavior. Taken together, even when behaviors should logically change, the decision-making process can be based on distorted perceptions. This insight may be used to predict public compliance.

How well do we do social distancing?

During the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), many jurisdictions around the world introduced a "social distance" rule under which people are instructed to keep a certain distance from others. Generally, this rule is implemented simply by telling people how many metres or feet of separation should be kept, without giving them precise instructions as to how the specified distance can be measured. Consequently, the rule is effective only to the extent that people are able to gauge this distance through their space perception. To examine the effectiveness of the rule from this point of view, this study empirically investigated how much distance people would leave from another person when they relied on their perception of this distance. Participants (N = 153) were asked to stand exactly 1.5 m away from a researcher, and resultant interpersonal distances showed that while their mean was close to the correct 1.5 m distance, they exhibited large individual differences. These results suggest that a number of people would not stay sufficiently away from others even when they intend to do proper social distancing. Given this outcome, it is suggested that official health advice include measures that compensate for this tendency.

Interpersonal Distance Theory of Autism and Its Implication for Cognitive Assessment, Therapy, and Daily Life.

The interpersonal distance (IPD) theory provides a novel approach to studying autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this article, we present recent findings on the neurobiological underpinnings of IPD regulation that are distinct in individuals with ASD. We also discuss the potential influence of environmental factors on IPD. We suggest that different IPD regulation may have implications for cognitive performance in experimental and diagnostic settings, may influence the effectiveness of training and therapy, and may play a role in the typical forms of social communication and leisure activities chosen by autistic individuals. We argue that reconsidering the results of ASD research through the lens of IPD would lead to a different interpretation of previous findings. Finally, we propose a methodological approach to study this phenomenon systematically.

Influence of interpersonal distance on collaborative performance in the joint Simon task-An fNIRS-based hyperscanning study.

Collaboration is a critical skill in everyday life. It has been suggested that collaborative performance may be influenced by social factors such as interpersonal distance, which is defined as the perceived psychological distance between individuals. Previous literature has reported that close interpersonal distance may promote the level of self-other integration between interacting members, and in turn, enhance collaborative performance. These studies mainly focused on interdependent collaboration, which requires high levels of shared representations and self-other integration. However, little is known about the effect of interpersonal distance on independent collaboration (e.g., the joint Simon task), in which individuals perform the task independently while the final outcome is determined by the parties. To address this issue, we simultaneously measured the frontal activations of ninety-four pairs of participants using a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS)-based hyperscanning technique while they performed a joint Simon task. Behavioral results showed that the Joint Simon Effect (JSE), defined as the RT difference between incongruent and congruent conditions indicating the level of self-other integration between collaborators, was larger in the friend group than in the stranger group. Consistently, the inter-brain neural synchronization (INS) across the dorsolateral and medial parts of the prefrontal cortex was also stronger in the friend group. In addition, INS in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex negatively predicted JSE only in the friend group. These results suggest that close interpersonal distance may enhance the shared mental representation among collaborators, which in turn influences their collaborative performance.

The Influence of Victim Self-Disclosure on Bystander Intervention in Cyberbullying.

The frequent occurrences of cyberbullying on social platforms have sparked a great deal of social conflict, and bystander intervention plays a crucial role in preventing the escalation of cyberbullying. This research examines the impact of victim self-disclosure on bystander intervention in cyberbullying through two experimental studies. The studies collected data from March to July of 2022, utilizing a convenience sampling approach to recruit university students as experiment participants. Study 1 recruited 247 valid participants, while Study 2 recruited 522 eligible participants. The results of Study 1 indicate that the perceptible dimensions (frequency, privacy, and valence) of victim self-disclosure impact bystander intervention. Specifically, in a low privacy context, positive self-disclosure increases bystander intervention, while negative self-disclosure does the opposite. The results of Study 2 suggest that the valence of self-disclosure affects bystander intervention through the mediation of victim blaming, with interpersonal distance moderating the impact of victim self-disclosure valence on the extent of victim blaming. This moderated mediation model clarifies the psychological process by which the valence of victim self-disclosure affects bystander intervention. The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of the social psychological process behind bystander intervention, providing a scientific basis and pathway for reducing cyberbullying and fostering a harmonious online environment.

The influence of altruistic personality, interpersonal distance and social observation on prosocial behavior: An event-related potential (ERP) study.

The psychological mechanisms that high and low altruists exhibit in different contexts remain unknown. This study examined the underlying mechanisms of the effect of altruistic personality, social observation, and interpersonal distance on prosocial behavior using event-related potentials (ERPs). Participants with high and low altruism were asked to make prosocial or non-prosocial choices toward different interpersonal distances (friends, acquaintances, or strangers) under the (non)observer condition. The electrophysiological responses to the choice stimuli were simultaneously recorded. The behavioral results demonstrated that high altruists had more prosocial choices, and these choices were unaffected by interpersonal distance and social observation. However, low altruists made more prosocial choices toward friends and acquaintances under the observer than nonobserver conditions, whereas their prosocial choices toward strangers showed no difference. The ERP results demonstrated that low altruists showed more negative N2 when the choice stimuli were toward strangers and acquaintances or under the nonobserver condition. Furthermore, low altruists showed larger P3 under the observer than nonobserver conditions when the choice stimuli were toward friends and acquaintances, while this difference was absent when the choice stimuli were toward strangers. However, for high altruists, no effect of interpersonal distance and social observation was observed in N2 and P3. These results suggest that the prosocial behavior of low altruists is mainly driven by reputational incentives, whereas high altruists are primarily motivated by concern about the well-being of others. Our findings provide insights into the prosocial behavior of high and low altruists in different contexts and support the empathy-altruism hypothesis.

Greater interpersonal distance in adults with autism.

Social interactions are often shaped by the space we prefer to maintain between us and others, that is, interpersonal distance. Being too distant or too close to a stranger can often be perceived as odd, and lead to atypical social interactions. This calibration of appropriate interpersonal distance thus constitutes an important social skill. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD, hereafter autism) often experience difficulties with this skill, and anecdotal accounts suggest atypical interpersonal distances in their social interactions. In the current study, we systematically measured interpersonal distance in individuals with autism using immersive virtual reality (IVR) to recreate a naturalistic interaction with a full body avatar of a similar age. Participants observed their own virtual body in first-person perspective, and the other avatar in two tasks: in the first task, they approached the other avatar (active), in the second one they were approached by the other avatar (passive). Two groups of neurotypical and autistic adults, performed both tasks. Autistic adults showed greater interpersonal distance when compared to non-autistic adults. Additionally, the difference between the passive and active conditions was smaller for non-autistic compared to autistic adults. Across the full sample, greater interpersonal distance was associated with higher autism-related traits. This study provides systematic evidence for greater interpersonal distance in autistic adults using a paradigm with high ecological validity and can be useful in informing the design of appropriate environmental adjustments for shared spaces.

Forgive or complain: Interpersonal distance modulates reactive attitudes and neural responses toward wrongdoers.

While the effect of interpersonal distance on forgiveness has been investigated over the past few years, it remains unclear whether this facilitating effect holds even when measured implicitly. Meanwhile, though cognitive control and the corresponding prefrontal cortex play a prominent role in forgiveness processing, the neural mechanism underlying forgiveness toward varied wrongdoers is largely unexplored. Here, forty-two participants initially underwent noise offense either from their friend or stranger, followed by a word identification test to examine their implicit attitude, during which they were presented with word-name combinations and required to categorize forgive- or complain-label words while ignoring the names of their friends or strangers below. A shorter reaction time reflects more congruence with one's implicit attitude. Electroencephalogram was recorded during the word identification test. Behaviorally, while individuals reacted faster to forgive-friend relative to complain-friend pairings, no such reaction bias was found for the stranger-wrongdoer, which suggests that individuals were more inclined to forgive someone close. Regarding the EEG/ERP results, forgive-friend elicited lower alpha oscillation and more negative frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) value than complain-friend combinations, suggesting increased and dominant activity in the right prefrontal network during forgiveness toward friends. Whereas complain- relative to forgive-stranger combinations elicited larger P3 amplitudes, suggesting a neural encoding bias to information associated with complaints about stranger-wrongdoer. These multimodal findings provide evidence for the benefits of closeness in forgiveness and shed light on the neural mechanisms underlying forgiveness toward different types of wrongdoers.

Effects of Target Variables on Interpersonal Distance Perception for Young Taiwanese during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected not only public health but also people's daily lives. Among various strategies to prevent infection, mask wearing and vaccination are considered to be the most effective methods; however, they may affect the comfortable interpersonal distance (IPD) for social interactions. In 2023, although the COVID-19 epidemic is considered to be similar to influenza, the public health sector of Taiwan still plans to give each person at least one dose per year, and even two does for special cases such as the elderly; and more than 90% of Taiwanese are still accustomed to wearing masks in public areas. Compared with mask wearing, studies examining the effects of vaccination on IPD are lacking. Therefore, an online survey was conducted in this study to collect the IPD data of 50 male and 50 female participants to elucidate the effects of mask wearing, vaccination, and target sex variables on IPD. The results showed that all variables significantly affected IPD (all p < 0.001). The effect of masks on IPD (49.1 cm) was slightly greater than that of vaccination (43.5 cm). The IPDs reported for wearing and not wearing masks were 145.7 and 194.8 cm, respectively, and those for vaccinated and unvaccinated were 148.5 and 192.0 cm, respectively. Regardless of participant sex, the IPDs for the female targets were significantly shorter than those for the male targets, which was consistent with the results of previous studies. Although mask wearing and vaccination are functionally different in nature, the findings indicate that the effects of both on IPD are nearly identical, jointly shortening IPD to approximately 93 cm. This implies that not only masks but also vaccination could lead to the shortening of IPD and may cause challenges in the prevention and control of COVID-19 transmission.

Interaction with Virtual Humans and Effect of Emotional Expressions: Anger Matters!

Today we are experiencing a hybrid real-virtual society in which the interaction with virtual humans is normal and "quasi-social". Understanding the way we react to the interaction with virtual agents and the impact of emotions on social dynamics in the virtual world is fundamental. Therefore, in this study we investigated the implicit effect of emotional information by adopting a perceptual discrimination task. Specifically, we devised a task that explicitly required perceptual discrimination of a target while involving distance regulation in the presence of happy, neutral, or angry virtual agents. In two Immersive Virtual Reality experiments, participants were instructed to discriminate a target on the virtual agents' t-shirts, and they had to provide the response by stopping the virtual agents (or themselves) at the distance where they could identify the target. Thus, facial expressions were completely irrelevant to the perceptual task. The results showed that the perceptual discrimination implied a longer response time when t-shirts were worn by angry rather than happy or neutral virtual agents. This suggests that angry faces interfered with the explicit perceptual task people had to perform. From a theoretical standpoint, this anger-superiority effect could reflect an ancestral fear/avoidance mechanism that prompts automatic defensive reactions and bypasses other cognitive processes.

Social rather than physical crowding reduces the required interpersonal distance in virtual environments.

Interpersonal distance plays an important role in human social interaction. With the increasing usage of virtual reality in social interaction, people's interpersonal distance in virtual space attracts great attention. It remains unclear whether and to what extent human-required interpersonal distance is altered by crowded virtual scenes. In this study, we manipulated crowd density in virtual environments and used the classical stop-distance paradigm to measure required interpersonal distances at different crowd densities. We found that people's required interpersonal distance decreased with increased social crowdedness but not with physical crowdedness. Moreover, the decrease of two types of interpersonal distance was associated with the globally averaged crowd density rather than local crowd density. The reduction is not due to the imitation of other virtual humans in the crowd. Moreover, we developed a model to describe the quantitative relationships between the crowdedness of the environment and the required interpersonal distance. Our finding provides insights into designing user-friendly virtual humans in metaverse virtual worlds.

Perceived Interpersonal Distances: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Young Taiwanese and Young Southeast Asians during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Prior research on interpersonal distance (IPD) has predominantly concentrated on specific nationalities or population groups within their respective regions. There is a dearth of studies investigating IPD differences among individuals of distinct nationalities coexisting in the same geographical location. This study aimed to examine the variances in IPD between 100 young Taiwanese participants (comprising 50 males and 50 females) and 100 Southeast Asian individuals (including 50 males and 50 females). This study also considered factors affecting IPD, including target genders and mask-wearing conditions. The results of the four-way ANOVA indicate that target gender and mask-wearing conditions had a significant impact on IPD (p < 0.001). While there were no significant main effects for region and participant gender, there was a noteworthy interactive effect between these two variables on IPD. In general, Southeast Asian participants exhibited lower sensitivity to changes in IPD in response to the independent variables in comparison to their Taiwanese counterparts; in certain instances, their IPD did not notably increase when confronted with targets not wearing masks. While prior research typically indicated that women tend to maintain larger IPD than men, the current study observed this gender difference only among young Taiwanese participants. However, such a gender gap was absent among young individuals from Southeast Asia.

Perceived Corona virus exposure as a function of interpersonal distance and time of a conversation.

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic people were asked to keep interpersonal distance, wash their hands and avoid gatherings of people. But, do people understand how much a change of the distance to a virus infected person means for the exposure to that person's virus? To answer this question, we studied how people perceive virus exposure from an infected person at different distances and lengths of a conversation. Method: An online questionnaire was distributed to 101 participants drawn from the general US population. Participants judged perceived virus exposure at different interpersonal distances to an infected person in a face to face conversation of different lengths of time. A model based on empirical and theoretical studies of dispersion of particles in the air was used to estimate a person's objective virus exposure during different times and distances from a virus source. The model and empirical data show that exposure changes with the square of the distance and linearly with time. Results: A majority (78%) of the participants underestimated the effects on virus exposure following a change of interpersonal distance. The dominating bias was assuming that exposure varies linearly with distance. To illustrate, an approach to a virus source from 6 to 2 feet was judged to give a 3 times higher exposure but, objectively it is 9 times. By way of contrast, perceptions of exposure as a function of the duration of a conversation were unbiased. The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV2 virus is likely to be followed by other pandemics also caused by airborne Corona or other viruses. Therefore, the results are important for administrators when designing risk communications to the general public and workers in the health care sector about social distancing and infection risks. Conclusions: People quite drastically underestimate the increase in virus exposure following an approach to a virus infected person. They also overestimate exposure after a move away from an infected person. For public health reasons, the correct function connecting distance with virus exposure should be communicated to the general public to avoid deliberate violations of recommended interpersonal distances. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s44155-022-00027-9.