The Definitive Book of Body Language (32 page)

This means that putting your arm, in a friendly way, around someone you've just met may result in that person feeling negative toward you, even though they may smile and appear to enjoy it in order not to offend you.

If you want people to feel comfortable around you, the golden rule is “keep your distance.” The more intimate our relationship is with other people, the closer they will permit us to move within their zones. For example, a new work employee may initially feel that the other staff members are cold toward him, but they are only keeping him in the Social Zone until they know him better. As he becomes better known to them, the distance between them decreases until eventually he is permitted to move within their Personal Zones and, in some cases, their Intimate Zones.

The distance that two people keep their hips apart when they embrace reveals clues about the relationship between them.
Lovers press their torsos against each other and move within each other's close Intimate Zones. This differs from the kiss received from a stranger on New Year's Eve, from your best friend's spouse, or dear old Aunt Sally, all of whom keep their pelvic area at least six inches away from yours.

One of the exceptions to the distance/intimacy rule occurs where the spatial distance is based on the person's social standing. For example, the CEO of a company may be the weekend fishing buddy of one of his subordinates and when they go fishing each may move within the other's Personal or Intimate Zone. At the office, however, the CEO keeps his fishing buddy at the social distance to maintain the unwritten code of social-strata rules.

Crowding at concerts, cinemas, in trains or buses results in unavoidable intrusion into other people's Intimate Zones, and people's reactions are fascinating to watch. There is a list of unwritten rules that most cultures follow rigidly when faced with a crowded situation such as a packed elevator, in a line at the sandwich shop, or on public transport.

Here are the common elevator-riding rules:

1. There will be no talking to anyone, including a person you know.
   

2. Avoid eye contact with others at all times.
   

3. Maintain a “poker face”—no emotion is permitted to be shown.
   

4. If you have a book or newspaper, pretend to be deeply engrossed in it.
   

5. In bigger crowds, no body movement is allowed.
   

6. You must watch the floor numbers change at all times.
   

This behavior is called “masking” and is common everywhere. It's simply each person's attempt to hide their emotions from others by wearing a neutral mask.

We often hear words such as “miserable,” “unhappy,” and “despondent” used to describe people who travel to work in the rush hour on public transport. These labels are used to describe the blank, expressionless look on the faces of the travelers, but are misjudgments on the part of the observer. What the observer sees, in fact, is a group of people masking—adhering to the rules that apply to the unavoidable invasion of their Intimate Zones in a crowded public place.

Notice how you behave next time you go alone to a crowded cinema. As you choose a seat that is surrounded by a sea of unknown faces, notice how, like a preprogrammed robot, you will begin to obey the unwritten rules of masking in a crowded public place. As you compete for territorial rights to the armrest with the stranger beside you, you will begin to realize why those who often go to a crowded cinema alone do not take their seats until the lights are out and the film begins. Whether we are in a crowded elevator, cinema, or bus, people around us become nonpersons—that is, they don't exist as far as we're concerned and so we don't respond as if we were being attacked if someone inadvertently encroaches on our territory.

An angry mob or group of protesters fighting for a mutual purpose does not react in the same way as an individual does when his territory is invaded; in fact, something very different occurs. As the density of the crowd increases, each individual has less personal space and starts to feel hostile, which is why, as the size of the mob increases, it becomes angrier and uglier and
fights may break out. The police try to break up the crowd so that each person can regain his own personal space and become calmer.

Only in recent years have governments and town planners begun to understand the effect that high-density housing projects have in depriving individuals of their personal territory. The consequences of high-density living and overcrowding were seen in a study of the deer population on James Island, an island about a mile off the coast of Maryland in Chesapeake Bay in the United States. Many of the deer were dying in large numbers, despite the fact that at the time there was plenty of food, predators were not evident, and infection was not present. Similar studies in earlier years with rats and rabbits revealed the same trend and further investigation showed that the deer had died as a result of overactive adrenal glands, resulting from the stress caused by the degradation of each deer's personal territory as the population increased. The adrenal glands play an important part in the regulation of growth, reproduction, and the level of the body's defenses. A physiological reaction to the stress of overpopulation had caused the deaths, not starvation, infection, or aggression from others. This is why areas that have the highest human population density also have the highest crime and violence rates.

Interrogators use territorial invasion techniques to break down the resistance of criminals being questioned. They seat the criminal on an armless, fixed chair in an open area of the room and encroach into his Intimate Zones when asking questions, remaining there until he answers. It often takes only a short while for this territorial harassment to break down the criminal's resistance.

When a person claims a space or an area among strangers, such as a seat at the cinema, a place at the conference table, or a towel hook at the health club, he does it in a predictable way. He usually looks for the widest space available between two others and claims the area in the center. At the cinema he will choose a seat that is halfway between the end of a row and where the nearest person is sitting. At the health club, he chooses the towel hook that is in the largest available space, midway between two other towels or midway between the nearest towel and the end of the towel rack. The purpose of this ritual is to avoid offending the other people by being either too close or too far away from them.

At the cinema, if you choose a seat more than halfway between the end of the row and the nearest other person, that other person may feel offended if you are too far away from him or he may feel intimidated if you sit too close. The main purpose of this spacing ritual is to maintain harmony and it appears to be a learned behavior.

An exception to this rule is the spacing that occurs in public toilet blocks. We found that people choose the end toilets about 90 percent of the time and, if they are occupied, the midway principle is used. Men always try to avoid standing beside strangers at a public urinal and always obey the unwritten law of “Death before eye contact.”

Try this simple test next time you eat with someone. Unspoken
territorial rules state that a restaurant table is divided equally down the middle and the staff carefully place the salt, pepper, sugar, flowers, and other accessories equally on the center line. As the meal progresses, subtly move the salt cellar across to the other person's side, then the pepper, flowers, and so on. Before long, this subtle territorial invasion will cause a reaction in your lunchmate. They either sit back to regain their space or start pushing everything back to the center.

A young Italian couple migrated from Italy to live in Sydney, Australia, and were invited to join a local social club. Several weeks after joining, three female members complained that the Italian man was making sexual advances toward them and that they felt uncomfortable around him. The male members of the club felt that the Italian woman had also been behaving as if she could be sexually available.

This situation illustrates the complications that can happen when cultures with different space needs come together. Many Southern Europeans have an intimate distance of only eight to eleven inches and in some places it's even less. The Italian couple felt at ease and relaxed when standing at a distance of ten inches from the Australians, but were totally unaware of their intrusion into the Australians' eighteen-inch Intimate Zone. Italian people also use more eye contact and touch than Australians, which gave rise to further misjudgments about their motives. The Italians were shocked when this was pointed out to them, but they resolved to practice standing back at a more culturally accepted distance.

Moving into the Intimate Zone of the opposite sex is a way of showing interest in that person and is commonly called an “advance.” If the advance into the Intimate Zone is rejected, the other person will step backward to reclaim their space. If the advance is accepted, the other person holds his ground and allows the intruder to remain. To measure a man's level of interest
in her, a woman will step into his Intimate Zone and then step back out again. If he's interested, this cues him to step into her space whenever he makes a point.

What seemed to the Italian couple to be a perfectly normal social encounter was being interpreted by the Australians as a sexual advance. The Italians thought the Australians were being cold and unfriendly because they kept moving away from the Italians to keep a comfortable distance.

The acceptable conversational distance for most Western, Northern European, and Scandinavian city dwellers

A man with a smaller spatial need forcing a woman to lean back to defend her space

The previous illustration shows the negative reaction of a woman on whose territory a man is encroaching. She leans backward, attempting to keep a comfortable distance. However, the man may be from a culture with a smaller Personal Zone and he is moving forward to a distance that is comfortable for him. The woman may interpret this as a sexual move.

At our international conferences, city-born Americans usually stand eighteen to forty-eight inches from each other and stand in the same place while talking. If you watch a Japanese and an American talking, the two will slowly begin to move around the room, the American moving backward away from the Japanese and the Japanese moving forward. This is an attempt by both the American and Japanese to adjust to a culturally comfortable distance from the other. The Japanese, with his smaller ten-inch Intimate Zone, continually steps forward to adjust to his spatial need, but this invades the American's Intimate Zone, forcing him to step backward to make his own spatial adjustment. Video recordings of this phenomenon replayed at high speed give the illusion that the two men are waltzing around the room, with the Japanese leading. This is one of the reasons why, when negotiating business, Asians and Europeans or Americans often look at each other with suspicion. The Europeans or Americans refer to the Asians as “pushy” and “familiar” and the Asians refer to the Europeans or Americans as “cold,” “standoffish,” and “cool.” This lack of awareness of Intimate Zone variations between cultures can easily lead to misconceptions and inaccurate assumptions about one culture by another.