Physiological Response to Facial Expressions in Peripersonal Space Determines Interpersonal Distance in a Social Interaction Context

Abstract

Accurate control of interpersonal distances in social contexts is an important determinant of effective social interactions. Although comfortable interpersonal distance seems to be dependent on social factors such as the gender, age and activity of the confederates, it also seems to be modulated by the way we represent our peripersonal-action space. To test this hypothesis, the present study investigated the relation between the emotional responses registered through electrodermal activity (EDA) triggered by human-like point-light displays (PLDs) carrying different facial expressions (neutral, angry, happy) when located in the participants peripersonal or extrapersonal space, and the comfort distance with the same PLDs when approaching and crossing the participants fronto-parallel axis on the right or left side. The results show an increase of the phasic EDA for PLDs with angry facial expressions located in the peripersonal space (reachability judgment task), in comparison to the same PLDs located in the extrapersonal space, which was not observed for PLDs with neutral or happy facial expressions. The results also show an increase of the comfort distance for PLDs approaching the participants with an angry facial expression (interpersonal comfort distance judgment task), in comparison to PLDs with happy and neutral ones, which was related to the increase of the physiological response. Overall, the findings indicate that comfort social space can be predicted from the emotional reaction triggered by a confederate when located within the observer’s peripersonal space. This suggests that peripersonal-action space and interpersonal-social space are similarly sensitive to the emotional valence of the confederate, which could reflect a common adaptive mechanism in specifying theses spaces to subtend interactions with both the physical and social environment, but also to ensure body protection from potential threats.

The shape of personal space

“…We do not know if observers perceive avatars -for their artificial nature -to be more or less gender-neutral, but so it seems when inspecting the data from our second experiment. Note that, Iachini et al (2014; found an interaction of subject gender and avatar gender but others did not (Cartaud, Ruggiero, Ott, Iachini, & Coello, 2018;Welsch et al, 2018). Thus, the specific rendering of the avatars in VEs may be crucial.…”

Sensori-motor adaptation to novel limb dynamics influences the representation of peripersonal space

“…Perception of peripersonal space was investigated through a widely used reachability judgment task (Grade et al, 2015;Bartolo et al, 2018;Cartaud et al, 2018). However, we slightly modified this perceptive task to match the direction of the force-field perturbation (Coriolis force applied orthogonally to the main direction of movement).…”

An Investigation Into Interpersonal and Peripersonal Spaces of Chinese People for Different Directions and Genders

“…The space surrounding individuals is an important area because it is where people interact with social stimuli in the external environment. Social psychology and neurocognitive research has focused on the space around our bodies, indicating that there is a particular relationship between the interpersonal social space (comfort distance) and peripersonal action space (reachability distance) (Iachini et al, 2015;Cartaud et al, 2018;D'Angelo et al, 2019;Spaccasassi et al, 2019). Interpersonal space (IPS) is defined by social psychology as a safety buffer zone that individuals maintain between themselves and others (Hall, 1966;Sommer, 1969;Hayduk, 1983).…”