Determinants of Nonstationary Personal Space Invasion

Summary The personal space of 116 pedestrians in midtown Manhattan was violated by a male or female experimenter. The subject population consisted of predominantly middle-class adults of all ages. Fifty-three percent of the subjects were male, and 27 percent were black. The experimenter walked toward a target subject in an unwavering straight line. Subjects and experimenters approached and passed each other in a section of the street where a measurement grid had been drawn on the sidewalk. Observers measured the point at which subjects initially deflected from the collision line, and the distance between subject and experimenter at the point at which they passed each other. The results indicated that males were given less frontal space than females (p < .01). About 40 percent of the trials resulted in mild brushes even though the line of vision between the experimenter and subject was always clear. The male experimenter was brushed more often than the female experimenter (p < .05). These results differ markedly from the findings of laboratory experiments.