1. Proxemics
Introduction:
Proxemics is what brings us together, today. The term ``proxemics'' was coined by researcher Edward
Hall during the 1950's and 1960's and has to do with the study of our use of space and how various
differences in that use can make us feel more relaxed or anxious.
physical territory, such as why desks face the front of a classroom rather than towards a center
isle, and
personal territory that we carry with us, the "bubble" of space that you keep between yourself
and the person ahead of you in a line.
Body:
Another important aspect of proxemics is the use of Personal territory. Let me briefly outline
the four areas of personal territory; public, social, personal, and intimate, that we Americans
intuitively respect and use.
Public space ranges from 12 to 25 feet and is the distance maintained between the audience and
a speaker such as the President.
Social space ranges from 4 to 10 feet and is used for communication among business
associates, as well as to separate strangers using public areas such as beaches and bus stops.
Personal space ranges from 2 to 4 feet and is used among friends and family members, and to
separate people waiting in lines at teller machines for example.
Finally, intimate space ranges out to one foot and involves a high probability of touching. We
reserve it for whispering and embracing.
Personal territories, however, can vary both culturally and ethnically.
Proxemics is the study of measurable distances between people as they interact. The term was
introduced by anthropologist Edward T. Hall in 1966. The effects of proxemics, according to Hall, can
be summarized by the following loose rule:
Like gravity, the influence of two bodies on each other is inversely proportional not only to the square
of their distance but possibly even the cube of the distance between them.
Body spacing and posture, according to Hall, are unintentional reactions to sensory fluctuations or
shifts, such as subtle changes in the sound and pitch of a person's voice. Social distance between
people is reliably correlated with physical distance, as are intimate and personal distance, according to
the following delineations:
Intimate distance for embracing, touching or whispering
o Close phase – less than 6 inches (15 cm)
o Far phase – 6 to 18 inches (15 to 46 cm)
Personal distance for interactions among good friends or family members
o Close phase – 1.5 to 2.5 feet (46 to 76 cm)
o Far phase – 2.5 to 4 feet (76 to 120 cm)
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2. Social distance for interactions among acquaintances
o Close phase – 4 to 7 feet (1.2 to 2.1 m)
o Far phase – 7 to 12 feet (2.1 to 3.7 m)
Public distance used for public speaking
o Close phase – 12 to 25 feet (3.7 to 7.6 m)
o Far phase – 25 feet (7.6 m) or more.
Hall notes that different cultures maintain different standards of personal space. In Latin cultures, for instance,
those relative distances are smaller, and people tend to be more comfortable standing close to each other; in
Nordic cultures the opposite is true. Realizing and recognizing these cultural differences improves cross-
cultural understanding, and helps eliminate discomfort people may feel if the interpersonal distance is too
large ("stand-offish") or too small (intrusive). Comfortable personal distances also depend on the culture,
social situation, gender, and individual preference.
Types of space
Proxemics defines three different types of space:
Fixed-feature space
This comprises things that are immobile, such as walls and territorial boundaries. However, some territorial
boundaries can vary (Low and Lawrence-Zúñiga point to the Bedouin of Syria as an example of this) and are
thus classified as semifixed-features.
Semifixed-feature space
This comprises movable objects, like mobile furniture, while fixed-furniture is a fixed-feature.
Informal space ; This comprises the individual space around the body, travels around with it, determining the
personal distance among people.
Proxemics also classifies spaces as either sociofugal or sociopetal (c.f. the sociofugal-sociopetal behaviour
category). The terms are analogous to the words "centrifugal" and "centripetal". Sociopetal spaces are spaces
that are conducive, by means of how they are organized, to interpersonal communcation, whereas sociofugal
spaces encourage solidarity.
Behaviour categories
Proxemics also defines eight factors in nonverbal communication, or proxemic behaviour categories, that
apply to people engaged in conversation:
Posture -gender identifiers ; This category relates the postures of the participants and their gender. Six
primary sub-categories are defined: man prone, man sitting or squatting, man standing, woman prone, woman
sitting or squatting, and woman standing.
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3. The sociopetal-sociofugal axis: This axis denotes the relationship between the positions of one person's
shoulders and another's shoulders. Nine primary orientations are defined: face-to-face, 45°, 90°, 135°, and
back-to-back. The effects of the several orientations are to either encourage or discourage communication.
Kinesthetic factors : This category deals with how closely the participants are to touching, from being
completely outside of body-contact distance to being in physical contact, which parts of the body are in
contact, and body part positioning.
Touching code : This behavioural category concerns how participants are touching one another, such as
caressing, holding, feeling, prolonged holding, spot touching, pressing against, accidental brushing, or not
touching at all.
Visual code : This category denotes the amount of eye contact between participants. Four sub-categories are
defined, ranging from eye-to-eye contact to no eye contact at all.
Thermal code : This category denotes the amount of body heat that each participant perceives from another.
Four sub-categories are defined: conducted heat detected, radiant heat detected, heat probably detected, and
no detection of heat.
Olfactory code : This category deals in the kind and degree of odour detected by each participant from the
other.
Voice loudness : This category deals in the vocal effort used in speech. Seven sub-categories are defined:
silent, very soft, soft, normal, normal+, loud, and very loud. .
Claustrophobia
The word "claustrophobia" is derived from two words, "Claustrum" (which means "A shut in place" in Latin)
and "Phobos" (which means "Fear" in Greek). Claustrophobia can be defined as "Abnormal, morbid, intense
and irrational fear of confined, closed or narrow spaces. Person suffering from claustrophobia panics when
inside places like elevator, small room, narrow lane, etc. The fear is focused on not being able to escape or not
having enough oxygen to breath. Around 5 percent of the world population suffer from this anxiety disorder.
Causes of claustrophobia
Experts have not been able to arrive at exact factors which cause claustrophobia. It is generally believed that
claustrophobia may be caused by a traumatic experience involving confined spaces (like getting trapped in a
closet). When the person encounters similar situations after this experience, they often trigger panic attacks.
This is because a program would be formed in the brain which would have associated enclosed space with
anxiety. As a result of this program, the person becomes claustrophobic.
Symptoms of claustrophobia:
When a person affected by claustrophobia finds himself/herself in an enclosed space, he/she may display
some of the following symptoms:
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4. -Increased heartbeat (palpitations).
-Shaking.
-Light headedness.
-Dry mouth.
-Breathlessness or sometimes hyperventilation (breathing faster and / or deeper than normal.
-Excessive sweating.
-Inability to think clearly.
-Unclear speech.
-Fainting.
-Nausea.
-Fear of imminent physical harm.
These symptoms vary in degree in different persons affected by claustrophobia.
Treatment of claustrophobia
There is no one treatment for claustrophobia. Doctors generally use a combination of medication (anti -
depressants, beta - blockers, etc), exposure therapy (flooding, counter - conditioning), regression
hypnotherapy and behavior therapy.
There have been cases where claustrophobia has been cured. If you or any one you know are displaying
symptoms of claustrophobia, it is very important that you take assistance of a mental health expert as soon as
possible. Ignoring this anxiety disorder can cause further complications.
Environmental conditions, specifically physical density and crowding, may affect several key dimensions of
retail shopping behavior. Exploratory research indicates that these forces are a salient force in the retail
setting.
An emerging interdisciplinary field of inquiry, environmental psychology, has evolved which focuses on the
relationship between the physical environment and human behavior. While in an early stage of development,
the presence and importance of influences emanating from the environment of human behavior have been
established in a number of diverse empirical studies. Clearly, environmental influences are worthy of more
thorough investigation in the study of buyer behavior. The central purpose of this paper is to outline a
paradigm of buyer behavior and one environmental condition, crowding.
While the effects of crowding have been empirically examined by a number of researchers, exploration of the
concept in the marketing setting is absent from the literature. Important trends in marketing point up the need
for inquiry into the area. First, scrambled merchandising, regional shopping centers and, more recently, the
super store, all require heavy concentrations of shoppers. Second, because of the growing number of working
wives, available shopping hours have been cut, thus placing a heavier burden on peak shopping times, e.g.,
Saturdays.
When is a store "crowded"? A manager and a consumer may respond differently to this query. Stokols (1972)
identifes two components of crowding: (1) a physical condition, and (2) an experiential state. The physical
condition, density, involves the restriction of movement imposed by limited space, while the experiential
state, crowding, encompasses the individual's perception of the restrictive aspects of limited space. The
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5. challenge for the manager is to increase density without triggering the experiential state of crowding among
shoppers.
FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF CROWDING
Psychological or perceived crowding is a function of several environmental and individual variables in
addition to the apparent lack of space. The more salient research findings suggest that crowding is a function
of the situation including the difficulty of the task (Stokols, 1972); the amount of interpersonal stimulation
and interaction (Desor, 1970) (Zlutnick and Altman, 1972); the individual's personal characteristics such as
aggressiveness (Stokols, et al., 1973); and the individual's previous experience and expectations in the
situation (Zlutnick and Altman, 1972). Moreover, the presence of these conditions results in information
overload, confusion, and frustrated goal seeking (Proshansky, et al., 1972). In turn, coping or adaptation
strategies are evoked and behavior is altered.
Situational Determinants of Crowding
The obvious situational determinant of crowding is the presence of a high density of people per unit of space.
Animal studies confirmed the deleterious effects of high density on behavioral patterns and population
growth. For example, Calhoun (1962) reported abnormal social patterns and drastically reduced birth rates
with rats confined in high density experiments. Christian, Flyger, and Davis (1960) studied deer on a naturally
confined island and reported similar findings. Generally, human studies have shown that density alone may
not produce aberrant human behavior in the experimental setting. Freedman, et al. (1971), found few
experimental effects on task behavior by variations in experimental room size.
Since man is a cognizing and goal-directed organism dependent on interactions and exchanges in his
environment, crowding occurs only when space restrictions confine goal directed behavior (Proshansky, et al.,
1972). For example, high density may actually facilitate goal achievement at a social function. The "richness
of environmental resources" (Zlutnick and Altman, 1972, p. 51) is definitely a factor. However, in a
supermarket, high density may impede mobility and decrease shopping efficiency. The degree to which time
effectiveness is altered becomes important to the shopper.
Interpersonal Stimulation and Interaction
Desor (1972, p. 79) has stressed the interpersonal de-determinants of crowding by defining "being crowded"
as "receiving excessive stimulation from social sources." Obviously, the amount of total stimulation from both
the physical and the social environment affect the individual's perception of a situation. For example, the
Zlutnick and Altman (1972, p. 52) add another important social determinant of crowding. They point out that
a feeling of crowding relates to "people's ability and inability to control their interaction with others."
Crowding becomes most pronounced when interference occurs. Restricted or redirected movement due to the
presence of other individuals would enhance a crowded feeling. At the same time, high density situations
which allow maximum freedom of movement produce less psychological crowding. Conditions of control and
movement have not been empirically studied in enough detail to specify the exact relationship to crowding.
Individual Characteristics
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6. Research indicates that individual characteristics have an effect on the degree to which a particular
environment is perceived as being crowded. Stokols, et al. (1973) found that aggressiveness and anxiety
influenced crowding when subjects were engaged in a competitive game. Few additional probes have been
made into the significance of personality traits to psychological crowding. Clearly, further research is needed.
Individual's Previous Experience
The psychological makeup of any individual is largely determined by previous learning. Crowding is a
relative concept--environments are more or less crowded and the anchors for judgment can be somewhat
elusive. The Japanese, who are accustomed to extremely high population density, perceive crowding
differently than the rural American. In buying behavior it is important to determine the circumstances under
which crowding is experienced by the shopper. The environment most certainly has a normative property,
although no particular measure for it exists. When the norm is violated, adaptation or coping strategies
become operative. By developing an understanding of these strategies the marketer could become more
responsive to the needs of the consumer. The obvious alternative to crowding for the consumer is to leave the
crowded store and never return. However, there are tradeoffs. To illustrate, convenience of location, price
considerations, and merchandising variety may more than compensate for the crowded condition. In fact, the
manager attempts to obtain high density by offering a large number of buyers a package of rewards which
exceed the costs of the shopping task.
Environmental psychology addresses environmental problems such as density and crowding, noise pollution,
sub-standard living, and urban decay. Noise increases environmental stress. Although it has been found that
control and predictability are the greatest factors in stressful effects of noise; context, pitch, source and
habituation are also important variables. Environmental psychologists have theorized that density and
crowding can also have an adverse effect on mood and may cause stress-related illness. To understand and
solve environmental problems, environmental psychologists believe concepts and principles should come
directly from the physical settings and problems being looked at. For example, factors that reduce feelings of
crowding within buildings include:
Windows - particularly ones that can be opened and ones that provide a view as well as light
High ceilings
Doors to divide spaces (Baum and Davies) and provide access control
Room shape - square rooms feel less crowded than rectangular ones (Dresor)
Using partitions to create smaller, personalized spaces within an open plan office or larger work
space.
Providing increases in cognitive control over aspects of the internal environment, such as
ventilation, light, privacy, etc.
Conducting a cognitive appraisal of an environment and feelings of crowding in different settings.
For example, one might be comfortable with crowding at a concert but not in school corridors.
Creating a defensible space (Calhoun)
Personal space and territory
Having an area of personal territory in a public space, e.g. at the office, is a key feature of many
architectural designs. Having such a 'defensible space' can reduce the negative effects of crowding in
urban environments..
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7. Creating barriers and customizing the space are ways of creating personal space, e.g. using pictures of
one's family in an office setting. This increases cognitive control as one sees oneself as having control
over the competitors to the personal space and therefore able to control the level of density and
crowding in the space.
Systems oriented
The systems oriented approach to experimenting is applied to individuals or people that are a part of
communities, groups, and organizations. This approach particularly examines group interaction, as
opposed to an individual‘s interaction and it emphasizes on factors of social integration. In the
laboratory, experiments focus on cause and effect processes within human nature.[11]
Interdisciplinary oriented
Environmental psychology relies on interaction with other disciplines in order to approach problems
with multiple perspectives. The first discipline is the category of behavioral sciences, which include:
sociology, political science, anthropology, and economics. Environmental psychology also interacts
with the interspecializations of the field of psychology, which include: developmental psychology,
cognitive science, organization theory, psychobiology, and social neuroscience. In addition to the
more scientific fields of study, environmental psychology also works with the design field which
includes: the studies of architecture, interior design, urban planning, industrial and object design,
landscape architecture, and preservation.[12]
Space-over-time orientation
Space over time orientation highlights the importance of the past. Examining problems with the past in
mind creates a better understanding of how past forces, such as social, political, and economic forces,
may be of relevance to present and future problems.[13] Time and place are also important to consider.
It‘s important to look at time over extended periods. Physical settings change over time; they change
with respect to physical properties and they change because individuals using the space change over
time.[14] Looking at these spaces over time will help monitor the changes and possibly predict future
problems.
There are a variety of tests that can be administered to children in order to determine their
temperament. Temperament is split up into three types: ―easy‖, ―difficult‖, and ―slow-to-warm-up‖.
Alexander Thomas, Stella Chess, Herbert G. Birch, Margaret Hertzig and Sam Korn created an infant
temperament test in the 1950s and rated them using nine temperament criteria.[15] By finding out a
child‘s temperament at birth, it enables us to know what to expect as the child progresses into
adulthood.
Concepts
Place identity
As a person interacts with various places and spaces, he/she is able to evaluate which properties in
different environments fulfill his/her various needs. When a place contains components that satisfy a
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8. person biologically, socially, psychologically and/or culturally, it creates the environmental past of a
person. Through ‗good‘ or ‗bad‘ experiences with a place, a person is then able to reflect and define
their personal values, attitudes, feelings and beliefs about the physical world.
Place identity has been described as the individual's incorporation of place into the larger concept of
self; a "potpourri of memories, conceptions, interpretations, ideas, and related feelings about specific
physical settings, as well as types of settings".[17] Other theorists have been instrumental in the creation
of the idea of place identity. Three humanistic geographers, Tuan (1980), Relph (1976) and Buttimer
(1980), share a couple of basic assumptions. As a person lives and creates memories within a place,
attachment is built and it is through one‘s personal connection to a place, that he/she gains a sense of
belonging and purpose, which then gives significance and meaning to their life. Five central functions
of place-identity have been depicted: recognition, meaning, expressive-requirement, mediating change,
and anxiety and defense function. Place identity becomes a cognitive "database" against which every
physical setting is experienced.[18] The activities of a person often overlap with physical settings,
which then create a background for the rest of life‘s interactions and events. The individual is
frequently unaware of the array of feelings, values or memories of a singular place and simply
becomes more comfortable or uncomfortable with certain broad kinds of physical settings, or prefers
specific spaces to others. In the time since the term "place identity" was introduced, the theory has
been the model for identity that has dominated environmental psychology.
Place attachment
Place attachment, is defined as one‘s emotional or affective ties to a place, and is generally thought to
be the result of a long-term connection with a certain environment.[23] This is different from a simple
aesthetic response such as saying a certain place is special because it is beautiful. For example, one
can have an emotional response to a beautiful (or ugly) landscape or place, but this response may
sometimes be shallow and fleeting. This distinction is one that Schroeder (1991) labeled ―meaning
versus preference‖.
Place attachment happens to many people of all ages and seems to occur after a person remains in a
place for a certain amount of time and becomes accustomed to all the things around them. There are
many ways to characterize a person who has place attachment. Some of these things are easy to
recognize, while others are not. Like every disorder, it is a combined involvement of certain
characteristics. The number of characteristics possessed and the degree to which these characteristics
are present will determine the extent to which an individual has this problem.
Environmental consciousness
Leanne Rivlin theorized that one way to examine an individual‘s environmental consciousness is to
recognize how the physical place is significant, and look at the people/place relationship.
Environmental cognition (involved in human cognition) plays a crucial role in environmental
perception. Environmental judgment is made by the orbitofrontal cortex in the brain.[26] Because of the
recent concern with the environment environmental consciousness or awareness has come to be related
to the growth and development of understanding and consciousness toward the biophysical
environment and its problems.
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9. Impact on the built environment
Environmental psychologists rejected the laboratory-experimental paradigm because it of its
simplification and skewed view of the cause-and-effect relationships of human's behaviors and
experiences. Environmental psychologists examine how one or more parameters produce an effect
while other measures are controlled. It is impossible to manipulate real-world settings in a laboratory.
(Proshansky, 1987)
Environmental psychology is oriented towards influencing the work of design professionals
(architects, engineers, interior designers, urban planners, etc.) and thereby improving the human
environment.
On a civic scale, efforts towards improving pedestrian landscapes have paid off, to some extent,from
the involvement of figures like Jane Jacobs and Copenhagen's Jan Gehl. One prime figure here is the
late writer and researcher William H. Whyte. His still-refreshing and perceptive "City", based on his
accumulated observations of skilled Manhattan pedestrians, provides steps and patterns of use in urban
plazas.
The role and impact of architecture on human behavior is debated within the architectural profession.
Views range from: supposing that people will adapt to new architectures and city forms; believing that
architects cannot predict the impact of buildings on humans and therefore should base decisions on
other factors; to those who undertake detailed precedent studies of local building types and how they
are used by that society.
Social distance
We like to keep our distance from others and there are very specific social rules about how close
we can go to others in particular situations.
This social distance is also known as body space and comfort zone and the use of this space is called
proxemics.
Why the distance?
Regulating the distances between us and other people provides us with several benefits, including:
Safety: When people are distant, they can't surprise attack us.
Communication: When people are closer, it is easier to communicate with them.
Affection: When they are closer still, we can be intimate.
Threat: The reverse can be used - you may deliberately threaten a person by invading their
body space.
Social distances
The social distances here are approximate, of course and will vary with people. But they are still a
good general rule. Hall (1966) identified four zones that are common for Americans:
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10. Public Zone : > 12 feet (3m)
The public zone is generally over 12 feet. That is, when we are walking around town, we will try to
keep at least 12 feet between us and other people. For example, we will leave that space between us
and the people walking in front.
Of course there are many times when we cannot do this. What the theory of social distance tells us is
that we will start to notice other people who are within this radius. The closer they get, the more we
become aware and ready ourselves for appropriate action.
When we are distant from another person, we feel a degree of safety from them. A person at a
distance cannot attack us suddenly. If they do seem to threaten, we will have time to dodge, run or
prepare for battle.
Social Zone : 4 - 12 feet (1.5m - 3m)
Within the social zone, we start to feel a connection with other people. When they are closer, then
we can talk with them without having to shout, but still keep them at a safe distance.
This is a comfortable distance for people who are standing in a group but maybe not talking directly
with one another. People sitting in chairs or gathered in a room will tend to like this distance.
Personal Zone : 1.5-4 feet (0.5m - 1.5m)
In the personal zone, the conversation gets more direct, and this is a good distance for two people
who are talking in earnest about something.
Intimate Zone < 1.5 feet (< 0.5m)
When a person is within arms reach or closer, then we can touch them in intimate ways. We can also
see more detail of their body language and look them in they eyes. When they are closer, they also
blot out other people so all we can see is them (and vice versa). Romance of all kinds happens in this
space.
Entering the intimate zone of somebody else can be very threatening. This is sometimes done as a
deliberate ploy to give a non-verbal signal that they are powerful enough to invade your territory at
will.
Varying rules
The rules about social distance vary with different groups of people. You can detect this by watching
people's reactions. If you feel safe and they seem not to feel safe, back off. If they invade your space,
decide whether to invade back or act otherwise. Turning sideways is an easy alternative for this, as a
person to the side is less threatening than a person at the same distance in front of you.
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11. Town and country
People who live in towns spend more time close to one another and so their social distances may
compact somewhat. In a large and crowded city, the distances will be less than in a small town.
People who normally live a long way from others will expand their social distances and may even
have to lean over towards another person to shake hands and then back off to a safe distance.
Different countries
Different countries also have different rules about social distances. The overcrowded nature of some
Asian countries means that they are accustomed to talking to others from a very close distance.
Watch a Japanese person talking at a party with a person from the Western countryside. The
Japanese will step in and the Westerner will step back. Speeded up it is like a dance around the
room.
Interpersonal Distance
People surround themselves with a "bubble" of personal space that they claim as their own, and they
tend to become stressed when other people invade their "bubble." Our personal space protects us
from too much arousal and helps us feel comfortable when we communicate with other people. Hall
(1966) called the study of interpersonal distance proxemics. From observing Americans, Hall
concluded that four interpersonal distances were important in our social interactions: intimate,
personal, social, and public. Intimate distance is from 0 to 1.5 feet. What can be done at this close
range? Vision is minimal, and we rely on our senses of smell and touch. Making love or comforting
someone are intimate activities, usually restricted to private encounters, which can be performed
comfortably at intimate distances. We tend not to get this close to people we are not intimate with,
and usually try to escape if we do. Personal distance is from about 1.5 feet to around 4 feet. At this
distance, touch is minimal (except perhaps when shaking hands), and vision and hearing become
important. This is the distance we use to interact with friends. Within this range, normal
conversations can take place easily. We might allow strangers into the outer limits, but reserve the
inner limits strictly for friends. Social distance extends from approximately 4 to 12 feet, and includes
the space required for more formal social interactions. Hearing and vision are the primary senses
involved. The social distance is often utilized in business, for example, in interviewing new
applicants for employment or negotiating for a raise. Public distance includes distances greater than
12 feet. Hall suggested that after 25 feet, interpersonal interaction is not possible. At this distance
there is little detail involved in communication. A public speaker (actor or politician) communicates
only one way with an audience. Research suggests that we feel uncomfortable when we are too close
or too distant from another person (Scott, 1984). How do we learn appropriate social distances?
Baxter (1970) suggested that we imitate others in our culture. He reported differences in three
cultures in interpersonal spacing, with Mexicans moving closest, White Americans next, and African
Americans staying farthest apart. Sex differences have been reported in personal spacing, as well,
with women usually feeling more comfortable at closer distances than men (Ashton & colleagues,
1980). Still other research suggests that interpersonal distance is influenced by social relationships.
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12. Women prefer more distance between themselves and an opposite-sex stranger than do men. Ashton
and colleagues found that when they asked pairs of friends and strangers to stand at various distances
from each other, both men and women felt more comfortable when an opposite-sex friend stood
close (about 1@fr{1/2} feet) than when a stranger of either sex stood at that distance. In general,
women tend to stand closer when talking with friends than do men. Understanding these sex
differences can help us behave appropriately in social situations with both men and women.
Human behavior refers to the range of behaviors exhibited by humans and which are influenced by
culture, attitudes, emotions, values, ethics, authority, rapport, hypnosis, persuasion, coercion and/or
genetics.
The behavior of people (and other organisms or even mechanisms) falls within a range[disambiguation
needed ]
with some behavior being common, some unusual, some acceptable, and some outside
acceptable limits. In sociology, behavior in general is considered as having no meaning, being not
directed at other people, and thus is the most basic human action. Behavior in this general sense should
not be mistaken with social behavior, which is a more advanced action, as social behavior is behavior
specifically directed at other people. The acceptability of behavior is evaluated relative to social norms
and regulated by various means of social control.
The behavior of people is studied by the academic disciplines of psychiatry, psychology, social work,
sociology, economics, and anthropology.
Factors affecting human behavior and actions
Genetics (see also evolutionary psychology) – affects and governs the individual's tendencies
toward certain directions.
Attitude – the degree to which the person has a favorable or unfavorable evaluation of the
behavior in question.
Social norms – the influence of social pressure that is perceived by the individual (normative
beliefs) to perform or not perform a certain behavior.
Perceived behavioral control – the individual's belief concerning how easy or difficult performing
the behavior will be.
Core faith – The person's set of beliefs, like religion, philosophy, etc. Provided, sometimes
subconsciously, by his or her family, peers, social media, and the society where he or she lives.
Survivor instinct - engaging in certain behaviors may abate fear and become habitual, as in
addiction.
Genetics affect one's tendencies to make choices based on their core beliefs[clarification needed] and
attitudes.
Social Norms
Social norms grow out of social value and both serve to differentiate human social behavior from that
of other species. The significance of learning in behavior varies from species to species and is closely
linked to processes of communication. Only human beings are capable of elaborate symbolic
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13. communication and of structuring their behavior in terms of abstract preferences that we have called
values. Norms are the means through which values are expressed in behavior.
Norms generally are the rules and regulations that groups live by. Or perhaps because the words, rules
and regulations, call to mind some kind of formal listing, we might refer to norms as the standards of
behavior of a group. For while some of the appropriate standards of behavior in most societies are
written down, many of them are not that formal. Many are learned, informally, in interaction with
other people and are passed "that way from generation to generation.
The term "norms" covers an exceedingly wide range of behaviour. So that the whole range of that
behaviour may be included. Sociologists have offered the following definition. Social norms are rules
developed by a group of people that specify how people must, should, may, should not, and must not
behave in various situations.
Some norms are defined by individual and societies as crucial to the society. For example, all
members of the group are required to wear clothing and to bury their dead. Such "musts" are often
labeled "mores", a term coined by the American sociologist William Graham Sumner.
Many social norms are concerned with "should "; that is, there is some pressure on the individual to
conform but there is some leeway permitted also. The 'should behaviors' are what Sumner called "folk-
ways"; that is, conventional ways of doing things that are not defined as crucial to the survival of
either the individual or the society. The 'should behaviors' in our own society include the prescriptions
that people's clothes should be clean, and that death should be recognized with public funerals. A
complete list of the should behaviors in a complex society would be virtually without end.
Social norms cover almost every conceivable situation, and they vary from standards where almost
complete conformity is demanded to those where there is great freedom of choice. Norms also vary in
the kinds of sanctions that are attached to violation of the norms. Since norms derive from values, and
since complex societies have multiple and conflicting value systems, it follows that norms frequently
are in conflict also.
Normative conflict is also deeply involved in social change. As statistical norms come to differ too
blatantly from existing prescriptive norms, new prescriptive norms give sanction to formerly
prohibited behaviour and even extend it. Recent changes in the sex norms of teenage and young adult
groups provide examples. The change is more apparent in communal living groups where sometimes
there is an explicit ideology of sexual freedom and the assumption that sexual activities will be shared
with all members of the group. In less dramatic fashion, the change is evident among couples who
simply begin to live together without the formality of a marriage ceremony.
Sociological Human Need
People's perception of their environment influences their social interaction within that environment.
Social interaction can be discussed in terms of four concepts: privacy, personal interaction levels,
territoriality, and crowding.
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14. Privacy is a central regulatory human process by which persons make themselves more or less
accessible to others. In an office environment, privacy may be manipulated through the use of
partitions which protect the individual from physical, visual and acoustical intrusion. The plan of an
office environment establishes the privacy level at which the office functions. Definition of an
individual's interaction levels is one mechanism used in achieving a desired level of privacy. Besides
needing enough space to move about and perform various tasks, each person moves within a domain
that expands and contracts to meet individual needs and social circumstances. The size of a space
determines perceptions, experiences, and uses of that particular environment. People inherently
discern their relationship with others in terms of distances, or spaces, between them. Edward T. Hall
defines four distinct distances at which interpersonal transactions normally take place. These are
categorized as intimate, personal, social, and public:
· Intimate space is that area immediately surrounding the individual‘s body. This area is the most
private and involves both physical and emotional interactions.
· Personal space is that area within which a person allows only select friends, or fellow workers with
whom personal conversation is mandatory.
· Social space is that area within which the individual expects to make purely social contacts on a
temporary basis.
· Public space is that area within which the individual does not expect to have direct contact with
others.
The more intimate the spatial relationship, the more people resist intrusion by others. Personal space
factors are important in establishing privacy requirements for interior design.
Territoriality is a means of achieving a desired level of privacy. It involves the exclusive control of a
space by an individual or group. This control implies privileges and may involve aggressive actions in
its defense. For the individual, territorial control provides security and identity and is communicated
through personalization and definition.
Crowding occurs when personal space and territoriality mechanisms function ineffectively, resulting
in an excess of undesired external social contact. Sociologically, people respond to crowding in
different ways depending upon the situation. Sometimes humans tolerate crowding, though it may be
unpleasant, because they know it is only temporary. In some situations crowding may be considered
desirable, it may even be sought after if it is perceived as "part of the fun" or the expectation within a
social setting. In either situation, however, psychological discomfort may be experienced if the
crowding is perceived as too confining.
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15. Levels of space: intimate, personal, social, and public.
Human Response to the Interior Environment
Each person responds uniquely when confronted with a specific situation or experience. These
responses fall into three categories—sociological, psychological and physiological—all of which are
influenced by factors within the interior environment. Sociological determinants relate to the social
needs and problems of the occupants. Factors that pertain to these sociological responses, including
group dynamics and communication, should be considered during planning. Group dynamics (the
interpersonal relationships among members of a small group) are a result of the personality and
cultural backgrounds of the individuals involved, their task, and the nature of the physical setting.
Spatial arrangements in small groups are functions of environment, task, and personality. Various
cultures respond differently to the amount and arrangement of space. In determining the physical
arrangement of an interior space, the interaction distances between work groups and the tasks to be
performed are very important to successful communication and social relationships.
The scale of a room—it's size relative to the occupants— also influences conversational distance. As
room scale diminishes, people tend to sit closer together. Likewise, increased noise levels and
distractions drive people to sit closer together.
Psychological determinants in the planning of an interior environment relate to the psychological
needs and concerns of the occupants. Visual privacy, acoustic privacy, and aesthetic factors are key
determinants to be considered.
Visual privacy addresses the ability to limit other's view of oneself. Inherent in human behavior is the
tendency to avoid situations in which one can be watched without being aware of who is watching.
Visual privacy can be achieved through the use of furnishings, partitions or walls. In a private space or
an office, people will often orient their desk in order to visually control the doorway and achieve a
visually private space on one side of the desk.
Similarly, people prefer to sit with a protected back, controlling the area they cannot see directly. In
restaurants, the first seats to be filled are usually those along the walls. In outdoor spaces, people
tend to sit against or beside objects such as trees and bushes rather than in the open.
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16. Acoustic privacy in an interior space results from effective treatment of the acoustic environment as an
interrelationship of many components: ceiling, partitions, furniture, equipment, and floor. A complete
acoustic system will generally provide adequate speech privacy. Speech privacy is achieved when
there is sufficient acoustic shielding to allow conversation to be unheard beyond the participants of the
conversation.
Visual control is a key to visual privacy
A high quality of speech privacy will contribute significantly to a desirable level of communication,
social interaction, and productivity. An appropriate relationship between background noise and that
produced within the activity space is conducive to speech privacy.
Aesthetic appreciation is both expressed in and influenced by the environment. To define aesthetic
qualities, the designer needs to understand that the concept of beauty differs with time and place,
purpose and context.
Values captured under the label "aesthetic" can best be understood at a universally comprehensible
level. These aspects of a design go beyond the functional and constructional concerns, and are
associated with the specific way the design presents itself to the human senses. The designer uses an
object to serve some need or want. When we look at an object, its physical appearancecauses a sensory
experience in us above and beyond its mere utility. The designer‘s appreciation of this experience
helps him to communicate his intent and understanding to the user.
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17. Physiological determinants relate to physical needs of the occupants. Factors to be considered during
the planning phase that deal with physiological responses include functionality, ergonomics, life
safety, and health concerns.
Functional efficiency relates to the degree to which physiological needs are supported in the interior
space plan. These needs, which are physical in nature, relate to human body requirements. Interior
environments must respond to basic human functional needs—vision, hearing, stability, and
mobility—to achieve both comfort and efficiency.
· Proper illumination for each task.
· A suitable acoustic environment that allows ease of communication, limited intrusive noise (and
resultant distraction), and protection from ear damage where appropriate.
· Human/facility interface features designed to be used within human mobility and strength limits.
(Special attention should be given to the removal of accessibility barriers for the handicapped worker.)
· Physical features of the facility that are compatible with typical human expectations and
comprehension.
· A plan that conserves human energy.
· An environment that allows workers to function within their most productive range of motion.
Flexible Working Conditions
A recent review by the Cochrane Collaboration has found that flexible working arrangements, such as
flextime and telecommuting can have positive effects on health, but the effects are primarily seen
when employees have some control over their new schedules.[1] Additionally, individuals who
telecommute to work most of the work week are more satisfied with their jobs than are traditional
employees who commute into a physical office location.[2]
Diversity in the Workplace
Gender and racial diversity in the workplace actually increases sales revenue, brings more customers,
results in greater market share, and greater relative profits.[3] Despite this fact, racial and ethnic
minorities and women are still under-represented in management in U.S. corporations.[4] The figure
below illustrates their under-representation:
Job Insecurity
Job insecurity has a deleterious effect on social capital and social involvement of workers.[5]
Individuals who have experienced an involuntary job loss (through layoff, downsizing, etc.), are 35#
less likely to be involved in their communities than are individuals who have never experienced an
involuntary job loss.
Personality, Perception, and Attribution
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18. Individual Differences and Organizational Behavior
Social Perception
Perception is used every day. Perception is how we, as individuals, asses situations. A burning stove
top is perceived to be hot. Traffic is perceived to be speeding up or slowing down. People are
perceived to be friendly or threatening. Yet when it comes to perceiving people, there are many more
perceptions that are made. These social settings and environments are what make up social perception.
The same settings can be applied to a smaller scale. This scale can be school, family, or the work
force. The work setting can be one of many challenging social perceptions. From the job interview, to
leaving the company, and everything in between, employers are evaluating their employee‘s job
performances, and employees are not only assessing one another, but their employer as well.
First impressions can be slowly swayed over time. It is not easy to change someone‘s first impression,
nor is it ever changed much. The anchor can only be pulled in one direction or another so far, and after
much effort, in this case continuous interactions. Familiarity is the only way to obtain the truest sense
of who a person really is. By learning the personality and tendencies of a person, one can better
understand that person‘s behaviors and actions.
Personality
Each individual has their own unique personality. This personality can show how a person behaves
and reacts to certain situations. There are many different factors to consider when determining
personality, like environment settings and heredity traits. A person‘s personality can also have an
effect on self-esteem, which is an individual‘s general feeling of self-worth, as well as self-monitoring,
the ability to base behavior on social cues. Different theories are used today to help measure a person‘s
Communication
Every day, we use communication to express our thoughts and feelings. There are many different
types and styles of communication. From verbal to nonverbal communication and from face-to-face to
electronic, every word said and move made is communicating different emotions and ideas to those
around us.
Ethical Behavior
First, ethics is the concept of having moral values and behaviors. Ethical behavior is conducting ones
self in a way that is common with a certain set of values whether personal or institutional. Businesses
are dependent on their reputations, so when a company withholds strong ethical values it brings
positive results. One effect of ethical behavior is the retention and attraction of employees. Employee
turnover tends to be lower as well as an increase in applicants resulting in higher qualified employees.
Unethical behavior can hurt a company, so through technology businesses are able to monitor Internet
content.
Stress
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19. Stress does not have an exact meaning. There are many different ways to look at it. Stress or the
response to stress is defined as,‖ the unconscious preparation to the flight or fight that a person
experiences when faced with any demand‖ (Peterson 1995). The demand on your body is known as the
stressor. Once the stressor is applied there are many reactions, psychologically, physically,
behaviorally, and organizationally.
The Four Approaches to Stress
Homeostatic (also known as the medical approach) was researched by Walter B. Cannon. He
determined that our bodies have an emergency response, the flight or fight. He found that when
aroused, the body goes out of homeostasis, the balanced state.
Cognitive Richard Lazarus emphasized that stress was caused by the environment that the person is in
rather than the body itself. He found that people differ greatly in that respect.
Person Environment Fit approach-Robert Kahn focused on how expectations in a person‘s life and
their conflicting roles. The person becomes stressed when they aren‘t able to meet the demands.
Psychoanalytic Harry Levinson took that Freudian approach. He believed that there were two parts
being: #1 Ego-ideal, how they feel about their perfect self. #2 Self image, how they feel about
themselves in respect to their perfect self. If there is any wrong thinking then there is stress because
they feel that they cannot obtain that.
Work Stress
Work stress is caused by demands and pressure from inside and outside the workplace.
Basic Design Dimensions
There are six basic design dimensions of an organization. These are a way to establish a level of
structural dimension from high to low and also develop a form of structure that is desired. One of these
six basic designs is formalization. This is basically an employee‘s role that is written down, such as a
job description. Second of these six basic designs is centralization. Centralization is a form decision-
making through out an organization. Third of these six basic designs is specialization. Meaning, when
tasks are turned into separate jobs making job titles spell out the job description. Forth of these six
basic designs is Standardization. When this is used, a job is the same thing everyday with little change.
Fifth of these six basic designs is Complexity. This happens when there are multiple activities going
on within the organization and the job force is more complex. Lastly, the sixth basic design is
hierarchy of authority. Hierarchy of authority are the different levels of management throughout an
organization.
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20. Five Structural Configurations
Organizational Structures are classified into 5 categories that were proposed by Mintzberg. The 5
Structural configurations proposed by Mintzberg are: Simple Structure- centralized form of
organization that emphasizes the upper echelon and direct supervision. Most small business is run this
way. Machine Bureaucracy – a form of organization that emphasizes the technical staff and
standardization of work processes. Professional Bureaucracy- decentralized form of organization that
emphasized the operating core and standardization of skills. Hospitals are an example. Divisionalized
form – moderately decentralized of organization that emphasizes the middle level and standardization
of outputs. This configuration is composed of divisions that have their organizations structure.
Adhocracy – a selectively decentralized form of organization that emphasizes the support of staff and
mutual adjustment among people.
Contextual Variables
There are four contextual variables in the design process of an organization. The number of employees
is considered to be the size of the organization. Size is an integral part in design process of an
organization. The second variable that is technology is anything an organization can use to make the
outputs of the organization less complicated. Organizations must be careful with the installation of
technology because it usually increases the complexity of the organization and the difficulty of the
task at hand. Third is everything outside of the organization is considered to be the environment.
Situations where circumstances are directly and indirectly associated with organization are also
considered to environment. Last there are strategy and goals which are the plans and objectives of the
organizational design. No one variable appears to be more important than the other but they must all
be utilized together in the design of an organization.
1. A territory is a defended space. In the broadest sense, there are three kinds of human territory:
tribal, family and personal.
2. It is rare for people to be driven to physical fighting in defence of these ‗owned‘ spaces, but
fight they will, if pushed to the limit. The invading army encroaching on national territory, the gang
moving into a rival district, the trespasser climbing into an orchard, the burglar breaking into a house,
the bully pushing to the front of a queue, the driver trying to steal a parking space, all of these
intruders are liable to be met with resistance varying from the vigorous to the savagely violent. Even if
the law is on the side of the intruder, the urge to protect a territory may be so strong that otherwise
peaceful citizens abandon all their usual controls and inhibitions. Attempts to evict families from their
homes, no matter how socially valid the reasons, can lead to siege conditions reminiscent of the
defence of a medieval fortress.
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21. 3. The fact that these upheavals are so rare is a measure of the success of Territorial Signals as a
system of dispute prevention. It is sometimes cynically stated that ‗all property is theft‘, but in reality
it is the opposite. Property, as owned space which is displayed as owned space, is a special kind of
sharing system which reduces fighting much more that it causes it. Man is a co-operative species, but
he is also competitive, and his struggle for dominance has to be structured in some way if chaos is to
be avoided. The establishment of territorial rights is one such structure. It limits dominance
geographically. I am dominant in my territory and you are dominant in yours. In other words,
dominance is shared out spatially, and we all have some. Even if I am weak and unintelligent and you
can dominate me when we meet on neutral ground, I can still enjoy a thoroughly dominant role as
soon as I retreat to my private base. Be it ever so humble, there is no place like a home territory.
4. Of course, I can still be intimidated by a particularly dominant individual who enters my home
base, but his encroachment will be dangerous for him and he will think twice about it, because he will
know that here my urge to resist will be dramatically magnified and my usual subservience banished.
Insulted at the heart of my own territory, I may easily explode into battle—either symbolic or real—
with a result that may be damaging to both of us.
5.In order for this to work, each territory has to be plainly advertised as such. Just as a dog cocks its
leg to deposit its personal scent on the trees in its locality, so the human animal cocks its leg
symbolically all over his home base. But because we are predominantly visual animals we employ
mostly visual signals, and it is worth asking how we do this at the three levels: tribal, family and
personal.
6.First: the Tribal Territory. We evolved as tribal animals, living in comparatively small groups,
probably of less than a hundred, and we existed like that for millions of years. It is our basic social
unit, a group in which everyone knows everyone else. Essentially, the tribal territory consisted of a
home base surrounded by extended hunting grounds. Any neighbouring tribe intruding on our social
space would be repelled and driven away. As these early tribes swelled into agricultural super-tribes,
and eventually into industrial nations, their territorial defence systems became increasingly elaborate.
The tiny, ancient home base of the hunting tribe became the great capital city, the primitive war-paint
became the flags, emblems, uniforms and regalia of the specialized military, and the war-chants
became national anthems, marching songs and bugle calls. Territorial boundary-lines hardened into
fixed borders, often conspicuously patrolled and punctuated with defensive structures—forts and
lookout posts, checkpoints and great walls, and today, customs barriers.
7.Today each nation flies its own flag, a symbolic embodiment of its territorial status. But patriotism is
not enough. The ancient tribal hunter lurking inside each citizen finds himself unsatisfied by
membership of such a vast conglomeration of individuals, most of whom are totally unknown to him
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22. personally. He does his best to feel that he shares a common territorial defence with them all, but the
scale of the operation has become inhuman. It is hard to feel a sense of belonging with a tribe of fifty
million or more. His answer is to form sub-groups, nearer to his ancient pattern, smaller and more
personally known to him—the local club, the teenage gang, the union, the specialist society, the sports
association, the political party, the college fraternity, the social clique, the protest group, and the rest.
Rare indeed is the individual who does not belong to at least one of these splinter groups, and take
from it a sense of tribal allegiance and brotherhood. Typical of all these groups is the development of
Territorial Signals — badges, costumes, headquarters,
banners, slogans, and all the other displays of group identity. This is where the action is, in terms of
tribal territorialism, and only when a major war breaks out does the emphasis shift upwards to the
higher group level of the nation.
8.Each of these modern pseudo-tribes sets up its own special kind of home base. In extreme cases non-
members are totally excluded, in others they are allowed in as visitors with limited rights and under a
control system of special rules. In many ways they are like miniature nations, with their own flags and
emblems and their own border guards. The exclusive club has its own ‗customer barrier‘: the doorman
who checks your ‗passport‘ (your membership card) and prevents strangers from passing in
unchallenged. There is a government: the club committee; and often special displays of the tribal
elders: the photographs or portraits of previous officials on the walls. At the heart of the specialized
territories there is a powerful feeling of security and importance, a sense of shared defence against the
outside world. Much of the club chatter, both serious and joking, directs itself against the rottenness of
everything outside the club boundaries—in that ‗other world‘ beyond the protected portals ……
9.Second: The Family Territory. Essentially, the family is a breeding unit and the family territory is a
breeding ground. At the centre of this space, there is the nest – the bedroom – where, tucked up in bed,
we feel at our most territorially secure. In a typical house the bedroom is upstairs, where a safe nest
should be. This puts it farther away from the entrance hall, the area where contact is made,
intermittently, with the outside world. The less private reception rooms, where intruders are allowed
access, are the next line of defence. Beyond them, outside the walls of the building, there is often a
symbolic remnant of the ancient feeding grounds—a garden. Its symbolism often extends to the plants
and animals it contains, which cease to be nutritional and become merely decorative—flowers and
pets. But like a true territorial space it has a conspicuously displayed boundary-line, the garden fence,
wall, or railings. Often no more than a token barrier, this is the outer territorial demarcation, separating
the private world of the family from the public world beyond. To cross it puts any visitor or intruder at
an immediate disadvantage. As he crosses the threshold his dominance wanes, slightly but
unmistakably. He is entering an area where he senses that he must ask permission to do simple things
that he would consider a right elsewhere. Without lifting a finger, the territorial owners exert their
dominance. This is done by all the hundreds of small ownership markers they have deposited on their
family territory: the ornaments, the possessed objects positioned in the rooms and on the walls; the
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23. furnishings, the furniture, the colours, the patterns, all owner-chosen and all making this particular
home base unique to them….
10. When they venture forth as a family unit they repeat the process in a minor way. On a day-trip
to the seaside, they load the car with personal belongings and it becomes their temporary, portable
territory. Arriving at the beach they stake out a small territorial claim, marking it with rugs, towels,
baskets and other belongings to which they can return from their seaboard wanderings. Even if they all
leave it at once to bathe, it retains a characteristic territorial quality and other family groups arriving
will recognize this by setting up their own ‗home‘ bases at a respectful distance. Only when the whole
beach has filled up with these marked spaces will newcomers start to position themselves in such a
way that the inter-base distance becomes reduced. Forced to pitch between several existing beach
territories they will feel a momentary sensation of intrusion, and the established ‗owners‘ will feel a
similar sensation of invasion, even though they are not being directly inconvenienced.
11. The same territorial scene is being played out in parks and fields and on riverbanks, wherever
family groups gather in their clustered units. But if rivalry for spaces creates mild feelings of hostility,
it is true to say that, without the territorial system of sharing and space-limited dominance, there would
be chaotic disorder.
12. Third: the Personal Space. If a man enters a waiting room and sits at one end of a long row of
empty chairs, it is possible to predict where the next man to enter will seat himself. He will not sit next
to the first man, nor will he sit at the far end, right away from him. He will choose a position about
halfway between these two points. The next man to enter will take the largest gap left, and sit roughly
in the middle of that, and so on, until eventually the latest newcomer will be forced to select a seat that
places him right next to one of the already seated men. Similar patterns can be observed in cinemas,
public urinals, aeroplanes, trains and buses, This is a reflection of the fact that we all carry with us,
everywhere we go, a portable territory called a Personal Space. If people move inside this space, we
feel threatened. If they keep too far outside it, we feel rejected. The result is a subtle series of spatial
adjustments, usually operating quite unconsciously and producing ideal compromises as far as this is
possible. If a situation becomes too crowded, then we adjust our reactions accordingly and allow our
personal space to shrink. Jammed into an elevator, a rush-hour compartment, or a packed room, we
give up altogether and allow body-to-body contact, but when we relinquish our Personal Space in this
way, we adopt certain special techniques. In essence, what we do is to convert these other bodies into
‗nonpersons‘. We studiously ignore them, and they us. We try not to face them if we can possibly
avoid it. We wipe all expressiveness from our faces, letting them go blank. We may look up at the
ceiling or down at the floor, and we reduce body movements to a minimum. Packed together like
sardines in a tin, we stand dumbly still, sending out as few social signals as possible.
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24. 13. Even if the crowding is less severe, we still tend to cut down our social interactions in the
presence of large numbers. Careful observations of children in play groups revealed that if they are
high density groupings there is less social interaction between the individual children, even though
there is theoretically more opportunity for such contacts. At the same time, the high-density groups
show a higher frequency of aggressiveness and destructive behaviour patterns in their play. Personal
Space – ‗elbow room‘ – is a vital commodity for the human animal, and one that cannot be ignored
without risking serious trouble….
14. Those of us who have to spend a great deal of time in crowded conditions become gradually
better able to adjust, but no one can ever become completely immune to invasions of Personal Space.
This is because they remain forever associated with either powerful hostile or equally powerful loving
feelings. All through our childhood we will have been held to be loved and held to be hurt, and anyone
who invades our Personal Space when we are adults is, in effect, threatening to extend his behaviour
into one of these two highly charged areas of human interaction. Even if his motives are clearly neither
hostile nor sexual, we still find it hard to suppress our reactions to his close approach. Unfortunately,
different countries have different ideas about exactly how close is close. It is easy enough to test your
own ‗space reaction‘: when you are talking to someone in the street or in any open space, reach out
with your arm and see where the nearest point on his body comes. If you hail from western Europe,
you will find that he is atroughly fingertip distance from you. In other words, as you reach out, your
fingertips will just about make contact with his shoulder. If you come from eastern Europe you will
find you are standing at ‗wrist distance‘. If you come from the Mediterranean region you will find that
you are much closer to your companion, at little more than ‗elbow distance‘.
15. Trouble begins when a member of one of these cultures meets and talks to one from another.
Say a British diplomat meets an Italian or an Arab diplomat at an embassy function. They start talking
in a friendly way, but soon the fingertips man begins to feel uneasy. Without knowing quite why, he
starts to back away gently from his companion. The companion edges forward again. Each tries in this
way to set up a Personal Space relationship that suits his own background. But it is impossible to do.
Every time the Briton moves back, the other feels rejected. Attempts to adjust this situation often lead
to a talking pair shifting slowly across a room, and many an embassy reception is dotted with western-
European fingertip-distance men pinned against the walls by eager elbow-distance men. Until such
differences are fully understood, and allowances made, these minor differences in ‗body territories‘
will continue to act as an alienation factor which may interfere in a subtle way with diplomatic
harmony and other forms of international transaction ….
16. A third method of reinforcing the body-territory is to use personal markers. Books, papers and
other personal belongings are scattered around the favoured site to render it more privately owned in
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25. the eyes of companions. Spreading out one‘s belongings is a well-known trick in public-transport
situations, where a traveler tries to give the impression that seats next to him are taken. In many
contexts carefully arranged personal markers can act as an effective territorial display, even in the
absence of the territory owner. Experiments in a library revealed that placing a pile of magazines on
the table in one seating position successfully reserved that place for an average of 77 minutes. If a
sports-jacket was added, draped over the chair, then the ‗reservation effect‘ lasted for over two hours.
17. In these ways, we strengthen the defences of our Personal Spaces, keeping out intruders with
the minimum of open hostility. As with all territorial behaviour, the object is to defend space with
signals rather than with fists and at all three levels – the tribal, the family and the personal – it is a
remarkably efficient system of space-sharing. It does not always seem so, because newspapers and
newscasts inevitably magnify the exceptions and dwell on those cases where the signals have failed
and wars have broken out, gangs have fought, neighbouring families have feuded, or colleagues have
clashed, but for every territorial signal that has failed, there are millions of others that have not. They
do not rate a mention in the news, but nevertheless constitute a dominant feature of human society –
the society of a remarkably territorial animal.
Lifestyle (sociology)
"Way of life" redirects here. For other uses, see Way of life (disambiguation).
Lifestyle is a term to describe the way a person lives, which was originally coined by Austrian
psychologist Alfred Adler in 1929. The current broader sense of the word dates from 1961.[1] A set of
behaviors, and the senses of self and belonging which these behaviors represent, are collectively used
to define a given lifestyle. The term is defined more broadly when used in politics, marketing, and
publishing.
A lifestyle is a characteristic bundle of behaviors that makes sense to both others and oneself in a
given time and place, including social relations, consumption, entertainment, and dress. The behaviors
and practices within lifestyles are a mixture of habits, conventional ways of doing things, and reasoned
actions.
Individual identity
A lifestyle typically also reflects an individual's attitudes, values or worldview. Therefore, a lifestyle is
a means of forging a sense of self and to create cultural symbols that resonate with personal identity.
Not all aspects of a lifestyle are entirely voluntaristic. Surrounding social and technical systems can
constrain the lifestyle choices available to the individual and the symbols she/he is able to project to
others and the self.[2]
The lines between personal identity and the everyday doings that signal a particular lifestyle become
blurred in modern society.[3] For example, "green lifestyle" means holding beliefs and engaging in
activities that consume fewer resources and produce less harmful waste (i.e. a smaller carbon
footprint), and deriving a sense of self from holding these beliefs and engaging in these activities.
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26. Some commentators argue that, in modernity, the cornerstone of lifestyle construction is consumption
behavior, which offers the possibility to create and further individualize the self with different
products or services that signal different ways of life.[4]
Politics
The term lifestyle in politics can often be used in conveying the idea that society be accepting of a
variety of different ways of life—from the perspective that differences among ways of living are
superficial, rather than existential. Lifestyle is also sometimes used pejoratively, to mark out some
ways of living as elective or voluntary as opposed to others that are considered mainstream,
unremarkable, or normative.
Within anarchism, lifestylism is the view that an anarchist society can be formed by changing one's
own personal activities rather than by engaging in class struggle.
Advertising and marketing
In business, "lifestyles" provide a means by which advertisers and marketers endeavor to target and
match consumer aspirations with products, or to create aspirations relevant to new products. Therefore
marketers take the patterns of belief and action characteristic of lifestyles and direct them toward
expenditure and consumption. These patterns reflect the demographic factors (the habits, attitudes,
tastes, moral standards, economic levels and so on) that define a group. As a construct that directs
people to interact with their worlds as consumers, lifestyles are subject to change by the demands of
marketing and technological innovation.
In the magazine and television industries, "lifestyle" is used to describe a category of publications or
programs.
Attitude (psychology)
An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for
something. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event— this
is often referred to as the attitude object. People can also be conflicted or ambivalent toward an object,
meaning that they simultaneously possess both positive and negative attitudes toward the item in
question. definitions of attitude An attitude can be defined as a positive or negative evaluation of
people, objects, event, activities, ideas, or just about anything in your environment (Zimbardo et al.,
1999) In the opinion of Bain (1927), an attitude is "the relatively stable overt behavior of a person
which affects his status." "Attitudes which are common to a group are thus social attitudes or `values'
in the Thomasonian sense. The attitude is the status-fixing behavior. This differentiates it from habit
and vegetative processes as such, and totally ignores the hypothetical 'subjective states' which have
formerly been emphasized. North (1932) has defined attitude as "the totality of those states that lead to
or point toward some particular activity of the organism. The attitude is, therefore, the dynamic
element in human behavior, the motive for activity." For Lumley (1928) an attitude is "a susceptibility
to certain kinds of stimuli and readiness to respond repeatedly in a given way—which are possible
toward our world and the parts of it which impinge upon us." Attitudes are judgments. They develop
on the ABC model (affect, behavior, and cognition).[1] The affective response is an emotional response
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27. that expresses an individual's degree of preference for an entity. The behavioral intention is a verbal
indication or typical behavioral tendency of an individual. The cognitive response is a cognitive
evaluation of the entity that constitutes an individual's beliefs about the object.[citation needed] Most
attitudes are the result of either direct experience or observational learning from the environment.
Bold text==Attitude formation== Unlike personality, attitudes are expected to change as a function of
experience. Tesser (1993) has argued that hereditary variables may affect attitudes - but believes that
they may do so indirectly. For example, consistency theories, which imply that we must be consistent
in our beliefs and values. The most famous example of such a theory is Dissonance-reduction theory,
associated with Leon Festinger, although there are others, such as the balance theory.
Attitude change
Bold textAttitudes can be changed through persuasion and we should understand attitude change as a
response to communication. Experimental research into the factors that can affect the persuasiveness
of a message include
1. Target Characteristics: These are characteristics that refer to the person who receives and
processes a message. One such trait is intelligence - it seems that more intelligent people are
less easily persuaded by one-sided messages. Another variable that has been studied in this
category is self-esteem. Although it is sometimes thought that those higher in self-esteem are
less easily persuaded, there is some evidence that the relationship between self-esteem and
persuasibility is actually curvilinear, with people of moderate self-esteem being more easily
persuaded than both those of high and low self-esteem levels (Rhodes & Woods, 1992). The
mind frame and mood of the target also plays a role in this process.
2. Source Characteristics: The major source characteristics are expertise, trustworthiness and
interpersonal attraction or attractiveness. The credibility of a perceived message has been
found to be a key variable here; if one reads a report about health and believes it came from a
professional medical journal, one may be more easily persuaded than if one believes it is from
a popular newspaper. Some psychologists have debated whether this is a long-lasting effect
and Hovland and Weiss (1951) found the effect of telling people that a message came from a
credible source disappeared after several weeks (the so-called "sleeper effect"). Whether there
is a sleeper effect is controversial. Perceived wisdom is that if people are informed of the
source of a message before hearing it, there is less likelihood of a sleeper effect than if they are
told a message and then told its source.
3. Message Characteristics: The nature of the message plays a role in persuasion. Sometimes
presenting both sides of a story is useful to help change attitudes.
Cognitive Routes: A message can appeal to an individual's cognitive evaluation to help change an
attitude. In the central route to persuasion the individual is presented with the data and motivated to
evaluate the data and arrive at an attitude changing conclusion. In the peripheral route to attitude
change, the individual is encouraged to not look at the content but at the source. This is commonly
seen in modern advertisements that feature celebrities. In some cases, physician, doctors or experts are
used. In other cases film stars are used for their attractiveness.
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28. Emotion and Attitude Change
Emotion is a common component in persuasion, social influence, and attitude change. Much of
attitude research emphasized the importance of affective or emotion components. Emotion works
hand-in-hand with the cognitive process, or the way we think, about an issue or situation. Emotional
appeals are commonly found in advertising, health campaigns and political messages. Recent
examples include no-smoking health campaigns and political campaign advertising emphasizing the
fear of terrorism. Attitudes and attitude objects are functions of cognitive, affective and conative
components. Attitudes are part of the brain‘s associative networks, the spider-like structures residing
in long term memory that consist of affective and cognitive nodes.
By activating an affective or emotion node, attitude change may be possible, though affective and
cognitive components tend to be intertwined. In primarily affective networks, it is more difficult to
produce cognitive counterarguments in the resistance to persuasion and attitude change.
Affective forecasting, otherwise known as intuition or the prediction of emotion, also impacts attitude
change. Research suggests that predicting emotions is an important component of decision making, in
addition to the cognitive processes. How we feel about an outcome may override purely cognitive
rationales.
In terms of research methodology, the challenge for researchers is measuring emotion and subsequent
impacts on attitude. Since we cannot see into the brain, various models and measurement tools have
been constructed to obtain emotion and attitude information. Measures may include the use of
physiological cues like facial expressions, vocal changes, and other body rate measures. For instance,
fear is associated with raised eyebrows, increased heart rate and increase body tension (Dillard, 1994).
Other methods include concept or network mapping, and using primes or word cues.
Components of Emotion Appeals
Any discrete emotion can be used in a persuasive appeal; this may include jealousy, disgust,
indignation, fear, blue, disturbed, haunted,and anger. Fear is one of the most studied emotional appeals
in communication and social influence research.
Important consequences of fear appeals and other emotion appeals include the possibility of reactance
which may lead to either message rejections or source rejection and the absence of attitude change. As
the EPPM suggests, there is an optimal emotion level in motivating attitude change. If there is not
enough motivation, an attitude will not change; if the emotional appeal is overdone, the motivation can
be paralyzed thereby preventing attitude change.
Emotions perceived as negative or containing threat are often studied more than perceived positive
emotions like humor. Though the inner-workings of humor are not agreed upon, humor appeals may
work by creating incongruities in the mind. Recent research has looked at the impact of humor on the
processing of political messages. While evidence is inconclusive, there appears to be potential for
targeted attitude change is receivers with low political message involvement.
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29. Important factors that influence the impact of emotion appeals include self efficacy, attitude
accessibility, issue involvement, and message/source features. Self efficacy is a perception of one‘s
own human agency; in other words, it is the perception of our own ability to deal with a situation. It is
an important variable in emotion appeal messages because it dictates a person‘s ability to deal with
both the emotion and the situation. For example, if a person is not self-efficacious about their ability to
impact the global environment, they are not likely to change their attitude or behavior about global
warming.
Dillard (1994) suggests that message features such as source non-verbal communication, message
content, and receiver differences can impact the emotion impact of fear appeals. The characteristics of
a message are important because one message can elicit different levels of emotion for different
people. Thus, in terms of emotion appeals messages, one size does not fit all.
Attitude accessibility refers to the activation of an attitude from memory in other words, how readily
available is an attitude about an object, issue, or situation. Issue involvement is the relevance and
salience of an issue or situation to an individual. Issue involvement has been correlated with both
attitude access and attitude strength. Past studies conclude accessible attitudes are more resistant to
change
Implicit and explicit attitudes
There is also considerable research on implicit attitudes, which are generally unacknowledged or
outside of awareness, but have effects that are measurable through sophisticated methods using
people's response times to stimuli. Implicit and explicit attitudes seem to affect people's behavior,
though in different ways. They tend not to be strongly associated with each other, although in some
cases they are. The relationship between them is poorly understood.
Jung's definition
Attitude is one of Jung's 57 definitions in Chapter XI of Psychological Types. Jung's definition of
attitude is a "readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way" (Jung, [1921] 1971:par. 687).
Attitudes very often come in pairs, one conscious and the other unconscious. Within this broad
definition Jung defines several attitudes.
The main (but not only) attitude dualities that Jung defines are the following.
Consciousness and the unconscious. The "presence of two attitudes is extremely frequent, one
conscious and the other unconscious. This means that consciousness has a constellation of
contents different from that of the unconscious, a duality particularly evident in neurosis" (Jung,
[1921] 1971: par. 687).
Extraversion and introversion. This pair is so elementary to Jung's theory of types that he labeled
them the "attitude-types".
Rational and irrational attitudes. "I conceive reason as an attitude" (Jung, [1921] 1971: par. 785).
The rational attitude subdivides into the thinking and feeling psychological functions, each with its
attitude.
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30. The irrational attitude subdivides into the sensing and intuition psychological functions, each with
its attitude. "There is thus a typical thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitude" (Jung,
[1921] 1971: par. 691).
Individual and social attitudes. Many of the latter are "isms".
In addition, Jung discusses the abstract attitude. ―When I take an abstract attitude...‖ (Jung, [1921]
1971: par. 679). Abstraction is contrasted with concretism. ―CONCRETISM. By this I mean a
peculiarity of thinking and feeling which is the antithesis of abstraction‖ (Jung, [1921] 1971: par. 696).
For example: "I hate his attitude for being Sarcastic."
[edit] MBTI definition
The MBTI write-ups limit the use of "attitude" to the extraversion-introversion (EI) and judging-
perceiving (JP) indexes.
The JP index is sometimes referred to as an orientation to the outer world and sometimes JP is
classified as an "attitude." In Jungian terminology the term attitude is restricted to EI. In MBTI
terminology attitude can include EI and also JP. (Myers, 1985:293 note 7).
The above MBTI Manual state ment, is restricted to EI," is directly contradicted by Jung's statement
above that there is "a typical thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuitive attitude" and by his other uses
of the term "attitude". Regardless of whether the MBTI simplification (or oversimplification) of Jung
can be attributed to Myers, Gifts Differing refers only to the "EI preference", consistently avoiding the
label "attitude". Regarding the JP index, in Gifts Differing Myers does use the terms "the perceptive
attitude and the judging attitude" (Myers, 1980:8). The JP index corresponds to the irrational and
rational attitudes Jung describes, except that the MBTI focuses on the preferred orientation in the outer
world in order to identify the function hierarchy. To be consistent with Jung, it can be noted that a
rational extraverted preference is accompanied by an irrational introverted preference. By Mr. M Amir
Shehzad
Values: A subjective point of view regarding the worth of our beliefs and the worth of the assumed or
perceived beliefs, values and attitudes of those we view or interact with, based on our own narrow
perspective. Once again the dictionary, ―the values of a person or group are the moral principles and
beliefs that they think are important‖.
Values: a set of moral standards or rules (based on our beliefs) that govern they way we make
judgements regarding the goodness or badness of factors in our environment and that influence what
we set as the norms of a correct existence.
THE COMMON ACCEPTANCE OF HUMAN VALUES
Much controversy arises or is made out of the question of values; what is meant by 'values'? Which
values are good and which bad, if any? Which values are to be tolerated even if their rightness is
controversial? Has one a right to express and teach values? Can any science or doctrine be neutral with
regard to values? These are key issues of psychic and social development, not facts merely to observe
and describe.
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31. The modern tendency is to avoid firm and definitive statements of values, often in the imagined
interests of maintaining a reputation for scientific objectivity or of cultural and social tolerance. This
widely prevalent misconception assumes that the spirit of truth and liberality somehow binds us to
remain passive observers and never to intervene in the free-for-all of moral conflict by asserting
positive values.
The long-bemoaned loss of central values through the disruptions of traditional religious society and
the consequent value relativism in all fields, from science and the humanities to religion, from morals
to the arts, as world cultures come into contact and clash with one another has tended to obscure the
existence of common denominator values that have always existed and been practiced to various
extents in great world cultures.
The values according to or against which we act are the unavoidable and essential element of all
important decisions in the human arena. Values are the link that tie together personal perceptions and
judgements, motives and actions. The same applies in understanding social and political life. A make-
or-break idea is that values or precepts - and their various practical consequences in life - are at least as
fundamental to understanding man and society as are the much-vaunted physical necessities. They are
also essential in improving man and society too.
Values are more important and primary than facts in forming and understanding all kinds of human
purpose. Values, rather than observable facts, are keys to understanding the reality behind the scene
outwardly presented by human behaviour. Motives and purposes are value determinations. The best-
attested of 'facts' can alter colour when explained by an interpreter. They appear in deeper perspective
when looked upon as the result of meaningful, intentional 'acts' (provided the acts were voluntary). An
action that seemed good at first can be seen as bad from a proper appreciation of motives, or
unfortunate when the practical consequences are known.
Whether any values exist that are universally held in esteem and have objective validity as an essential
part of the human make-up is today often either doubted outright or regarded as an unverified
hypothesis. Whether such a true ethic is somehow commonly inherent to humanity or not, has been the
subject of centuries of debate. Methods based on natural science cannot decide the issue, precisely
because values are not facts. Opponents to the idea assert that such values that exist are simply the
result of sensible adjustments to circumstances or pragmatic behaviour for ensuring survival, reducing
conflict, maximising security or even pleasure and so on. Hence, morals in modern societies today are
in practice often made dependent on the perceived interests of either the individual, the group or the
nation, and are thus 'relativistic', that is, without any definite or fixed value basis. Or they are simply
denied, as in out-and-out moralism on the lines of 'every man for himself' and the idea of a free-for-all
with an ethical carte blanche.
The idea that there are 'human values' is becoming widespread, but few people can actually explain
just what these may be. A general disillusionment about the disunity of humanity amid the great
cultural clashes of the 20th Century seems to have hindered realisation of a common human value
system coming to expression through the fundamental strivings of humanity in much of history.
Research into this hardly occurs, even though we are in a process of increasing world integration and
the global interaction of value systems.
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32. Common human values, to be essentially human and common, must be demonstrably derivable from
universally-held precepts, however differently the values are articulated in different situations in
varying cultures, societies and religions. There should be no question of human values representing
any mere ideology or philosophical speculation, for the implicated values and norms should be testable
both by reason and, where relevant and possible, by empirical and historical research, not excluding
experimental 'trial and error method' in action research.
The great predominance of violence, war, hate and crime in most societies and eras of history may
seem to refute the universality of human values. However, the values do go back to the earliest
recorded human societies and religions and have somehow persisted throughout all the eras and all
cultures. In this sense they are universal, added to which is the evolutionary nature of the human being
and civilisation, whereby the assertion of these values becomes eventually more and more secure...
and now on an interactive global scale through international laws and practices.
The essential goodness of human nature is ultimately something for us to reach out to together,
through discovering, experiencing and further developing it personally. Progress in this direction
invokes many kinds of feedback from others in one's personal sphere of experience, which strengthen
the conviction that, despite all, values are a human heritage, while anti-values are but the result of
ignorance as to our this heritage and shortcomings in so far discovering and pursuing our true destiny,
whether individually or collectively.
The values that have been at the essence of the so-called 'perennial philosophy' represent or are closely
involved with human values. The five human values are 'universal' in that, though values are not
always held in the sense of being followed, they are everywhere generally held in esteem... hence are
universally held as being values. In distinction to these are a range of attitudes and aims which have
traditionally been considered as going against common human values... being deleterious to the
common good of society and/or humanity as such. These I refer to as anti-values or counter'values
(rather than the self'contradictory term 'negative values'. Each counter-value is identifiable as the
contrary to some widely-accepted value and is usually definable as such. Thus, for example, if we
recognise the value of truthfulness, frankness, openness the counter-values would be lying, conniving
and deception.
DISTINGUISHING AND DEFINING VALUES
One asks, in what do values consist in actual living, as opposed to counter-values? Because values of
any kind in actual life depend for their meaning and the forms they are expressed in on the kind of
social culture, language and human environment where they apply, it is obvious that no one rigid
system or hierarchy of values can be said to apply everywhere and equally. In many respects, the
culture itself is the determining factor in what are regarded as values and what as anti-values. Values
are mostly related as much to the history and traditions from which they arose as to the demands of the
current environment, which now must be said more and more to be a global one.
Theologies and philosophies throughout world history contended with the question of values. Each
have their ways of identifying what is of value, why and for whom etc., each have developed their
various sets of reasons for and against the varieties of human behaviour and aspiration. Any attempt to
develop a single value system to account harmoniously for all the behavioural tenets of all the major
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