Courtship Signals – Proxemics – 1

The human being, like animals, divide the space around them in concentric zones each one with a different weight that is directly proportional to the degree of intimacy that we attributes it. The number of these zones is 4.

Starting from the individual and proceeding toward the exterior, they are: the intimate zone, the personal zone, the social zone and the public zone. The intimate zone goes from 0, the physical contact, to 45 centimeters from the individual. In this space, we only let enter people with which we have a very strong intimacy like relatives, friends or partners.

To this distance emotional variations, odors and the heat emanated by the body are perceptible. For this reason, we would be greatly uneasiness if a person with whom we haven’t a good degree of intimacy would enter in this sort of protection ball. The personal zone goes from 45 to 120 centimeters.

This is the zone in that we let enter people that we known but with which we are not particularly intimate like friends, acquaintances, work colleagues and the like. Since’ this zone is in contact with the intimate zone, we have the tendency to hold nearer, at about 50 centimeters, the people with which we have close relationships and at a greater distance, over 70 centimeters, the others.

The personal zone is the one that interest us the most in relationship with the nonverbal gesture of the "approach" previously described. We have seen in fact that the woman, to encourage the man to start the conversation, position herself to about 50 centimeters of distance from him, she enters his personal zone, that space in which generally accessible only to known people, relatives or friends.

In this way, she increases, in an artificial way, the degree of intimacy with the man that, now, won't perceive her as an extraneous anymore. The remaining zones are that social zone, between one and three meters and the public zone, over three meters of distance from the individual. These are the zones in which generally can enter people with which we have only formal relationships or that are unknown.