Social Approach - Perry et al (personal space) PDF

Perry et al. (personal space) Background:  Perry et al. were interested in investigating how people’s personal space preferences are affected by a few different factors, including interpersonal distance  They measured people’s preferences for different social f...

Perry et al. (personal space) Background:  Perry et al. were interested in investigating how people’s personal space preferences are affected by a few different factors, including interpersonal distance  They measured people’s preferences for different social figures so they could compare how close people want to be to strangers or friends, for example.  Perry believed this preference could be influenced by the action of social hormones such as oxytocin (OT)  Overall, an interaction effect was being tested between OT, the empathy levels of people, and the social figure with whom they are having the interaction: OT x empathy x condition Psychology Being Investigated:  Interpersonal distance (personal space): refers to the distance between two people and an individual’s preferred distance may vary depending on their relationship with others  Edward T.Hall introduced the idea of interpersonal distance in 1966 and proposed four zones of space:  Intimate: used between romantic partners or very close family members and involves all senses  Personal: used with other people in everyday interactions, in which we can see, touch and hear the other person  Social: used in formal interactions with others in which we may use louder voices, body movements and eye contact  Public: Used to keep distance from public figures (e.g. someone making a speech), in which a loud voice and body movements can usually feature  Oxytocin: a social hormone found in humans that plays a role in social bonding, childbirth and breastfeeding and has been seen to promote prosocial behaviour  Empathy: understanding someone else’s experience by perceiving it from their point of view  Social salience: the importance or attention someone gives to cues from another person such as body language or expressions   Social cues: facial expressions or body language people use to send messages across to one another, e.g. smiling to indicate happiness  Social salience hypothesis: this predicts that oxytocin increases attention to social cues which affects the way a person may process these cues and respond in different ways depending on the social setting Aim:  To test the differential effect of the social hormone oxytocin on personal space preference in relation to a person’s empathy ability Method and Design:  Research Method:  Lab experiment: conducted at a lab at the University of Haifa, Israel  Self-Report: IRI online questionnaire Experiment 1  Independent Variable:  Empathy: operationalized as being “high” (over 40) or “low” (under 33)  Treatment: operationalized by giving oxytocin or placebo  Condition: operationalized by “stranger”, “authority”, “friend” or “ball”  Dependent Variable: Preferred interpersonal distance: operationalized using the Comfortable Interpersonal Distance (CID) paradigm  Experimental Design:  For IV of empathy: Independent measures design  For IV of treatment: Repeated measures design  For IV of condition: Repeated measures design Experiment 2  Independent Variable:  Empathy: operationalized as being “high” or “low”  Treatment: operationalized by giving oxytocin or control  Condition: operationalized by positioning of chairs (experimental condition) or positioning of table and plant (control condition)  Dependent Variable: Task of ‘choosing rooms’: operationalized by mean average preferred distance between the two chairs (in centimeters) and mean average preferred angle of the two chairs (in degrees)  Experimental Design:  For IV of empathy: Independent measures design  For IV of treatment: Repeated measures design  For IV of condition: Repeated measures design Sample:  54 male participants  Undergraduates from the University of Haifa, Israel  Age range 19 to 32 years, with a mean age of 25 years  They received either course credit or payment for participation  5 of the participants were left handed, with normal or corrected-to-normal eye sight and no history of psychiatric or neurological disorders  Sampling Technique: Volunteer Sampling Procedure:  Participants attended the university to complete experiment 1 and then returned exactly one week later for experiment 2. The order of the two experiments was counterbalanced (half the participants completed experiment 1 in week 1, and experiment 2 in week 2, whereas the other half did the opposite)  Oxytocin administration: The participants were randomly administered a treatment of either a solution of 24 international units in 250ml of intranasal (IN) oxytocin, or a placebo in the form of saline solution  This was a double blind technique as neither participants, nor the experimenters knew which condition the participant was in, in order to avoid demand characteristics from the participants, and researcher bias from the experimenter, hence improving validity   Assessment of empathy: Once the solution was administered, the participants completed the IRI online questionnaire in order to determine their level of empathy  This was a 28 – item self report rated on a 5 point Likert scale (from A = does not describe me well, to E = does describe me well) with four 7 – item subscales all relating to empathy  Based on the results of the IRI, the participants were allocated to one of two conditions – ‘high empathy’ (a total of 20 participants with an IRI score of over 40, and mean age 24 years) and ‘low empathy’ conditions (a total of 20 participants with an IRI score of under 33, and a mean age of 26 years)  After completing the IRI, participants were given three issues of a popular Israeli nature magazine and waited in a quiet room for 45 minutes (to allow the oxytocin to be absorbed by the central nervous system and plateaus). This was done to keep any social interaction to a minimum Experiment 1 (CID Design):  A circle was presented on a computer screen and participants were instructed to imagine themselves in the center of the room with another person approaching them along a radius  The participant had to indicate by pressing the keyboard space bar at the point along the radius where they would want the person to stop approaching  The imaginary individual approaching would be referred to as a protagonist. The computer animation had options for the protagonist to be one of the following conditions: a close friend, stranger, authority figure (boss or teacher), or a rolling ball  Each participant would be shown the name of the person approaching for 1 second, followed by a fixation point for 0.5 seconds. After this the participant would be shown a still picture of a circular room with a figure at the center and an approaching figure at one of eight entrances  This was followed by a 3 second animation showing the figure approaching the center of the circle  The participant would have to imagine themselves in the center of the room and press the space bar button to stop the protagonist from approaching  The animation would stop when the participant pressed the space bar, or after 3 seconds when the two figures collided  Each of the four figures appeared three times from each of the eight radii, resulting in 24 trials for each figure, and 96 trials in total Experiment 2 (Choosing Rooms):  After doing the two runs of the experiment (placebo and oxytocin), participants were told they would be asked to sit in a room with another person to discuss personal/intimate topics (this is not true though, therefore, deception)  They were informed that they would be shown pairs of similar rooms and that they would have to choose the room they preferred from each pair  They were further told that at the end of the 2 weeks of experiments, the computer would calculate an average room based on their preferences and that the personal conversation would be held in a room designed according to these preferences  The computerized stimuli were coloured pictures with two identical chairs in the middle, a table on one side, a cupboard, a plant, a lamp, and a clock  The experimental condition was ‘preferred distance between chairs’ and consisted of the following stimuli: distance between chairs (20 – 140 cm with intervals of 20 cm), and angle of chairs positions (0º: both facing forwards, 45º each, or 90º: facing each other)  The control condition was ‘preferred distance between table and plant’ and consisted of the following stimuli: distance between the table and the plant (200 – 320 cm with intervals of 20 cm), and angle of the table and plant positions (0º: both facing forwards, 45º each, or 90º: facing each other)  The experiment included 21 different pairs of chair distances, 21 different pairs of table- plant differences, and three options for each pair of angles that was repeated seven times, making it 21 pairs of comparative angles  Each participant was shown a total of 84 pairs, each repeated twice to equal 168 pairs overall with the participant shown two rooms simultaneously in each trial  The two picture sets were shown on a computer screen for 2 seconds and the participant had to select their preference  Participants were then debriefed  Results: Experiment 1:  The mean preferred distance of the participants for the IV of the four conditions of protagonists was as follows: Stranger 39.8%, Authority 34.1%, Ball 20.2%, and Friend 12.4%, on the CID  This suggests that overall, the participants preferred closer personal space with a friend the most, and least with a stranger  When we discuss the interaction effect of two IV’s (treatment and empathy combined) on preferred distance, the participants mean percentage of preferred distance on the CID was as follows: Oxytocin Group with High Empathy 23.2%, Oxytocin Group with Low Empathy 30.2%, Placebo Group with High Empathy 26.1%, and Placebo Group with Low Empathy 26.9%  When we talk about the interaction effect of all 3 IV’s (treatment x empathy x condition), the CID mean percentage of preferred distance was as follows:  High Empathy Participants in Oxytocin Group: Stranger 39.7%, Authority 30.5%, Ball 14.4%, and Friend 8.5%  High Empathy Participants in Placebo Group: Stranger 38.5%, Authority 33.9%, Ball 20.9%, and Friend 11%  Low Empathy Participants in Oxytocin Group: Stranger 40.8%, Authority 36.8%, Ball 26.8%, and Friend 16.3%  Low Empathy Participants in Placebo Group: Stranger 40.1%, Authority 35.1%, Ball 18.6%, and Friend 14% Experiment 2:  The preferred distance between chairs for the groups was as follows:  High Empathy Participants and Oxytocin Group: 78 cm  High Empathy Participants and Placebo Group: 80.5 cm  Low Empathy Participants and Oxytocin Group: 80 cm  Low Empathy Participants and Placebo Group: 78 cm  Conclusions:  The administration of OT enhances social cues in opposite ways for individuals with different empathetic abilities, supporting the social salience hypothesis  People with low empathetic ability respond to OT with a preference for increased personal distance, and those with high empathetic ability respond to OT with a preference for decreased personal distance Evaluation: Strengths:  Internal Validity: the order of the experiments was counterbalanced in order to prevent order effects. Extraneous variables were also controlled, as social interaction after OT or saline administration was minimized  Reliability: the study has high levels of controls, for example, the number of trials were the same (96) in experiment 1, and also for experiment 2, and all participants were shown the images for the same duration, making the results reliable and the experimental procedures could be replicated and expected to produce the same results Weaknesses:  Generalisability: The sample was not very large, of just 54 participants who were all male, majority right handed, all from the same university in Israel, and as a result, the findings cannot be applied to females, or to people outside the university, or of other cultures as they are not represented in the sample  Ecological Validity: The study was conducted in the artificial and highly controlled setting of a lab. Furthermore, the task of selecting preferred personal distance was done through a computer animation rather than through actual physical interaction with people, and as a result, it is not something people experience in their everyday lives, and therefore, it can be argued that the study lacks mundane realism  Issues & Debates: Application to everyday life:  The findings of the study are useful to help us understand that administration of oxytocin in individual with low empathy levels such as people with autism, may not treat their lack of an ability to interact socially, but in fact, worsen their condition  The findings are also useful in helping us understand that people who generally have low levels of empathy would not prefer close interpersonal distances with others, so we should maintain our distance with them and respect their personal space Individual and Situational Explanations:  The study supports the situational explanation as preferences of personal distance depend on the situation of who the other individual is, for example the situation of being around a close friend would lead to a preference of a closer personal space, whereas a situation of being around a stranger or authority figure would lead to a further distance  The study also supports the individual explanation as these preferences of interpersonal space between people is also dependent on personal traits such as an individual’s level of empathy being either high or low Nature versus Nurture Debate:  The study supports the nature side of the debate. The role oxytocin has a biological effect on the individual’s attention to social cues and preferences of personal distance as it is a hormone  However, the study also supports the nurture side of the debate as people’s preferences of being closer to their friends and further away from strangers is due to cues that we learn from our environment. Similarly, empathy levels can also be influenced by an individual’s upbringing and interaction with their social environment