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Sharpening of peripersonal space during the COVID-19 pandemic.

ABSTRACT: Our social world has been transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond the direct impact of the pandemic on physical health, the social distancing measures implemented worldwide to slow down disease transmission have dramatically impacted social interactions¹^,². These measures, including orders to stay at home and to maintain a social distance of at least 2 meters, have been essential to limit the spread of the disease, but they have had severe costs for humans as social animals². Right before and right after the adoption of the most stringent measures in Switzerland in Spring 2020, we were conducting a series of experiments to measure the representation of the so-called peripersonal space - the space immediately surrounding our body, where we normally interact with objects and other individuals³. We found that the introduction of social distancing measures led to a reduction in the extent of the peripersonal space and enhanced its segregation between individuals, as if the presence of others in close space would activate an implicit form of freezing response.

SUBMITTER: Serino S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8188303 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Sharpening of peripersonal space during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Serino Silvia S Trabanelli Sara S Jandus Camilla C Fellrath Julia J Grivaz Petr P Paladino Maria Paola MP Serino Andrea A

Current biology : CB 20210609 14

Our social world has been transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond the direct impact of the pandemic on physical health, the social distancing measures implemented worldwide to slow down disease transmission have dramatically impacted social interactions1,2. These measures, including orders to stay at home and to maintain a social distance of at least 2 meters, have been essential to limit the spread of the disease, but they have had severe costs for humans a ...[more]

PMID: 34314711

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Project description:Personal space is the distance that people tend to maintain from others during daily life in a largely unconscious manner. For humans, personal space-related behaviors represent one form of non-verbal social communication, similar to facial expressions and eye contact. Given that the changes in social behavior and experiences that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, including "social distancing" and widespread social isolation, may have altered personal space preferences, we investigated this possibility in two independent samples. First, we compared the size of personal space measured before the onset of the pandemic to its size during the pandemic in separate groups of subjects. Personal space size was significantly larger in those assessed during (compared to those assessed before) the onset of the pandemic (all d > 0.613, all p < 0.007). In an additional cohort, we measured personal space size, and discomfort in response to intrusions into personal space, longitudinally before and during the pandemic, using both conventional and virtual reality-based techniques. Within these subjects, we found that measurements of personal space size with respect to real versus virtual humans were significantly correlated with one another (r = 0.625-0.958) and similar in magnitude. Moreover, the size of personal space, as well as levels of discomfort during personal space intrusions, increased significantly during (compared to before) the COVID-19 pandemic in response to both real and virtual humans (all d > 0.842, all p < 0.01). Lastly, we found that the practice of social distancing and perceived (but not actual) risk of being infected with COVID-19 were linked to this personal space enlargement during the pandemic (all p < 0.038). Taken together, these findings suggest that personal space boundaries expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic independent of actual infection risk level. As the day-to-day effects of the pandemic subside, personal space preferences may provide one index of recovery from the psychological effects of this crisis.

Dataset Information

Sharpening of peripersonal space during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Publications

Sharpening of peripersonal space during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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