Abstract
Virtual Reality (VR) offers unlimited possibilities to create virtual populated environments in which a user can be immersed and experience social interactions with virtual humans. A better understanding of these interactions is required to improve the realism of the interactions as well as user’s experience. Using an approach based on Interactionist Sociology, we wondered whether the social settings within which the individual interact has an impact on proxemics norms in real conditions and if these norms apply in VR. We conducted an experiment in real and virtual conditions where individuals experienced a transgression of proxemics norms at a train station and in a sports fan zone. Our results suggest that proxemics norms vary according to the subjective relationship of the individual to the social settings. This variation would translate directly into a modulation of bodily sensitivity to the proximity of the body of others. While we were able to show that social norms still exist in VR, our results did not show a main effect of the social settings on participants’ sensitivity to the transgression of proxemics norms. We discuss our results in the frame of the cross-fertilization between Sociology and VR.
Supported by the ANR OPMoPS project (ANR-SEBM-0004) and the Inria associate team BEAR.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Adams, L., Zuckerman, D.: The effect of lighting conditions on personal space requirements. J. Gen. Psychol. 118(4), 335–340 (1991)
Argyle, M.: Social Interaction. Tavistock publications (1969)
Argyle, M.: Bodily Communication, 2nd edn. Methuen, London (1988)
Augé, M.: Non-places: an introduction to anthropology of supermodernity, le seuil (1992)
Bailenson, J.N., Blascovich, J., Beall, A.C., Loomis, J.M.: Equilibrium theory revisited: mutual gaze and personal space in virtual environments. Presence: Teleoper. Virtual Environ. 10(6), 583–598 (2001)
Bailenson, J.N., Blascovich, J., Beall, A.C., Loomis, J.M.: Interpersonal distance in immersive virtual environments. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 29(7), 819–833 (2003)
Baker, J., Wakefield, K.L.: How consumer shopping orientation influences perceived crowding, excitement, and stress at the mall. J. Acad. Mark. Sci. 40(6), 791–806 (2012)
Bateson, J.E., Hui, M.K.: The ecological validity of photographic slides and videotapes in simulating the service setting. J. Consum. Res. 19(2), 271–281 (1992)
Berton, F., Olivier, A.H., Bruneau, J., Hoyet, L., Pettré, J.: Studying gaze behaviour during collision avoidance with a virtual walker: influence of the virtual reality setup. In: 2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR), pp. 717–725. IEEE (2019)
Blascovich, J., Loomis, J., Beall, A.C., Swinth, K.R., Hoyt, C.L., Bailenson, J.N.: Immersive virtual environment technology as a methodological tool for social psychology. Psychol. Inq. 13(2), 103–124 (2002)
Bönsch, A., et al.: Social VR: How personal space is affected by virtual agents’ emotions. In: 2018 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR), pp. 199–206. IEEE (2018)
Bourdieu, P.: The Logic of Practice. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto (1990)
Brady, A.T., Walker, M.B.: Interpersonal distance as a function of situationally induced anxiety. Br. J. Soc. Clin. Psychol. 17(2), 127–133 (1978)
Bühler, M.A., Lamontagne, A.: Circumvention of pedestrians while walking in virtual and physical environments. IEEE Trans. Neural Syst. Rehabil. Eng. 26(9), 1813–1822 (2018)
Cafaro, A., Ravenet, B., Ochs, M., Vilhjálmsson, H.H., Pelachaud, C.: The effects of interpersonal attitude of a group of agents on user’s presence and proxemics behavior. ACM Trans. Interact. Intell. Syst. (TiiS) 6(2), 1–33 (2016)
Chattaraj, U., Seyfried, A., Chakroborty, P.: Comparison of pedestrian fundamental diagram across cultures. Adv. Complex Syst. 12(03), 393–405 (2009)
Cochran, C.D., Hale, W.D.e.H.C.P.: Espace personnel requis dans les emplacements intérieurs “et extérieurs”. J. Psychol. 117, 121
Di Méo, G.: L’individu, le corps et la rue globale. Géogr. Cult. 71, 9–23 (2009)
Elias, N.: What is Sociology?. Columbia University Press, New York (1978)
Elias, N., Dunning, E., et al.: Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilising Process. University College Dublin Press (2008)
de Gelder, B., Kätsyri, J., de Borst, A.W.: Virtual reality and the new psychophysics. Br. J. Psychol. 109(3), 421–426 (2018)
Gérin-Lajoie, M., Richards, C.L., Fung, J., McFadyen, B.J.: Characteristics of personal space during obstacle circumvention in physical and virtual environments. Gait Posture 27(2), 239–247 (2008)
Gérin-Lajoie, M., Richards, C.L., McFadyen, B.J.: The negotiation of stationary and moving obstructions during walking: anticipatory locomotor adaptations and preservation of personal space. Mot. Control 9(3), 242–269 (2005)
Goffman, E.: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth, London (1978)
Hall, E.T.: A system for the notation of proxemic behavior. Am. Anthropol. 65(5), 1003–1026 (1963)
Harrigan, J.A.: Proxemics, kinesics, and gaze (2005)
Iachini, T., Coello, Y., Frassinetti, F., Senese, V.P., Galante, F., Ruggiero, G.: Peripersonal and interpersonal space in virtual and real environments: effects of gender and age. J. Environ. Psychol. 45, 154–164 (2016)
Isaac, J.: La ville sans qualités. La Tour d’Aigues, Éditions de l’Aube, p. 62 (1998)
Kaufmann, J.C.: Corps de femmes, regards d’hommes: sociologie des seins nus. Nathan Paris (1995)
Kaufmann, J.C.: L’invention de soi. Une théorie de l’identité, Nathan Paris (2005)
Kmiecik, C., Mausar, P., Banziger, G.: Attractiveness and interpersonal space. J. Soc. Psychol. 108(2), 277–278 (1979)
Loomis, J.M., Blascovich, J.J., Beall, A.C.: Immersive virtual environment technology as a basic research tool in psychology. Behav. Res. Methods Instr. Comput. 31(4), 557–564 (1999)
McClelland, L., Auslander, N.: Perceptions of crowding and pleasantness in public settings. Environ. Behav. 10(4), 535–553 (1978)
Mehrabian, A.: Orientation behaviors and nonverbal attitude communication. J. Commun. (1967)
Olivier, A.H., Bruneau, J., Kulpa, R., Pettré, J.: Walking with virtual people: evaluation of locomotion interfaces in dynamic environments. IEEE Trans. Visual Comput. Graph. 24(7), 2251–2263 (2017)
Pan, X., Hamilton, A.F.D.C.: Why and how to use virtual reality to study human social interaction: the challenges of exploring a new research landscape. Br. J. Psychol. 109(3), 395–417 (2018)
Remland, M.S., Jones, T.S., Brinkman, H.: Interpersonal distance, body orientation, and touch: effects of culture, gender, and age. J. Soc. Psychol. 135(3), 281–297 (1995)
de la Rosa, S., Breidt, M.: Virtual reality: a new track in psychological research. Br. J. Psychol. 109(3), 427–430 (2018)
Sanz, F.A., Olivier, A.H., Bruder, G., Pettré, J., Lécuyer, A.: Virtual proxemics: locomotion in the presence of obstacles in large immersive projection environments. In: 2015 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR), pp. 75–80. IEEE (2015)
Seyfried, A., Steffen, B., Klingsch, W., Boltes, M.: The fundamental diagram of pedestrian movement revisited. J. Stat. Mech: Theory Exp. 2005(10), P10002 (2005)
Slater, M.: Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philos. Trans. Roy. Soc. B: Biol. Sci. 364(1535), 3549–3557 (2009)
Steele, C.M., Southwick, L.: Alcohol and social behavior: I. The psychology of drunken excess. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 48(1), 18–34 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.48.1.18
Vasser, M., Aru, J.: Guidelines for immersive virtual reality in psychological research. Curr. Opin. Psychol. 36, 71–76 (2020)
Yaremych, H.E., Persky, S.: Tracing physical behavior in virtual reality: a narrative review of applications to social psychology. J. Exp. Soc. Psychol. 85, 103845 (2019)
Yee, N., Bailenson, J.N., Urbanek, M., Chang, F., Merget, D.: The unbearable likeness of being digital: the persistence of nonverbal social norms in online virtual environments. CyberPsychol. Behav. 10(1), 115–121 (2007)
Zibrek, K., Niay, B., Olivier, A.H., Hoyet, L., Pettre, J., McDonnell, R.: Walk this way: evaluating the effect of perceived gender and attractiveness of motion on proximity in virtual reality. In: 2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), pp. 169–170. IEEE (2020)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Duverné, T. et al. (2020). Effect of Social Settings on Proxemics During Social Interactions in Real and Virtual Conditions. In: Bourdot, P., Interrante, V., Kopper, R., Olivier, AH., Saito, H., Zachmann, G. (eds) Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. EuroVR 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12499. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62655-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-62655-6_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-62654-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-62655-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)