Abstract
Face masks and social distancing are widely encouraged as barrier gestures against the Covid-19 pandemic. In the aspect of social psychology, severe public hygiene might change people’s perception of interpersonal distance (IPD). The purpose of the current study was to study the effects of face mask and gender on IPD performances. Under the isolation condition, the paper-and-pencil test was selected and conducted into an online version of visual distance scale for IPD measurement. Thirty participants were required to drag the picture-confederates for determining the comfort distance under facing confederates with/without face masks of different genders. The result of the ANOVA showed the significant effect by face mask and confederate’s gender on IPD. For confederate’s gender, the IPD of male was larger than female. Moreover, the results of face mask effect were found that participants preferred a larger IPD when facing the confederate without a face mask than that with a face mask. In other words, the image of the face mask can arouse the feeling of safety and contribute to social intercourse promotion during the Covid-19 pandemic.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Hall, E.T.: The Hidden Dimension. Garden City, Doubleday, New York (1966)
Hayduk, L.A.: Personal space: where we now stand. Psychol. Bull. 94, 293–335 (1983)
Kennedy, D.P., Gläscher, J., Tyszka, J.M., et al.: Personal space regulation by the human amygdala. Nat. Neurosci. 12, 1226–1227 (2009)
Lourenco, S.F., Longo, M.R., Pathman, T.: Near space and its relation to claustrophobic fear. Cognition 119, 448–453 (2011)
Uzzell, D., Horne, N.: The influence of biological sex, sexuality and gender role on interpersonal distance. Brit. J. Soc. Psychol. 45, 579–597 (2006)
Yu, X., Xiong, W., Lee, Y.-C.: An investigation into interpersonal and peripersonal spaces of Chinese people for different directions and genders. Front. Psychol. 11, 981 (2020)
Adams, L., Zuckerman, D.: The effect of lighting conditions on personal space requirements. J. Gen. Psychol. 118(4), 335–340 (1991)
Hayduk, L.A.: The shape of personal space: an experimental investigation. Can. J. Behav. Sci. 13(1), 87 (1981)
Gessaroli, E., Santelli, E., di Pellegrino, G., et al.: Personal space regulation in childhood autism spectrum disorders. PloS ONE 8(9), e74959 (2013)
Bailenson, J.N., Blascovich, J., Beall, A.C., et al.: Interpersonal distance in immersive virtual environments. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 29(7), 819–833 (2003)
Iachini, T., Coello, Y., Frassinetti, F., et al.: Peripersonal and interpersonal space in virtual and real environments: effects of gender and age. J. Environ. Psychol. 45, 154–164 (2016)
Leung, N.H., Chu, D.K., Shiu, E.Y., et al.: Respiratory virus shedding in exhaled breath and efficacy of face masks. Nat. Med. 26(5), 676–680 (2020)
World Health Organization: Maladie à coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19): conseils au grand public (2020). http://www.who.int/fr/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public. Accessed 28 Jan 2021
Abney, K.: “Containing” tuberculosis, perpetuating stigma: the materiality of N95 respirator masks. Anthropol. South. Afr. 41(4), 270–283 (2018)
Kabindra, M., Shakya, A.N., et al.: Evaluating the efficacy of cloth facemasks in reducing particulate matter exposure. J. Expos. Sci. Environ. Epidemiol. Off. J. Int. Soc. Expos. Sci. 27, 352–357 (2017)
Brienen, N.C., Timen, A., Wallinga, J., et al.: The effect of mask use on the spread of influenza during a pandemic. Risk Anal. Int. J. 30(8), 1210–1218 (2010)
Cartaud, A., Quesque, F., Coello, Y., et al.: Wearing a face mask against Covid-19 results in a reduction of social distancing. Plos ONE 15(12), e0243023 (2020)
Dosey, M.A., Meisels, M.: Personal space and self-protection. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 11, 93–97 (1969)
Coello, Y., Bourgeois, J., Iachini, T.: Embodied perception of reachable space: how do we manage threatening objects? Cogn. Process. 13(13), 1–135 (2012)
Michael, S.A., Dylan, F.C.: Parieto-frontal interactions, personal space, and defensive behavior. Neuropsychologia 44(13), 2621–2635 (2006)
Argyle, M., Dean, J.: Eye-contact, distance and Affiliation. Sociometry 28, 289–304 (1965)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Ethics declarations
Compliance with Ethical Standards
The study was approved by the Logistics Department for Civilian Ethics Committee of South China University of Technology.
All subjects who participated in the experiment were provided with and signed an informed consent form.
All relevant ethical safeguards have been met with regard to subject protection.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this paper
Cite this paper
Wang, M., Lee, YC. (2022). Investigating the Effects of Face Mask and Gender on Interpersonal Distance Judgments. In: Long, S., Dhillon, B.S. (eds) Man-Machine-Environment System Engineering: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on MMESE. MMESE 2021. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 800. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5963-8_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5963-8_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-16-5962-1
Online ISBN: 978-981-16-5963-8
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)