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Edward Hall, an American anthropologist, first defined "personal space" in the mid-1900s, when he noticed that its size varied widely from culture to culture: Southern Europeans and Latin Americans, for example, were "closer talkers", while Northern Europeans and North Americans were more stand-offish. Personal space, Hall surmised, was a form of social communication, helping to separate insiders from outsiders. It was such a fundamental aspect of shared culture, in fact, that he proposed it deserved to be measured exactly—in inches.
But is it just a cultural artifact? Not exactly: Newer neurological studies suggest that it has deep evolutionary roots, and is tied directly into our fear and anxiety centers. The brain may construct personal space in the amygdala, a region associated with the fear response, according to scientists at the California Institute of Technology. In one experiment, published in 2009, they asked a woman whose amygdala had been damaged, referred to as SM, to rate her comfort level as an experimenter approached her.
"SM demonstrated a striking lack of discomfort at close distances," the researchers wrote. "Even when nose-to-nose with direct eye contact," she insisted she was "perfectly comfortable."
People with normal amygdalae don't do this. When placed in…
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