
Personal Space Is a Fear Response - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/personal-space-is-a-fear-response
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arpa
Wait, how exactly perception of "personal space" is a response; secondly,
please drop the pretense that "fear is bad, mkay". It is perfectly fine to
feel fear when a red hot poker enters your personal space (i.e. it can harm
you). There's nothing to be fixed here, system self-preservation subroutines
work just fine, thank you.

Oh, and, _edit_ , just because amygdala is partial to fear responses, it
doesn't make all the actions that it takes part in "fear". It controls a lot
of other functions, such as pleasure, sexual behavior, aggression, memory
consolidation; not to mention that a lot of information passes through it both
into the brain and out of it. Please, age of phrenology is over. It's not
coming back. Human brain and human behavior is not "black and white" anymore,
it's never going to be. It's a complex system of neuron junctions and pathways
some of which are more specialized than others, sure, but, to reiterate, the
incredible malleability and the sheer number of connections in human brain
make neuroscientists even doubt the necessity of well established "centers"
such as Broca's area. God. Damn. It.

~~~
hodwik
Someone took the article personally.

~~~
jerf
The article happens to pattern match a current politically-charged argument in
which opposition to some particular position is labeled as coming from fear,
which is labeled a -phobia, which is therefore labeled as being irrational and
whoever has it is mentally ill. Unsurprisingly, people rarely respond to this
by saying "Oh, yes, you are correct, you have cogently shown me I am mentally
ill, thank you so much for pointing this out!" and instead develop a rather
hostile response to anything that even smells like the argument.

I actually somewhat carefully read the article to see if it ever suggested
that fear in response to personal space violation was bad, and I don't think
it did. I do think that it poorly supported its case, as a couple of other
people are arguing, because just because certain activations look the same
doesn't mean they are the same, but it never claimed this was a bad response.

Personally, based on how it feels from the inside, I can well believe that
personal space is _related to_ fear, and may activate some of the same
circuits as fear, but that it "is" a fear is going beyond the evidence.
Especially given the overloading of the word "fear". I am "afraid" of touching
a hot oven, but I'm not running around in constant fear. It's a perfectly
rational, controlled, situational "fear", not "a fear". Personal space
violations strike me as rather more like the rational, controlled, situational
case even if we are going to call that a "fear" response, which is perfectly
fine scientifically, but serializes into conventional English poorly.

~~~
Jtsummers
For me, I was reading "fear response" as physiological. A ball comes flying
towards my face, my body releases adrenaline, my heart rate spikes, I tense or
flinch. In that case I _also_ experience the emotion of fear.

But sometimes the emotion is absent, see generalized anxiety disorder. I
wasn't _afraid_ , but if you observed my heart rate, breathing, blood pressure
two summers ago you would've thought I was having a constant panic attack. I
wasn't experiencing any fear (emotion), if anything it was confusion (I'd not
experienced anxiety on that level in years so I wasn't prepared for it again).

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taneq
The fact that fear is the response to a perceived invasion of personal space
doesn't mean that your perception of personal space is a fear response.

You can't just lump things into two categories:
[https://youtu.be/bXKvRNnXF3A](https://youtu.be/bXKvRNnXF3A)

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laotzu
Marshall McLuhan has an alternate but related theory for the difference
between "close talkers" and those who like to be able to see the whole person
when talking.

In The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan infers that "close talkers" are often tribal
cultures who rely primarily on the spoken word for means of communication
whereas highly literate cultures like to be able to see the whole person
because of the stress the print medium has on the eye.

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Eric_WVGG
Why are so many of the commenters on this page acting as if they were
personally attacked? Nowhere in the article are "fear responses" described as
bad or unusual.

The knee-jerk hostility and lack of any sense of irony is quite telling.

~~~
arpa
Please point me to the articles' irony. It's easy to miss in that mess.

~~~
Eric_WVGG
Histrionic knee-jerks reactions are a common response to fear. Numerous people
here are simultaneously announcing that they are protective of their personal
space, and lashing out at the article -- one person even admitted that it
triggered his "flight or fight" response. All of this is anecdotal proof of
the thesis.

(Just as an additional anecdote of the flip side of this, I have no personal
space issues -- I like crowds and subways -- and have somewhat reckless
tendencies)

~~~
arpa
Histrionic statements receive histrionic reactions; I fail to see connection
with fear, fright or threat. I mean, we're all just flinging poo here and
that's about it.

What got to me is not the title, but the way how an fascinating topic was
dragged down to the gutter and then just choked to death.

I mean personal space is just another boundary, which one has to cross to "get
up close and personal". It is an act of aggression. Now who displays that
aggression, is what determines what kind of response you'll get. If it's your
sweetheart in a sexy mood, the response will be sexual. If it's a skinhead
with a knife, it will be a fear response. The action is the same: violation of
personal space; the circumstances are not. You could write a dissertation on
that alone. And well here we have a person obviously not in the field, writing
a biology column on neuroscience using one quote of neuroscientist and a case
study of a brain-damaged patient to drive her point that "personal space is a
fear response" and not even doing that well. Sorry. The article is just bad.

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lr4444lr
Why the assumption that it's always fear-based? Personal space boundaries are
also cues to kinship ties, and sexual willingness. To my understanding, this
is observed even in much of the animal kingdom.

~~~
DominikR
Exactly, I'm not afraid of something when I feel that some woman enters my
personal space against my will. I'm just not interested.

I'm also not afraid of the colleague entering my personal space, I'm just not
interested in friendship with that particular person.

~~~
Jtsummers
I find language interesting. The word "afraid" suggests some conscious level
understanding of the fear you're feeling. A fear response doesn't require you
to be conscious of it.

When someone stands too close behind me, particularly if it's unexpected or a
stranger, while I'm not _afraid_ (I am not concerned about being assaulted in
any form), my body still tenses up. That's a fear response.

Something comes quickly at you, seen in your peripheral vision, you react by
flinching, perhaps some adrenaline. A fear response, it may cause an emotional
response of fear, or it may not. But it creates the physiological response to
it.

~~~
DominikR
I'm not a native english speaker so my use of the language is more basic than
yours.

But yes I agree, if a stranger is for some reason standing very close behind
me in an unexpected situation (in public transportation it would be okay) then
of course there would be a fear response directly leading to either moving
away from that person or showing aggression. (fight or flight)

But I don't believe that this fear is wrong on my part and that I should do
something about it.

It is unexpected and unwanted behaviour in our Western societies and this
person should be aware of this and behave appropriately. If the person does
not then he/she either doesn't know what our social rules are (can be
dangerous) or something is wrong with that person (also dangerous)

For example: I am at a party and go home at night through some lonely street,
in front of me (10 meters or so) there is some unknown women going the same
way. The appropriate thing to do is to keep more distance so she is not
afraid, even though I don't have any intentions of harming anyone. (but she
cannot know this, I'm a stranger)

What do you propose how she should feel if for some reason a person would not
keep a safe distance? Is she wrong if she is afraid in such a situation? I
don't think so.

~~~
Jtsummers
> But I don't believe that this fear is wrong on my part and that I should do
> something about it.

I agree. And I think the article is saying the same. Fear (the emotion) is an
appropriate response to numerous things, including someone entering your
personal space.

My response, poorly worded, sorry, was intended to say that a fear _response_
is different from _fear_ (the emotion). Even a non-stranger could elicit a
fear _response_ from you, even a trusted person or lover, by entering your
personal space. But it may not trigger the _emotion_ of fear. That is, if I
know you and trust you, you could be in my face during a conversation. I
wouldn't fear you or the situation. But I may still experience the heightened
senses, the increased heart rate, due to your proximity because of a
physiological response (fear response).

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je-so
Personal space is a natural right!

Even animals has this right except farm animals.

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miguelrochefort
This has been said over and over and over again. Privacy is irrational, a
response to fear.

Why model a future after a fear?

~~~
tbrownaw
_...is irrational, a response to fear._

You do realize that fear isn't always (or even usually) irrational, right?

~~~
miguelrochefort
I do realize that.

What if a person is afraid of guns. Would the solution be for the government
to subsidize body armors?

~~~
tbrownaw
I have no idea what you're trying to get at here.

