Crowding and Preferred Interpersonal Distances Across Time: An Experience‐Sampling Method Study

Individuals prefer interpersonal distance; that is approaching beyond a certain amount of distance is perceived as unpleasant. The extensive research in this area spans from cross-cultural psychology to applied sciences such as architecture. Although there is a large corpus of research on inter-individual and cross-cultural differences in preferred interpersonal distances, these preferences have—to our knowledge—yet to be analysed intra-individually across time. Therefore, we conducted a pre-registered experience-sampling study in the field (N = 81 participants, 2 weeks, k = 3716 daily assessments) by assessing preferred distances and whether they were contingent on the number of people in close proximity (i.e., crowding). Furthermore, we used a Bluetooth scan to nonintrusively measure the number of people within 2 m. We found substantial variance in the preferred interpersonal distances, not only between participants but also within participants, suggesting large situation-dependent state-like aspects of this construct. Second, in addition to the expected age and gender effects (older and female participants preferred larger distances), the more people there were within 2 m (Bluetooth was the best measure for this), the smaller the preferred interpersonal distance to strangers. This observation indicates the potential presence of either an adaptation process (i.e., adapting to the situation) or a selection process (i.e., demonstrating a greater tolerance for crowding due to the self-selection of the situation). It seems probable that research on the state aspects of preferred interpersonal distances will retain their significance in the future, given the ongoing process of urbanisation in numerous countries worldwide.