Females Perform Higher Proximity than Male in Communication in Standing Position at Interpersonal Level

Essay by unsplendid_1College, UndergraduateC, March 2007

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In this research, our researchers hypothesized that female dyads stand closer to each other than male dyads do at interpersonal communication level. Our researchers randomly observed 45 pairs of female dyads and 45 pairs of male dyads on the University of California, Santa Barbara campus, eyeballing and estimating their proximities. Each pair of dyads are categorized into intimate, personal and social distance zones by our researchers’ estimates of the distance they were standing apart when they stand next to each other when they are communicating in a standing position. We calculated our statistics into percentages to compare the differences in how female and male conduct standing conversation. Our study shows that most female dyads stood more closely together in an intimate distance while most male dyads communicate within a further physical distance.

The idea of physical posture versus gender had always been a long discussed issue. Thousands of researches were done on related topics by researchers who tried to find out how gender account for social issues.

Studies have pointed out how men and women’s body posture displayed sociometric status and power and showed how gender inter-relates with situational differences through the observation of proxemics (Cashdan, 1998; Berman and Smith, 1984). Although Cashdan’s study suggested that “male body posture was open then women” (Cashdan, 1998), the measure of openness of body posture was limited to a sitting position. Knowing that in order to understand a far more complicated study of related topics we must explore whether the difference between how genders perform in terms of proximity does exists in a natural environment, not restricted by any environmental settings. Our study is an observation to ensure the external validity of this relationship while holding other factors unknown and not bringing in a new variable. Deborah Tannen in “Sex, Lies and...