The effects of physical and social distance on psychological distance

Abstract

Psychological distance between people is an important dimension of experience in human groups. The concept has been defined as "the degree of intimacy or alienation that a person desires to experience in connection with specific others" (Tolor, 1970, p.160). Distance, in this sense, pertains to the degree of desired interpersonal intimacy between humans, or the amount of "emotional investment" (Tolor, 1970) which an individual makes in other people. Tolor and Orange (1969) have suggested that this important dimension of personality consists of three components: a. the degree of emotional involvement which an individual experiences with other humans; b. the "target" of the emotional involvement; that is, the class of people with whom he strives for emotional involvement; and c. the direction of his striving - whether associating himself with,or disassociating himself from, others. The desire to form emotional relationships can be scaled on a continuum from a very strong to a very weak desire to associate with others. While physical proximity has been demonstrated to be correlated with psychological distance, this relationship is often far from perfect. For example, marital partners who live in close proximity may be quite distant psychologically, while individuals far removed geographically may have very strong emotional ties.