The Effect of Facial Expressions on Interpersonal Space: A Gender Study in Immersive Virtual Reality

In proxemics, the interpersonal space is the optimal social distance between individuals. Evidence has shown that the emotional facial expressions and gender-related effects can modulate this distance during social interactions. Typically, this distance increases in threatening situations and decreases in safe situations. Moreover, male dyads maintain larger distances than female dyads whereas the findings about mixed-sex dyads are still unclear. Virtual Reality (VR) based technologies are becoming more and more used in different areas of everyday life and, in the scientific field, for studying social phenomena. This raises the question of the degree of similarity of VR simulations to actual phenomena, i.e. its ecological validity and its effectiveness for applied purposes. In order to clarify gender-related and emotion-related effects and the ecological validity of VR, we investigated if real females and males differently modulated their interpersonal distance while male and female virtual confederates with happy, angry and neutral faces approached them. Results showed that participants preferred larger distances with both male and female virtual confederates who showed an angry face rather than neutral and happy. Moreover, males preferred a shorter distance, particularly when facing smiling virtual females, while females preferred a larger distance from angry virtual males. These results suggest that gender differences can affect the impact of emotional facial expression on the modulation of the interpersonal space. Moreover, they confirm previous behavioural studies and add further support to the ecological validity of IVR simulations and thus its potential effectiveness as a tool for research and application interventions.