Personal Bubble Issues?

Yesterday, I decided to violate someone’s personal bubble. I approached one of my friends and struck up a conversation. However, instead of standing a few feet away, like a normal person, I stood right next to him so that my face was a few inches away from his.

His instantaneous reaction was to back away. He pretended that it was just some sort of accident and tried his best to continue the conversation as if nothing happened. However, I followed him as he stepped backwards, so I was still in his face. Then he got annoyed and asked me what I thought I was doing. I answered him saying, “I’m just having a chat with you.” He asked me, “but why are you so close to me?”

“Well what’s wrong with me being close to you?”

“It’s uncomfortable”

“Why is it uncomfortable?”

“It just is!”

After seeing that he was getting angry, I backed off and told him that it was something I was supposed to do for this class. We both laughed it off afterwards. I thought it was interesting how my friend was unable to explain why he felt so uncomfortable when I was so close to him. Why do we have a personal bubble? Speaking from an evolutionary perspective, it could be for safety reasons, so it gives you time to react should anything suddenly attack you. 

Raging Hormones

I remember playing basketball with some friends in junior high, and one friend was getting extremely angry as we were playing. He was normally fairly calm and a pretty decent basketball player. But during the game, the person defending him was clearly better than him, and he was getting extremely frustrated. Every time he missed a shot, he would swear and slam the ball on the ground. 

As the game progressed, he started getting more and more physical in his playing style, pushing and shoving more and more. He also became more and more competitive until after one last blocked shot, he finally snapped. He screamed that it was a foul and asked the person defending him if he was looking for a fight. My friends and I were able to break the two of them up and finish the game without things getting worse.

I think this was a case in which hormones were influencing my friend. It is likely that testosterone had a role in his behaviors because he was expressing a dominance reaction during the competitive interactions during basketball. There also may have been some cortisol affecting him because of his stress from being shut down during such a competitive sport like basketball. I thought it was amusing to see how greatly a person's composure can change given a certain context or situation.

 

What is emotion?

I believe emotions are a set of physiological responses that occur when we are presented with certain stimuli so that our brain can learn to react a certain way when presented with the same stimuli again. So, while a child may not feel sad at a funeral, they will see all the other grown-ups around him or her, thus learning to be sad the next time that child is at a funeral.

Of course, I do think there are some stimuli that carry emotions that don't have to be learned. If someone is having fun, they will most likely smile and laugh. I think that may be a biological trait that is passed down genetically.

Emotion defines a lot of our personality. Some people have low emotional affectivity whereas others are high. Some are more pessimistic while others are naturally more optimistic. I think part of the development of our emotions comes from our personality constructs on how we view the world.