Luowei Yan¹ (), Clara Colombatto², Jelena Ristic¹; ¹McGill University, ²University of Waterloo

Human life is inherently social, with people frequently assembling in groups of two or three individuals. Accordingly, human perception is attuned to detect social groups; for example, observers are faster at detecting individuals facing towards versus away from each other, an effect known as the ‘facing advantage’. However, group configuration is not defined solely by the orientation of its members, but also by the distances between them. The study of proxemics identifies four interpersonal distance zones — intimate, personal, social, and public — with only the intimate and personal distances supporting close social interactions. Here, in a preregistered experiment, we investigated the role of interpersonal distance in the perception of social groups. Participants viewed displays containing four dyads or triads and searched for facing groups (among non-facing distractors) or non-facing groups (among facing distractors). Group members were positioned at either personal or public distances. Participants were faster to find dyads than triads, and groups with members positioned at closer interpersonal distances compared to farther ones (personal vs. public). Most importantly, while overall facing groups were found faster than non-facing groups, this facing advantage also varied with interpersonal distance such that for groups of two the facing advantage was more pronounced at the personal relative to public distance, while for groups of three the facing advantage did not vary across distances. This suggests that distance between group members may play a greater role in the perception of smaller dyads, with distances conducive to close social interactions enhancing perceptual grouping. Social perception thus appears to be attuned not only to the overall structure of groups, but also to their intrinsic interactive properties, highlighting a fundamental capacity of the human perceptual system to incorporate diverse environmental cues into the perception of complex social structures.

Acknowledgements: This project was supported by funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC), Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC), G. W Stairs, and William Dawson Funds.