SYMBOLIC-PROXEMIC ZONES REGULATION BY PERSONS OF DIFFERENT AGE GROUPS

The success of any communication process largely depends not only on what interlocutors say, but also on how they give and receive messages and at what distance it is done. For optimization of this process it is important to know the laws of proximity language. The particularity of proximity language is that it is driven by subconscious impulses of a person while he/she lacks the opportunity to forge them. This allows an individual to trust symbolic language more, than a usual verbal message channel. We believe that the distance between a transmitter and a receiver of the message is the most symbolic and relevant feature in the interaction process. Psychological experiment consisted of four episodes. All participants (208 male and 183 female) were evaluated according to the “Portrait” technique that required all participants to approach at a maximal comfortable distance to photographs of persons located in a “symbolic circle”. During a psychological research it is investigated how a person regulates his/her behavior in a symbolic-proxemic zone in regards to people of different ages. In the article we also studied how the choice of a particular proximity zone of interaction is made based on sex, height of the person, subject of the message transmitted/received as well as the characteristics of relationships of people, current emotional state and personal temper of an individual. It was indicated that in order to gain encouragement by another person, a personality reduces a distance of contact therefore showing a proxemic distance is correlated with a level of negative attitude to a partner. Control of the proxemic distance significantly depends on internal symbols such as social status, introversion-extraversion, total size and content of message.