Close to me? The influence of affective closeness on space perception.

Recent data show that psychosocial factors affect visual perception. We tested this hypothesis by investigating the relationship between affective closeness and the perception of apertures between two people. People feel discomfort when they are near someone they are not affectively close to. Therefore, we predict that they will be less likely to perceive that they can pass between two people not affectively close to them. Participants had to imagine passing through the aperture between two life-size classmate pictures. We found that the closer participants felt to their classmates, the more they felt able to pass between them. This provides the first evidence of a relationship between affective closeness and the perception of aperture between two people, suggesting that psychosocial factors constrain space perception.