Mitigation of threat by posture, distance, and proximity 1

Abstract

It has been shown previously that distance mitigates the extent to which nonverbal cues such as direction of eye gaze, facial expression, sex, and posture communicate threat. This article extends the relevant body of knowledge by investigating a new factor: proximity of threat. Theory predicts that environments with two stimuli, such as people, would be perceived as more threatening if the nearer (proximate) person exhibits hostile cues and the farther (distal) person exhibits benign cues rather than vice-versa. The results, based on an experiment with 24 scenes and 24 participants, supported the predictions for the visual cues of sex and posture at distances from 5 to 20 m.