Equilibrium theory revisited: Mutual gaze and personal space in virtual environments

During the last half of the twentieth century, psychologists and anthropolo gists have studied proxemics, or spacing behavior, among people in many con texts. As we enter the twenty-first century, immersive virtual environment technology promises new experimental venues in which researchers can study proxemics. Immersive virtual environments provide realistic and compelling experimental settings without sacrificing experimental control. The experim ent reported here tested Argyle and Dean's (1965) equilibrium theory's spec ification of an inverse relationship between mutual gaze, a nonverbal cue s ignaling intimacy, and interpersonal distance. Participants were immersed i n a three-dimensional virtual room in which a virtual human representation (that is, an embodied agent) stood. Under the guise of a memory task, parti cipants walked towards and around the agent. Distance between the participa nt and agent was tracked automatically via our immersive virtual environmen t system. All participants maintained more space around agents than they di d around similarly sized and shaped but nonhuman-like objects. Female parti cipants maintained more interpersonal distance between themselves and agent s who engaged them in eye contact (that is, mutual gaze behavior) than betw een themselves and agents who did not engage them in eye contact, whereas m ale participants did not. Implications are discussed for the study of proxe mics via immersive virtual environment technology, as well as the design of virtual environments and virtual humans.