Personal Space: How We Interact With Social Robots
Exploring our comfort boundaries with robots.
Posted March 18, 2025 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
Have you ever stood next to a robot and wondered how close is too close? Personal space —often called “comfort distance”—is a key aspect of social behavior that shapes how we navigate our interactions with both people and machines. When someone steps into our personal space, we tend to feel uneasy or threatened. But do we experience that same discomfort when the “intruder” is a robot, and does the level of discomfort vary depending on the robot’s traits, such as its perceived “ sex ,” attractiveness , or capacity for thought and emotion ?
In psychology, comfort distance refers to the radius around us that we like to keep free from intrusion, so we can feel relaxed and unthreatened. This concept has roots in classic studies of human interpersonal space—imagine pressing into a packed elevator, or standing in a long checkout line where strangers are forced to stand much closer than usual. As robots become more commonplace in everyday environments, these questions of personal space extend beyond human-to-human interactions. Researchers are now investigating how human comfort zones might shift—or stay the same—when a robot enters the picture.
In two studies involving more than 400 participants, we explored how people evaluate comfort distance when presented with realistic digital images of humans and comparable humanoid robots. Each figure, whether human or robot, was shown at distances ranging from 50 cm to 250 cm. Participants not only provided their comfort ratings for each image but also judged how attractive they found each figure. In one of the experiments, they further evaluated the figure’s perceived agency (the capacity to act or do) and experience (the capacity to feel or sense emotions). This allowed us to see whether perceptions of a figure’s “mind” influenced how close people were willing to stand.
Our findings showed that participants generally felt more comfortable with human avatars than with humanoid robots. When the figure was a robot, people preferred it to stay at larger distances. Another noteworthy pattern emerged regarding “sex”: participants were more comfortable around female human avatars compared to male ones, but for robots, this difference faded away—male and female robots were both perceived as similarly less comfortable to approach. Beyond these proximity preferences, humans were consistently rated as more attractive, and as having greater agency and experience, than their robotic counterparts. In practical terms, it appears people like to keep robots at a slightly longer arm’s length, and this may tie into how “alive” or “feeling” they consider the robot to be.
These findings matter because robots are increasingly showing up in settings where close human contact is common, such as schools, hospitals, and elder care facilities. If a robot is caring for an older adult or helping children in a classroom, understanding how close it should get—and how that proximity affects the sense of safety and ease—is crucial. The research suggests that robots designed to display more human-like qualities, or that evoke greater empathy, might be allowed into closer personal spaces. However, as long as robots remain less attractive or less capable of conveying “mind” than humans, people may be hesitant to allow them too close.
Ultimately, these insights might be informative for designers and engineers to create robots that move and interact in ways that feel more natural for human counterparts. By paying attention to how robots look, act, and communicate emotion, it may be possible to reduce discomfort and build smoother, more intuitive relationships between humans and the machines we increasingly rely upon.
Pazhoohi, F., Gojamgunde, S., & Kingstone, A. (2023). Give me space: Sex, attractiveness, and mind perception as potential contributors to different comfort distances for humans and robots . Journal of Environmental Psychology, 90 , 102088.
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Farid Pazhoohi, Ph.D., is a lecturer in psychology at the University of Plymouth. His interdisciplinary research program focuses on the cognitive, social, and neural mechanisms of interpersonal perception.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.