Social Cognition
Personal Space Task
Also called: stop-distance paradigm, interpersonal distance task, comfort distance, comfortable interpersonal distance
Measure comfortable distance online: faces come toward participants across a drawn room, slowly or faster, and participants stop each one where they start to feel uncomfortable, scored as the stop distance by speed and by face.
5-7 minTimed: desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad
Free to start: 10 free participants per account, then $0.99 per participant for academic research, or any yearly plan. Try it here first, with no account.
- Papers, 2021 to 2025
- 51
- Evidence grade
- C
- Registered clinical studies
- 6
What it measures
Measures comfortable distance from an approaching face. Faces come toward the participant across a drawn room, slowly or faster, and the participant stops each one where they start to feel uncomfortable. Scores give the stop distance in room units, by speed and by face.
Constructs
- Personal space
- Interpersonal distance
- Social approach and avoidance
Research uses
- Research on personal space in social anxiety
- Research on interpersonal distance in autism
- Research on how approach speed and the approaching face shape comfortable distance
How the paradigm works
Personal space is the area people keep around themselves, where another person coming closer causes discomfort, and the stop-distance method measures it by having someone approach until the participant says stop (Hayduk, 1978, gives an overview of personal space and its measures). Kennedy and colleagues (2009) had an experimenter walk toward the participant from 4.7 m across a room and measured the distance the participant chose, four times. Iachini and colleagues (2014) moved virtual people toward participants at a constant 0.5 m per second and asked them to press a button as soon as the distance made them feel uncomfortable.
More about the paradigm
This version draws a room in perspective, seen from a fixed eye 1.6 room units above the floor. A London Set face starts 5 units away and comes toward the participant at 0.5 or 1 unit per second, growing as perspective requires, until the participant presses the space bar or clicks Stop, or until it reaches the closest point, 0.25 units away, where the picture fills the height of the drawing. Eight people, one woman and one man from each of the set's four recorded groups, each come once at each speed in every pass: two passes and 32 approaches in the standard form, one pass and 16 in the short form. Each half pass shows every person once, half of them slowly, in a seeded order that never shows the same person twice in a row. Two practice approaches come first.
The primary score is the mean stop distance in room units; an approach that reached the closest point without a stop counts as the closest point. Secondary scores give the mean distance at each speed and their difference, the mean distances for women's and men's faces, and the spread of the eight faces' mean distances. Each stop distance comes from the time of the press, so at the faster speed the face covers more distance while the press is made.
Distances are in the units of the drawn room, not real-world distances, and the judgments describe the pictures, not the people pictured. Norms are off; compare people within a study.
Scores
- Stop distanceroom units
- Mean distance at which the participant stopped the approaching faces, in units of the drawn room. An approach that reached the closest point without a stop counts as 0.25.
- Larger means the participant kept more distance.
- Slow approach distanceroom units
- Mean stop distance for faces that came at 0.5 units per second.
- Informational
- Fast approach distanceroom units
- Mean stop distance for faces that came at 1 unit per second.
- Informational
- Speed effectroom units
- Fast minus slow mean stop distance. At the faster speed the face also covers more distance while the press is made.
- Informational
- Distance from women's facesroom units
- Mean stop distance for the four women's faces.
- Informational
- Distance from men's facesroom units
- Mean stop distance for the four men's faces.
- Informational
- Face spreadroom units
- Standard deviation of the eight faces' mean stop distances.
- Informational
- Approaches stoppedcount
- Approaches the participant stopped, leaving out stops under 100 ms after the face started to move.
- Quality check
- Closest point reachedcount
- Approaches that reached the closest point without a stop.
- Quality check
- Planned approachescount
- 16 or 32 test approaches, by the approaches setting.
- Informational
- Anticipationscount
- Presses before a face started to move or within 100 ms of its start. They do not stop the face.
- Quality check
Use and evidence
51 papers from 2021 to 2025 name this task in their title or abstract, up 59% compared with 2016 to 2020. That ranks it 428 of 670 test families in our census. See the counts for every test.
Show the numbers
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 11 |
| 2024 | 14 |
| 2023 | 7 |
| 2022 | 7 |
| 2021 | 12 |
| 2020 | 10 |
| 2019 | 4 |
| 2018 | 6 |
| 2017 | 6 |
| 2016 | 6 |
| 2015 | 3 |
| 2014 | 3 |
| 2013 | 5 |
| 2012 | 1 |
| 2011 | 1 |
| 2010 | 1 |
| 2009 | 0 |
| 2008 | 1 |
| 2007 | 1 |
| 2006 | 1 |
| 2005 | 0 |
| 2004 | 2 |
| 2003 | 1 |
| 2002 | 0 |
| 2001 | 0 |
| 2000 | 1 |
Use grade D
30 to 99 papers from 2021 to 2025.
Evidence grade C
At least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies.
- Papers on test-retest reliability
- 1
- Papers on reliability or validity
- 9
- Registered clinical studies using it as an outcome
- 6
Measured on ConductCognition
Pooled across the studies that feed our platform norms, by device group. A figure needs 50 or more people.
No pooled figure yet.
Note on the counts: includes studies in virtual reality; stop distances in the units of a room our code draws, not real-world distances; judgments describe the pictures, not the people. Norms off..
How the grades work
Use: A is 1,000 or more papers from 2021 to 2025, B 300 to 999, C 100 to 299, D 30 to 99 and E fewer than 30. Evidence: A means at least 25 papers report its test-retest reliability and at least 25 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome; B, at least 8 test-retest papers, and either 5 registered clinical studies or 150 reliability or validity papers; C, at least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies; D, little published measurement evidence found. The counts measure use. They include every paper that names the task in its title or abstract. Grades describe the published research on this task, not ConductCognition's version of it.
Source: ConductCognition test census 0.48.0, counted 12 November 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
Task design
The trial sequence as the test runs in ConductCognition.
- Faces
- Neutral front London Set photographs of 8 people, one woman and one man from each of the set's four recorded groups, none of them shown in the Gaze Direction Task. All are grayscale and matched in luminance and contrast, with the black background around each face made transparent. A separate person appears in practice.
- Room
- A room drawn in perspective from a fixed eye 1.6 room units above the floor, with a floor of 1-unit tiles and a back wall 6 units away. Each face is drawn at the size perspective gives at its distance, with the pupils at eye level.
- Approaches
- Each face waits 1,000 ms at 5 units, then comes toward the participant at 0.5 or 1 unit per second until it is stopped or reaches the closest point, 0.25 units away. 32 approaches in the standard form: every face once at each speed in each of two passes, half of the faces slow in each half pass, in a seeded order that never shows the same person twice in a row. The short form has one pass of 16. Two practice approaches come first.
- Answer
- The space bar or the Stop button stops the face, timed from the press itself. Presses before the face moves or within 100 ms of its start are counted and ignored. A stopped face stays in place for 500 ms, and a 500 ms blank separates the approaches.
- Scoring
- Stop distance is the mean distance in room units at which faces were stopped; an approach that reached the closest point counts as 0.25. Secondary scores give the mean at each speed and the fast minus slow difference, the means for women's and men's faces, and the standard deviation of the eight faces' means.
Distances are in the units of the drawn room, not real-world distances, and the judgments describe the pictures, not the people pictured. No answer is right or wrong. Norms are off. Scores support research and do not diagnose. The 8 test people and the practice person also appear in Face Memory Test (4), Face-Name Memory Task (3), Face Matching Task (9), Chimeric Faces Task (2), Part-Whole Face Task (3), Thatcher Illusion Task (5), Two-Tone Pictures Task (3), Verbal Overshadowing Task (5), Face Impressions Task (9), Real or AI Face Task (9), Uncanny Valley Task (2), Face Aftereffect Task (2), Group Faces Task (9). Counts include the other tasks' practice pictures and foils. Separate sessions or counterbalance task order when combining face tasks.
Quality checks
Each session is marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason, before you see its scores.
Scored rows: personal_space_test from the scored run. A stop distance has no correct answer. An incomplete run and faces that reached the closest point without a stop on at least half of the approaches are flagged. Stops under 200 ms after the face starts to move on at least half of the approaches invalidate.
Why these rules
There is no correct option to compare with chance, so accuracy is not judged against chance. Stop distances describe responses within this session, in the units of the drawn room. An answer under 200 ms is faster than a simple visual reaction, so it cannot reflect the item. Following response-time effort screening for untimed tests (Wise and Kong 2005), the session is invalid only when at least half the answers are that fast. A hidden tab lets the study, delay or response timers run without the participant, so a percentile is withheld after one.
No percentile. Scores and quality flags only.
Running this test
Settings you can change
| Setting | Standard | Allowed |
|---|---|---|
| Approaches | 2 passes, 32 approaches (standard) | 2 passes, 32 approaches (standard), 1 pass, 16 approaches |
Yearly plans can change settings within these limits. Free and pay-as-you-go studies use the standard settings.
Need a setting this test does not have?
Devices and languages
- Timed test: participants need a desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad. Participant devices
- Languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese.
- Available on: Every plan, including the free plan.
- No percentile. Scores and quality flags only. How norms work
- Recruiting online? See the setup guides for Prolific, Sona Systems, CloudResearch Connect and Qualtrics.
Cite and describe
Participants completed the Personal Space Task in a web browser (ConductCognition task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0; Kennedy et al., 2009), with the standard settings (approaches: 2 passes, 32 approaches). The main score was stop distance (mean distance at which the participant stopped the approaching faces, in units of the drawn room).
ConductCognition versions: task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0. Every export records the versions each session used, for a methods section.
- Kennedy, D. P., Gläscher, J., Tyszka, J. M., & Adolphs, R. (2009). Personal space regulation by the human amygdala. Nature Neuroscience, 12(10), 1226-1227. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2381The stop-distance method: a person walks toward the participant across a room, repeated, and the chosen distance is measured.
- Iachini, T., Coello, Y., Frassinetti, F., & Ruggiero, G. (2014). Body space in social interactions: A comparison of reaching and comfort distance in immersive virtual reality. PLOS ONE, 9(11), e111511. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111511Virtual people approach at a constant speed until the participant presses a button where the distance starts to feel uncomfortable.
- Hayduk, L. A. (1978). Personal space: An evaluative and orienting overview. Psychological Bulletin, 85(1), 117-134. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.85.1.117An overview of personal space and its measures.
Source papers
Questions
How long does the Personal Space Task take?
About 5 to 7 minutes, as listed in the test library.
What device does a participant need?
Timed test: participants need a desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad. The browser must be Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
What scores does it produce?
Stop distance, Slow approach distance, Fast approach distance, Speed effect, Distance from women's faces, Distance from men's faces, Face spread, Approaches stopped, Closest point reached, Planned approaches and Anticipations. Each session is also marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason.
How widely is the Personal Space Task used in research?
51 papers from 2021 to 2025 name it in their title or abstract, up 59% compared with 2016 to 2020. That ranks it 428 of 670 test families in the ConductCognition test census (use grade D). Source: ConductCognition test census 0.48.0, counted 12 November 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
How much reliability evidence does the Personal Space Task have?
In the published research, 1 paper reports its test-retest reliability and 6 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome (evidence grade C in the ConductCognition test census).
Does it report a percentile?
No. Scores and quality flags only.
Which settings can a researcher change?
Approaches (2 passes, 32 approaches (standard), 1 pass, 16 approaches). Settings can be changed on yearly plans; free and pay-as-you-go studies use the standard settings.
Which languages can participants use?
Participants can take this test in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese. English is on every plan, and the other languages come with yearly plans. Have a native speaker read the machine-translated text before launch.
Is this a clinical test?
No. ConductCognition is for research use only. It runs, scores and exports the test; clinical interpretation is outside the platform.
Every test: the full test list.
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