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The authors are proposing a theoretical model explaining the behavior of individuals tested through experiments on obedience toward authority conducted according to Milgram’s paradigm. Their assumption is that the participant faces typical avoidance-avoidance conflict conditions. Participant does not want to hurt the learner in the adjacent room but he or she also does not want to harm the experimenter. The solution to this conflict, entailing hurting on of the two, may be different depending on the spatial organization of the experiment. In the study, experimental conditions were modified, so that the participant was (vs. was not) in the same room as the experimenter and was (vs. was not) in the same room as the learner. Forty individuals (20 women and 20 men) were tested in each of the four experimental conditions. It turns out that the physical presence of the experimenter was conducive to obedience, while the physical presence of the learner reduced it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Establishing government agencies outside ministerial departments is frequently justified by a need to safeguard agency autonomy. In addition to 'formal agencification', that is, erecting formal barriers between agencies and ministries, agencies are also frequently (re)located physically distant from ministries to both signal and strengthen agency autonomy. However, we know little of the effects of physical location and distance on agency autonomy. Using two large surveys from 2006 and 2016, this study examines how geographical location and distance affect agency autonomy. Our study establishes that agency autonomy is only weakly associated with physical location and distance, and is much less important than political salience. Whereas a conventional claim is that agency autonomy may be strengthened by physically (re)locating agencies at arm's length distance from the core executive, our study suggests that physical (re)location represents an in effective administrative policy design-tool when applied to agency autonomy. Points for practitioners: Physical distance between agencies and parent ministries is only remotely associated with agency autonomy. Physical location thus represents an ineffective design-tool if the purpose is to increase agency autonomy [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paid domestic work is a social fact strongly defined by racial, class, gender, and territory relations, which reflect social hierarchies and differentiation within Brazilian society. The social relevance of paid domestic workers in Brazil, a country with a large gap in access to socio-reproductive public services, is invertedly proportional to their social acknowledgment, income, and social protection. At the bottom of the Brazilian social pyramid, paid domestic workers are particularly vulnerable during socioeconomic crises. The covid 19 pandemic and an economic crisis in Brazil increased social inequalities, without effective public action to reduce its consequences. Informed by secondary sources and by public statistics analysis, this article is drawn on the contradiction between the physical proximity and the social distance that is inherent to paid domestic work aiming to present the main challenges that paid domestic workers experienced during the most critical period of the sanitary crisis.

Relatively little is known about how commitment manifests in couples' everyday lives in a way that orients couples toward their future together. Building on the Investment Model of Commitment, we propose that, in everyday life, individuals with high levels of commitment are more likely to (a) assure their partners about the future of the relationship and (b) behaviorally invest in that future by spending more time in the partner's presence. Results from a sample of individuals (N = 100) suggest that relationship commitment is associated with greater time investment in the relationship (i.e., time spent with the partner in daily life); results from a second sample of couple members (N = 269) replicate this effect and suggest that relationship commitment is associated with the use of daily assurances, which mediate the relationship between commitment and time spent co-present with the partner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary purpose of this study is to empirically test the effects of trust, physical proximity, and network structure on the information-sharing ties across the Supply Chain Network (SCN) over time. Given a three-wave dataset, the Simulation Investigation for Empirical Network Analysis (SIENA) technique based on a Stochastic Actor-Oriented Model (SAOM) is employed to develop the research model. To do this, the two processes, including social selection (at the network level) and social influence (at the behavior level), are considered. The respondents of this study consisted of 91 chief executive officers from 32 Production Organizations (POs). The results revealed that information sharing was significantly the result of the social selection process. Physical proximity and network structure in the form of the social selection process affected information sharing. However, trust had no significant effect on information sharing. Indeed, trust may not directly predict information sharing rather indirectly explain it because of other phenomena such as physical proximity. Furthermore, the formation of information-sharing ties is not limited to the selection of a particular actor but is done with the aim of balancing the benefits and costs. The results provide managers with a set of useful mechanisms for enhancing information sharing across the supply chain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a critical review of published findings pertaining to the physical proximity between employees and customers in various sales and service settings. Following an overview of this stream of research, reflections are then offered on how the concepts of personal space and physical proximity may have changed in terms of their financial and well-being-related effects as a function of the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the risk of infection in interpersonal interactions, and despite the affiliative aspects associated with physical proximity, recent recipes for success—as advocated by academics—may eventually have a negative impact on multiple crucial metrics in a post-pandemic world, such that employees' physical proximity to customers may soon come with a wide array of costly consequences. The article concludes with a set of future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates transnational families' experiences of the COVID‐19 pandemic outbreak and the accompanying sudden and unexpected travel restrictions. Our data consist of written stories collected in April–June 2020 from migrants with ageing kin living in another country. For many respondents, the situation provoked an acutely felt urge for physical proximity with their families. By analysing their experiences of 'not being there', we seek to understand what exactly made the urge to 'be there' so forceful. Bringing into dialogue literature on transnational families with Jennifer Mason's recent theoretical work on affinities, we move the focus from families' transnational caregiving practices to the potent connections between family members. We argue that this approach can open important avenues for future research on families—transnational or otherwise—because it sheds light on the multisensory and often ineffable charges between family members that serve to connect them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• More time spent present with romantic partner in 24 h associated with lower CRP. • Effect of time spent on CRP held when controlling for romantic relationship quality. • Effect of time spent on CRP held when controlling for hostility with partner. • Effect of time spent on CRP held when controlling for individual loneliness. • Everyday time spent together may be key link between relationships and inflammation. Social relationships are an important driver of health, and inflammation has been proposed as a key neurobiological mechanism to explain this effect. Behavioral researchers have focused on social relationship quality to further explain the association, yet recent research indicates that relationship quality may not be as robust a predictor as previously thought. Here, building on animal models of social bonds and recent theory on close relationships, we instead investigated merely being in the physical presence of one's romantic partner. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that spending more time co-present with a loved partner in everyday life would be associated with lower C-reactive protein (CRP). Three times over the course of one month, 100 people in romantic relationships reported how much time they spent in the same physical space as their partner in the prior 24 h, in minutes, and provided a sample of blood for CRP assay (n observations = 296). Results from multi-level models showed that when one reported spending more time in the physical presence of their partner they had lower CRP – an effect that was independent from social relationship quality explanations from the prior literature, including romantic relationship quality, hostility, and loneliness. These findings move past global assessments of social isolation to consider a novel everyday behavior that is of great interest in the non-human animal literature – spending time together -- as a potential mechanism linking high-quality relationships and physical health in adult humans. The findings also point to future research on additional behavioral mechanisms that are not dependent on stress pathways: people in high-quality relationships tend to spend enjoyable and affectionate time with one another, which may impact inflammation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for physical proximity and face-to-face communication in financial information flows is contested. But the movement restrictions imposed across Asia during the COVID-19 pandemic, together with the elevated information needs as financial markets became stressed, provided the unique circumstances for a natural experiment to test the extent to which physical interaction is important in the origination and distribution of financial information. Drawing upon 70 interviews undertaken across Asia during 2021, primarily with sell-side analysts who act as information intermediaries in the financial ecosystem, this article provides evidence that physical proximity and face-to-face communication remains highly valued, particularly when accessing information embedded in informal local networks and originated through reciprocal client relationships. Analysts physically restricted from contacts at corporates and within their associated operating environments, reported a degradation of knowledge, especially versus more proximate competitors. The enforced physical separation also weakened previously strong social and reciprocal relationships with clients, even those co-located in the same city. Although these trends may be gradual and incremental rather than dramatic, they are persistent and self-reinforcing, and demonstrate the continued benefits of proximity and face-to-face interaction, with longer-term implications for financial geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of new coronavirus (COVID-19) infections shows no signs of stopping. Therefore, we must consider how to deal with this disaster well. The practice of social distance is one of the powerful tools for that purpose. Therefore, in this paper, we analyzed the factors that influence physical proximity in the manufacturing industry, which has a large impact on the economy given the scale of employment. As the method, first, exploratory factor analysis is performed using the US occupation information site O*NET information, and the extracted 7 variables, sitting work, work conditions, information processing, task significance, interdependence, response to aggression, and autonomy, are used in the regression analysis. As a result, it was shown that interdependence and response to aggression, which are categorized as “social characteristics”, and work conditions and sitting work, which are categorized as “context characteristics”, showed a positive correlation with physical proximity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has focused public attention on occupational groups that ensure the maintenance of critical infrastructure, provision of medical care and supply of essential goods. This paper examines the working conditions in critical jobs based on representative data from the German BAuA Working Time Survey 2019. Our analyses reveal that essential workers are more likely to perform unskilled or semiskilled activities and work in cleaning, transport and logistics, health care occupations as well as IT and natural science services. Regarding the working conditions, essential workers are paid comparatively less and are more physically proximate to others at work than nonessential workers. They more often work atypical hours, such as day and night shifts and on weekends, and have less autonomy in their working time. Additionally, critical jobs are characterised by muscular and skeletal strain due to working positions and carrying heavy loads significantly more often. Thus, our findings strongly suggest that work-related risks accumulate in critical jobs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Hubei province in China as the COVID‐19 pandemic epicenter and January 23, 2020 as the event date (the date the Chinese government announced the lockdown of Wuhan, the provincial capital), we document that while Chinese firms generally exhibited negative cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) around the event date, firms located far from the Hubei province experienced relatively less adverse impact by way of negative CARs than firms located close to and in the province. Moreover, firms that engaged strongly in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities in terms of corporate donations prior to the event date experienced less of an adverse impact than those with no or weak CSR activities, suggesting that CSR serves an insurance‐like function that alleviates the adverse impact on stock returns precipitated by the negative investor sentiment stemming from COVID‐19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose that perceptions of auditory loudness and interpersonal closeness are bidirectionally related. Across 12 experiments (total N = 2,219; 10 preregistered; with Singaporean, British, U.S. American, and Australian participants), we demonstrated that louder audio made people feel physically (Study 1a) and socially (Study 1b) closer to others, presumably because loudness activates interpersonal closeness-related concepts implicitly (Studies 1c and 1d). This loudness–interpersonal closeness effect was observed across diverse samples (Studies 2a, 3a, and S1), for longer listening intervals (Study 2b), and in natural settings (Studies 3a and 3b). Conversely, individuals made to feel socially excluded rated their surroundings as quieter (Study 4). Furthermore, following social exclusion, individuals showed a preference for louder volume (Study 5). Finally, exposure to loud stimuli mitigated detrimental psychological effects of social exclusion (Study 6). Theoretical implications for the social cognition of loudness, social exclusion and compensatory strategies, and practical implications for ameliorating loneliness are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The continuous adoption of Near Field Communication (NFC) tags offers many new applications whose security is essential (e.g., contactless payments). In order to prevent flaws and attacks, we develop in this article a framework allowing us to analyse the underlying security protocols, taking into account the location of the agents and the transmission delay when exchanging messages. We propose two reduction results to render automatic verification possible relying on the existing verification tool ProVerif. Our first result allows one to consider a unique topology to catch all possible attacks. The second result simplifies the security analysis when considering Terrorist fraud. Then, based on these results, we perform a comprehensive case study analysis (27 protocols), in which we obtain new proofs of security for some protocols and detect attacks on some others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study investigates modularization and its impact on cost, speed to market and product quality (firm relative positional advantage) in the world's largest car market. The research findings support the view that modularization is an important factor in the Chinese auto industry. It has a positive impact on these variables that constitute firm relative positional advantage. The study also shows that knowledge sharing and physical proximity partially moderate the relationship between the degree of modularization and firm relative positional advantage variables: cost, speed to market and product quality. The study contributes to the literature by showing modularization as an important competitive strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the factors affecting U.S. industry employment change in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that the percentage of industry employment in occupations that require close physical proximity has a negative effect on year-over-year employment change in the six months of April through September of 2020. On the other hand, the percentage of industry employment in jobs that involve high interaction with the public has a negative effect on year-over-year employment change in April and May, but not in the months of June to September. These different results related to physical proximity and interaction with the public are driven, in part, by the uneven impacts of COVID-19 on hospitality and retail businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the main preliminary findings of GEITONIA research project (Growing and Enabling of Information Technologies for Online Neighborhoods: Implications and Applications). Focusing on the development of a local social network for neighborhoods of Nea Smyrni community in Attica (Greece), the main results of an exploratory mixed methods research study, are discussed. The local social network is a non-commercial social medium that operates as a mobile application. Residents of the local community will have the opportunity to use the application for a pilot period, create their virtual neighborhoods, interact with other neighbors, and expand local social ties in a continuum of physical and virtual spatialities. Moreover, taking into consideration residents' perceptions, demands and visions, regarding a local social network for their neighborhoods, the research project aims to enhance the rule that sets the focus on the users, as co-creators and co-producers of communication technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the role of job characteristics on an individual's decisions to follow social distancing policies, work, and apply for unemployment insurance in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use data that track millions of mobile devices and their daily movements across physical locations to measure whether the devices' owners leave their homes, or work part-time or fulltime on a given day, and we also collect data on weekly unemployment insurance claims. We find that the presence of jobs with a high work-from-home capacity in a region increases the ability of people to follow social distancing policies and decreases their unemployment risk, whereas the presence of jobs with high physical proximity decreases the incidences of following social distancing policies and unemployment and increases the incidence of work during the pandemic. These heterogeneous responses based on local job characteristics persist even conditional on a broad set of demographic and socioeconomic variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the adoption of collaborative buildings and office spaces to improve collaboration, the expected benefits of spatial interventions often fail to materialize. In a study of an ostensibly 'collaborative building', we identified strategies that employees use to avoid collaborating (i.e. 'focusing on existing collaborations', 'reinforcing group boundaries', 'enacting legacy policies' and 'minimizing social interactions'). These strategies combined to minimize serendipitous encounters, which led to the avoidance of new collaborations. Our findings address a theoretical tension in the literature as to whether proximity facilitates or inhibits collaboration. We also show that, while it is often difficult to facilitate serendipitous encounters in an ostensibly collaborative building, serendipity nonetheless plays a central role in the development of new collaborative partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Humans interact through numerous communication channels to build and maintain social connections: they meet face-to-face, make phone calls or send text messages, and interact via social media. Although it is known that the network of physical contacts, for example, is distinct from the network arising from communication events via phone calls and instant messages, the extent to which these networks differ is not clear. We show here that the network structure of these channels show large structural variations. The various channels account for diverse relationships between pairs of individuals and the corresponding interaction patterns across channels differ to an extent that social ties cannot easily be reduced to a single layer. Each network of interactions, however, contains both central and peripheral individuals: central members are characterized by higher connectivity and can reach a large fraction of the network within a low number of steps, in contrast to the nodes on the periphery. The origin and purpose of each communication network also determine the role of their respective central members: highly connected individuals in the person-to-person networks interact with their environment in a regular manner, while members central in the social communication networks display irregular behavior with respect to their physical contacts and are more active through irregular social events. Our results suggest that due to the inherently different functions of communication channels, each one favors different social behaviors and different strategies for interacting with the environment. These findings can facilitate the understanding of the varying roles and impact individuals have on the population, which can further shed light on the prediction and prevention of epidemic outbreaks, or information propagation.

Fiona Woollard argues that when one is personally involved in an emergency, one has a moral requirement to make substantial sacrifices to aid others that one would not otherwise have. She holds that there are three ways in which one could be personally involved in an emergency: by being physically proximate to the victims of the emergency; by being the only person who can help the victims; or by having a personal encounter with the victims. Each of these factors is claimed to be defeasibly sufficient to ground personal involvement, and thus a requirement of substantial sacrifice to aid. Woollard defends this view on the basis of a number of cases. We show that Woollard's cases contain various confounding factors. In view of the more precisely drawn cases offered here, it is clear that neither proximity nor uniqueness nor personal encounter is intuitively defeasibly sufficient in the way Woollard claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A mobile peer-to-peer (MP2P) system results from overlaying a peer-to-peer (P2P) system over a mobile ad hoc network (MANET). A cluster/superpeer based architecture can be used as an efficient solution to reduce communication redundancy and network traffic induced by flooding. In this paper, we propose an efficient multihop Proximity aware Clustering Scheme for Mobile peer-to-peer systems (PCSM). PCSM is based on the physical proximity of peers and reduces the mismatch between the P2P overlay and the network layer. PCSM integrates three factors to allow the new peer to efficiently select the cluster to join, namely the number of physical hops, the cluster size and the availability of the clusterhead. Additionally, a maintenance process manages the mobility of peer. The simulation results show that our overlay topology fits the MANET underlay and that PCSM enhances the results of the search process in terms of the average file-discovery delay and false-negative ratio. Additionally, PCSM performs better than the existing cluster-based P2P overlay regarding of load balancing and routing overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From an evolutionary perspective, incestuous behavior is puzzling. The goal of this study was to assess the tenability of the Westermarck hypothesis (1891, 1921)-that people who live in close physical proximity with one another during childhood will develop a sexual indifference or aversion toward one another-and the mediating role of disgust as an incest avoidance mechanism in father-daughter relationships. A sample of fathers with daughters (N = 632) from Canada and the United States were recruited by Qualtrics-a survey platform and project management company-to complete an online survey. The results from this study did not support the viability of the Westermarck hypothesis as a mechanism that facilitates incest avoidance for fathers. Physical proximity was not associated with incest propensity or disgust toward incest. Less disgust toward incest, however, was found to be associated with more incest propensity. These results indicate that physical proximity may not be a reliable kinship cue used by fathers to inform incest avoidance, but that disgust toward incest may still be a proximate mechanism that facilitates incest avoidance among fathers using kinship cues other than physical proximity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking that maternal touch is a key factor in mother-infant relationships, we aim to compare the quality of mother-infant interaction in two groups: Group 1) 20 infants carried next to their mothers' bodies and Group 2) 20 infants who were carried in trolleys or other aids for transportation. Infants were between 6 and 36 months of age (20 girls, 13 primiparous) without developmental problems. Both groups were paired by gestational age, birth weight, children sex, children age, parents' age, SES and nationality. The quality of the mother-infant interaction was evaluated in a free play situation with CARE-Index and MINDS scales. Our findings indicate that Group 1, in comparison with group 2, had lower dyadic quality. These findings support the idea that more than body closeness, it is the quality of interaction where such closeness occurs, that contributes to the quality of mother-infant relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grounded in Vygotsky’s cultural-historical theory, this paper examines how often teachers are involved in children’s imaginative play and discusses their beliefs about their role in supporting children’s imaginative play. To investigate this problem, video (65 hours of digital observations) and interview data (two hours and 30 minutes) of 60 children with 7 teachers from two preschools in Australia were analysed. Using Vygotsky’s [1966. “Play and Its Role in the Mental Development of the Child.” Voprosy Psikhologii 12 (6): 62-76] cultural-historical concept of play, and Kravtsov and Kravtsova’s [2010. “Play in the L.S. Vygotsky’s Nonclassical Psychology.” Journal of Russian and East European Psychology 48 (4): 25-41] conception of ‘subject positioning’ (being inside and outside of the play), it was found that despite the general importance of play, teachers’ involvement in developing children’s imaginative play appears to be minimal. The interviews showed that teachers’ beliefs about their role in children’s imaginative play are directly related to the distance of their physical proximity and understanding of the play narrative being enacted. This paper argues that focusing on teachers’ involvement in children’s play is an important but under-researched dimension of play-based pedagogies in early childhood education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research fills a gap in the retailing literature regarding physical proximity while shopping. Most research in this area examines perceived crowding or social presence and largely ignores issues of distance. Using four studies we explore the impact of the physical proximity of an employee to a shopper. Contrary to common belief, we show that such encroachments can increase consumers’ acceptance feelings and their purchase intentions. We illustrate how these results are consistent with social identity theory. The results show a shopper can have higher purchase intentions the closer an employee physically gets to them due to an increase in feelings of acceptance. This result is strengthened when being included to an in-group is important to the shopper. The negative effects of feeling anxious in a purchase situation can also be buffered the closer an employee gets. Finally, the positive relationship of felt acceptance to purchase intentions is most critical when the product being purchased is perceived as less expressive. These results have important implications to our understanding of shopper behavior and reactions to physical proximity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies proximity and knowledge creation and sharing in coworking spaces, which are currently abundant in large metropolitan areas. Physical and non-physical proximities can have a positive effect on knowledge sharing, as they facilitate communication and the creation of sense of community, but they can also have a detrimental effect as they might dimmish differences that can make knowledge exchange valuable. To investigate the effect of non-physical (or non-spatial) proximities on knowledge creation and sharing within coworking spaces, a questionnaire was applied to users of those spaces in São Paulo, Brazil, the largest metropolitan area in Latin America. Analysis of 45 responses indicates that users can be classified in three profiles according to their view on the effect of proximities on knowledge sharing, and that for some users, exchange is facilitated by social proximity, but it is actually hindered by cognitive proximity. Individuals that enjoy different points of view are also more available to contact and exchange, and thus, cognitive and social diversity actually favour knowledge sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Office layout features and organizational culture have independently been shown to influence employee job satisfaction; however, little is known about whether office layout influences organizational culture. This study had two aims. The first was to investigate the association between office layout and organizational culture. The second was to investigate whether organizational culture mediates the relationship between office layout and job satisfaction. A total of 202 Australian workers completed an online survey. Structural equation modelling revealed that office layout features were significantly and positively associated with ratings of organizational culture. Additionally, culture ratings were shown to mediate the relationship between the office layout features and job satisfaction. These findings suggest that perceptions of office layout can influence employees’ perceptions of the organizational culture and important employee attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]