The Interacting Effects of Men’s Height and Shoulder-to-Hip Ratio on Comfort Distance: A Virtual Reality Study

Objectives

Previous studies have shown that body size and height affect one’s perceived optimal distance during social interactions. This current study is built up on the previous research that found a relationship between men’s height and comfort distance but failed to find any effect of men’s shoulder-hip ratio (SHR) on one’s comfort distance. The current study investigated the combined effect of SHR and height to eliminate methodological issues that prevented from establishing an effect of SHR in the previous study.

Methods

In this study, a total of 49 participants (both men and women) reported their comfort distance in relation to 63 male avatars that differed in height from 150 to 190 cm (9 values) and in SHR from 1 to 1.3 ratio (7 values).

Results and Conclusion

The result of this study showed that both genders had an increment of their comfort distance as the height of the avatar increased. The effect of SHR on comfort distance was only evident with extreme SHR measurements; demonstrating that height is a better indicator of establishing comfort distance during interactions.