Interpersonal space (IPS) is the area surrounding our own bodies in which we interact comfortably with other individuals. During the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping larger IPS than usual, along with wearing a face mask, is one of the most effective measures to slow down the COVID-19 outbreak. Here, we explore the contribution of actual and perceived risk of contagion and anxiety levels in regulating our preferred social distance from other people during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. In this study, 1293 individuals from six Italian regions with different levels of actual risk of infection participated in an online survey assessing their perceived risk to be infected, level of anxiety and IPS. Two tasks were adopted as measures of interpersonal distance: the Interpersonal Visual Analogue Scale and a questionnaire evaluating interpersonal distance with and without face mask. The results showed that the IPS regulation was affected by how people subjectively perceived COVID-19 risk and the related level of anxiety, not by actual objective risk. This clarifies that the role of threat in prompting avoidant behaviors expressed in increased IPS does not merely reflect environmental events but rather how they are subjectively experienced and represented.

Keeping a large interpersonal space (IPS) is one of the most important measures to counter the COVID-19 pandemic. The IPS is automatically modulated according to primary affiliation and defence needs aimed at protecting our physical and psychological well-being. Through a multicentric online survey (1293 respondents) in six Italian regions during the lockdown (April-May 2020), we investigated the psychological and situational factors that influenced the regulation of IPS and psychological well-being. The results showed that the IPS was modulated according to perceived rather than actual risk of COVID-19 infection. This perception was influenced by institutional communication and citizen satisfaction in local Healthcare Systems. Higher levels of anxiety, stress and feeling of insecurity, exacerbated by situational factors linked to the context of life, led to an increase in IPS at the expense of psychological well-being. Instead, the possibility to go out and seeing other people wearing a face-mask reduced the IPS. The findings provide useful insights into pandemic management to bring human behaviour in line with the recommendations of public health experts.

Recent research has investigated whether the representation of space around the body, in terms of reach–action (imagining of reaching another person) and comfort–social (tolerance of the other’s proximity) spaces, may reflect a shared sensorimotor basis. Some studies exploiting motor plasticity induced by tool use have not observed sensorimotor identity (i.e., the same mechanisms that underlie, based on sensory information, the representation of proximal space in terms of action possibilities, goal-directed motor actions, and anticipation of the sensorimotor consequences), whereas evidence to the contrary has also emerged. Since the data are not fully convergent, here we wondered whether or not the combination of motor plasticity induced by tool use and the processing of the role of social context might reflect a similar modulation in both spaces. To this end, we conducted a randomized control trial with three groups of participants (N = 62) in which reaching and comfort distances were measured in Pre- and Post-tool-use sessions. The tool-use sessions were conducted under different conditions: (i) in the presence of a social stimulus (determining the social context) (Tool plus Mannequin group); (ii) without any stimulus (Only Tool group); (iii) in the presence of a box (Tool plus Object group) as a control condition. Results showed an extension of comfort distance in the Post-tool session of the Tool plus Mannequin group compared with the other conditions. Conversely, the reaching distance was larger after tool use than at the Pre-tool-use session, independently of the experimental conditions. Our findings suggest that motor plasticity impacts reaching and comfort spaces to different degrees; while reaching space is markedly sensitive to motor plasticity, comfort space needs qualification of social context information.