or those of you who wonder why people should bother knowing the personal space customs of other cultures, remember this story. In diplomatic circles, a legendary story has a British diplomat and an Arab diplomat speaking at a party.

The Arab kept moving forward, while the Briton kept backing away to establish the distance at which he felt most comfortable. The result was a comical chase around the party hall, the Briton backing away with the Arab in pursuit.

The legend is based in the personal experience of Edward T. Hall, an anthropologist at Northwestern University who pioneered the study of personal space. Hall worked for the State Department in the 1950s training diplomats. He heard complaints from many diplomats who said they felt bullied when they traveled to Iran. On the other hand, the Iranians said they felt the Americans were not friendly.

Hall's research, contained in his seminal 1966 The Hidden Dimension, was the first study about the cultural differences in the perception of space. Looking at the two cultures, he discovered the diplomats were neither rude nor bullying. They were only feeling the friction between their two different standards of personal space.

eople grow up with many expectations of how they should treat each other, international etiquette consultant Hilka Klinkenberg said. Such attitudes aren't instinctive - they are a subconscious cultural reaction they learn informally as babies. "Unless they have a great deal of experience, they only have their own perceptions to base it on," Klinkenberg said. Social blunders often happen with American business travelers, Klinkenberg said.

They don't do enough homework - learning the specific repertoire of mannerisms and expectations of that country - before they leave. They wind up either offending someone or getting offended when they get there. Being custom-savvy is growing more important in our ever-shrinking world, Klinkenberg said. As globalization has diluted many countries' political and economic identities, those countries have entrenched themselves in their cultural values.

Return to Top