At BelSU, International Students Discover How Culture Shapes Our Invisible Boundaries

What feels like a friendly distance in one culture can feel intrusive or oddly cold in another. A recent training session at Belgorod National Research University (BelSU) set out to help international students decode these invisible boundaries, offering practical insights into the psychology of personal space.

The workshop, titled What is Social Distancing and Why is it Important? was run by the VPITIPE Coordination Centre as part of its Golden Distance project. It drew a diverse group of international students keen to understand why everyday interactions can sometimes feel unexpectedly uncomfortable – and how to handle them with confidence.

Yevgeniya Tolbatova, a member of the BelSU Coordination Centre, guided the session. She explained that whenever we communicate, we unconsciously establish a physical distance between ourselves and the person we are talking to – a “comfort zone” that varies far more than most people realise.

Drawing on proxemics, the branch of social psychology that studies the spatial organisation of communication, Tolbatova outlined four distinct zones: intimate, reserved for close friends; personal, for friends; social, for colleagues and strangers; and public, for speaking before an audience. When someone enters a zone they should not, she noted, people often feel anxious, irritated, or even fearful – without quite knowing why.

The session then moved from theory to practice. Students “tried on” each zone: from intimate proximity of under half a metre to a public distance of more than three metres, and made several discoveries. One of the most striking was that personal space is fluid: it can shrink when we are in a good mood and expand when we are stressed or tired. Perceptions of acceptable distance, they learned, also shift markedly across cultures, personality types, and levels of familiarity.

By the end of the workshop, the group had reached a shared conclusion. Social distancing, they agreed, is not a sign of coldness or mistrust. Properly understood, it is a way of telling another person, ‘I respect your personal space as much as I respect my own.’

For international students navigating life in a new country, the session offered something invaluable: a framework for understanding the subtle social signals that can make the difference between feeling out of place and feeling at home.