One of the most mysterious and yet captivating behavior of trees is the tendency of trees not to touch the branches of neighboring branches not to touch each other. This has been named crown shyness, canopy disengagement, and intercrown spacing among other names.
This reminded me of the “social shyness” of humans or maybe better to call it imposed social shyness. This, we experienced the COVID-19 crisis where people distanced themselves from each other to keep safe. Surprisingly, one of the explanations for crown shyness is the avoidance of infections and to inhibit the spread of leaf-eating insect larvae.
One other explanation for the crown shyness of trees is to increase their exposure to light and thus enhancing photosynthesis
More on Social Distancing
There are other factors that define the degree of social closeness or shyness. One factor is the shyness of people who tend to keep away from unfamiliar people. This distances people and social closeness weakens.
Social shyness has its own problems. Studies revealed that this may cause emotional disorders among some people.
Another reason for social distancing is the tendency of people to get close to similar people such as those from the same country, with similar interests, religion, or hobbies. We see this as affinity groups on social media. This results in the formation of groups and each group with its similar factors.
This may lead to what I call “social clustering” with each social cluster avoiding contacting other social clusters.
One example is immigrants to foreign countries with different cultures. The immigrants tend to cluster together and stay away from the local hosts to preserve their culture and to” protect” their children from “foreign culture influence”. Social distancing becomes evident.
Different countries have different degrees of social closeness. There is a scale to measure social shyness or closeness. The closer people are to each other the lesser social shyness shall be.
Bogardus Social Distance Scale for measuring it. Affective social distance refers to the degree to which a person from one group feels sympathy or empathy for persons from other groups.
The spillover effect of social shyness or distancing shall affect many sectors in the society. Take for example teams. If the team has members who distance themselves from each other the team shall not be an active one because team members do not share their knowledge, information or skills with other team members.
We can see also the phenomenon of ‘family shyness” where family members do not contact each other because they are busy with their mobile devices.
Measurement of Social Distancing
Wikipedia gives good coverage of measuring social distancing. “The Bogardus social distance scale is a psychological testing scale created by Emory S. Bogardus to empirically measure people’s willingness to participate in social contacts of varying degrees of closeness with members of diverse social groups, such as racial and ethnic groups”.
The scale asks people the extent to which they would be accepting of each group (a score of 1.00 for a group is taken to indicate no social distance):
- As close relatives by marriage (e., as the legal spouse of a close relative) (score 1.00)
- As my close personal friends (2.00)
- As neighbors on the same street (3.00)
- As co-workers in the same occupation (4.00)
- As citizens in my country (5.00)
- As non-citizen visitors in my country (6.00)
- Would exclude from entry into my country (7.00)
Social Closeness Needs and Risk
A recent post by Dennis Pitocco covered the need for humanity to foster its efforts. This can only happen if people are close to each other.
In his recent post on “Radical Acceptance: Time to Dance in the Rain?’ Dennis wrote;
Today, let us make a bold choice together: Will we continue fighting against life’s natural rhythms, or will we join hands in embracing the full spectrum of our shared humanity?
So great but this shall only happen if humanity has a low shyness scale. When social shyness is low and so social closeness is high people may cooperate as Dennis suggested.
However, this closeness may bring the problem of the bandwagon effect. This is a psychological phenomenon in which people do what other people do to keep their social closeness even if this contrasts with their own beliefs.
We need to be close but also not to be led by the bandwagon effect.
