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The concept of social distance is based on social norms that differentiate individuals and groups on the basis of characteristics such as race, ethnicity, age, sex, social class, religion, or nationality. It was Emory Bogardus (1925) who first constructed a unidimensional and cumulative scale based on the assumption that respondents would accept members of the designated group to all steps below their highest level of acceptance. His initial work involved asking participants their willingness to admit members of different racial and ethnic groups to: close kinship by marriage, as fellow club members, as neighbors, as co-workers, to citizenship, as visitors only to their country, and as persons to be excluded from the country. Through the years social scientists have applied variations of the social distance scale to racial, religious, and other groups and have found it a reliable measure of the level of acceptance of one group by another.
Bogardus assumed that social nearness originates in favorable experiences and farness in unfavorable experiences, the result determined by either a lack of knowledge or by stereotypic knowledge about group differences such as appearance, beliefs, or behaviors. Typically the concept of social distance subsumes individual characteristics. Poole (1927) was the first to distinguish between social distance and personal distance, thereby offering an explanation of how individuals become exceptions” to their groups. Social distance is dictated by social norms. Personal distance as in acquaintances, friendships, and love, on the other hand, is limited only by the possibilities of association between individuals or individuals and groups.
Bibliography:
- Bogardus, S. (1925) Measuring social distance. Journal of Applied Sociology 9: 299-308.
- Poole, W. C. (1927) Social distance and personal distance. Journal of Applied Sociology 11: 114-20.
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