User:Tomcuth/John R. Aiello

John R. Aiello is currently a professor of psychology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. His research focus has included proxemics, crowding, and social facilitation.

=Biography=

Early Life and Education
John was born in New Rochelle, New York in 1946. He received his B.A. in Psychology from the City University of New York in 1968. He then went on to receive his PhD in Social-Organizational Psychology from Michigan State University in 1972.

=Research= Through out his career, Aiello conducted a program of research exploring the processes people undergo to control their social interactions with others. He emphasizes the role of nonverbal aspects of interaction, particularly spatial behavior, and focuses on the effects of environmental stress on the process of interaction. His research investigates: the normative spatial behavior of different groups; the development of spatial and other nonverbal behaviors during interaction, which is learned in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood; the validity of indirect measures of spatial behavior in interpersonal involvement; behavioral responses to two types of crowding: restricted space and high social density, and other environmental stressors. His current line of research investigates the effects of social facilitation on performance and stress.

Proxemic Behavior
Aiello's research started in the area of Proxemic behavior in the 1970s. He has collaborated with multiple researchers on topics including development on personal space, interaction distances, and spatial behavior in a cultural context.

Specifically, his book chapter about personal space in a cultural context provides great insight.He highlights personal space, because there was growing research interest in that field throughout the 1970s. He defines personal space as the preferred distance from other people that an individual maintains within a given setting. He also describes how personal space has two primary functions: 1. Protection: personal space protects against psychologically and physically uncomfortable social encounters by controlling the amount and quality of sensory stimulation.

2.Communication: personal space communicates information about the relationship between the individuals who are interacting. Personal space also communicates the formality of the interaction through cues that are made available to others and to the self. These cues describe the preferred distance that has been chosen by the interactants. In his chapter, he reviews the "cross-cultural differences in how people actively use space and shape the physical environment in order to regulate social interaction" (p. 108). .

The majority of studies in the 1970s revolved around personal space between White Americans subjects and African Americans subjects. Dr. Aiello reviewed many of these studies in detail and his literature revealed that there is evidence that proves contact and noncontact cultures use space differently.

Social Facilitation
Since 1990, the bulk of Aiello's work has been on social facilitation. His lab has looked at the role distractions and challenge-threat appraisals play in social facilitation. His greatest contribution to social facilitation research was his literature review on previous research spanning from the early 20th century to the early 21st century. In this paper, all previous social facilitation research was summarized and a model for future research was constructed.

Electronic Performance Monitoring
Aiello's greatest contribution was to the growing body of research on the effects of Electronic Performance Monitoring (EPM). EPM extends the social facilitation framework to implied electronic presence. One study in his lab confirmed that EPM produces effects consistent with social facilitation However, another study in his lab found that although the effects on performance are consistent with social facilitation, electronic presence causes much more stress than physical presence.

=Career= =References=