Social Withdrawal

Social Withdrawal

Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

Removing a boundary between people can produce less contact rather than more, because people restore the boundary by other means. Exposure is not availability.

What it is

The intuition behind open architecture is that walls prevent conversation, so removing walls should produce conversation. The intuition behind this concept is that the walls were doing something else as well, and that people who lose them will find a substitute.

The evidence status is mixed and the originator carries medium confidence, because this is the authors' interpretation of their own result rather than something they tested directly.