Aggression in the workplace makes social distance difficult

TL;DR

This study identifies key factors influencing social distancing in workplaces during COVID-19, highlighting that responses to aggression significantly impact physical proximity more than teamwork.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic method for selecting social distance factors and reveals the prominent role of aggression response in physical proximity.

Findings

Response to aggression strongly influences physical proximity.

Eight key scales related to social distance were identified.

Response to aggression has the greatest impact on physical proximity.

Abstract

The spread of new coronavirus (COVID-19) infections continues to increase. The practice of social distance attracts attention as a measure to prevent the spread of infection, but it is difficult for some occupations. Therefore, in previous studies, the scale of factors that determine social distance has been developed. However, it was not clear how to select the items among them, and it seemed to be somewhat arbitrary. In response to this trend, this paper extracted eight scales by performing exploratory factor analysis based on certain rules while eliminating arbitrariness as much as possible. They were Adverse Conditions, Leadership, Information Processing, Response to Aggression, Mechanical Movement, Autonomy, Communication with the Outside, and Horizontal Teamwork. Of these, Adverse Conditions, Response to Aggression, and Horizontal Teamwork had a positive correlation with Physical Proximity, and Information Processing, Mechanical Movement, Autonomy, and Communication with the Outside had a negative correlation with Physical Proximity. Furthermore, as a result of multiple regression analysis, it was shown that Response to Aggression, not the mere teamwork assumed in previous studies, had the greatest influence on Physical Proximity.