You know how uncomfortable you start to feel when a coworker hovers over you as she looks at something on your computer screen? Or how you start to back up and scan the room for an exit strategy when a friend of a friend gets too close as he talks to you at a party?

All of us cringe when someone invades our personal space. Heck, it can even feel icky when we watch it happen to someone else. (Case in point: touchy-feely politicians on both sides of the aisle.) But there’s a good reason things get awkward fast when someone busts through that buffer, says Michael Graziano, PhD, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University and the author of The Spaces Between Us.

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