The Meaning of Boundary in Interpersonal Relationships for Iranians: A Study Based on Correspondence Analysis

Boundary is a psychological demarcation that protects the integrity of an individual or group or that helps the person or group set realistic limits on participation in a relationship or activity. Clear boundaries are essential for human physical and mental health. The concept of the boundary is largely influenced by the cultural context and can be associated with different meanings for different people. Therefore, it is expected that people have a different understanding of it in any cultural context. The present article begins with this question: how are the semantic structure and the concept of the boundary for Iranians? In firs phase, 289 participants responded to the research questionnaire online. They were asked to provide at least 10 words related to the concept of "boundaries in interpersonal relationships" based on producing the associative terms task. After extraction of 10 most-frequent words, 195 participants were asked to evaluate the pair relationship between these words with using judged-similarity task. Correspondence analysis results showed that these words can be explained by considering the two dimensions: "significance of relationship" and "ease of self-expression". Thus, four situations in relationships can be assumed based on the changes of the two dimensions. It seems that in Iranian culture, the boundary and privacy is a right which in relationship only the person who has higher status can have it.