While privacy regulation exists in almost every culture, the specific behavioral and psychological mechanisms that people use to regulate privacy boundaries are culturally unique. Since the 1960s, when privacy mostly concerned physical access to an individual’s surroundings and private space, researchers had found that people in different cultures are universally aware and capable of regulating physical privacy, but their specific psychological and behavioral mechanisms vary from culture to culture [1]. For example, the Mehinacu (a tribal group in central Brazil) lived together in a small circular plaza, but used secret paths and clearings in the woods around to escape from others [2]. The Javanese families (an ethnic group native to the Indonesian island of Java) lived in unfenced homes, but they would shut people out with a wall of etiquette, such as hiding their emotional feelings [3]. A case study of Chinese families in Malaysia showed that these families maintained separation by means of cultural practices, such as strong taboos for entering others’ sleeping areas, separate storage and cooking areas in different parts of the communal kitchen, and clarification of relationship status among the elderly and young, between men and women [4]. Another culture, the Ngadju Dayaks of Borneo who resided in multifamily units, maintained separate sleeping areas and possessions, ate at different times, and had strong norms against intrusion [5]. These examples illustrate how physical privacy is a culturally pervasive process that allows people to make themselves more or less accessible to others. Yet, they also demonstrate the cultural specificity of physical privacy regulation.

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