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Despite frequent discussion in the literature on social interactions, social distance is neither precisely defined nor clearly explained in terms of its influence on behavior. This study defines social distance between an assessor and a group as the assessor's perception of the threat posed by the group. In a small pilot study, I show that an individual whose action unintentionally harms an assessor is perceived as more socially distant than an individual whose identical action harms someone else, according to conventional indicators of social distance. Following this, I intend to create a series of new experimental designs to test the scope of how threats influence social distance, beginning with whether perceptions of the threatening groups’ culpability influence the social distance ascribed to these groups.