Effects of social density in university residential environments

To evaluate the impact of an unanticipated partial tripling of male dormitory rooms normally used for double occupancy, data were collected from 144 male students concerning their cognitive and affective reactions to their present living situation (including perceptions of self, roommate, and room properties). Residents of triples expressed greater feelings of crowding, perceived less control over room activities, expressed more negative interpersonal attitudes, and experienced a more negative room ambience. Factor analyses carried out separately for doubles and triples revealed dramatically different implicit theories of crowding. Triples located privacy, control, interpersonal attitudes, and perceptions of crowding within the same phenomenal space; whereas doubles appeared to perceive a number of separate realms of experience involving the loading of crampedness, privacy, and interpersonal compatibility on separate factors. Although there were no overall differences in academic performance between doubles and triples, triples but not doubles manifested a negative relationship between indices of interpersonal adjustment and academic performance (average grade point and incompletes). (28 ref)