Andrew Baum

Residential Group Size, Social Interaction, and Crowding

at Stony Brook require 34 students to share common bathroom and lounge facilities while suite-design dormitories require four or six students to share these common facilities. Data that will be presented suggest that the interior architecture of the corridor-design dormitories requires residents to interact with too many others, that interactions too often occur at inconvenient times or with disliked others, and that such a socially overloaded environment leads residents to experience stress and develop potentially stress-reducing behaviors.