Jonathan L. Freedman

Crowding and human aggressiveness

Abstract Two experiments investigated the effect of crowding on human aggressiveness by placing groups of S s in small or large rooms for several hours. In both experiments there was no main effect of crowding but there was an interaction between sex of subject in one-sex groups and the size of the room. In Expt. I, all-male groups were more competitive in small rooms while all-female groups were less competitive in small rooms. In Expt. II, all-male groups gave more severe sentences in a small room than in a large room while all-female groups were more lenient in the small than the large room. Mixed-sex groups showed no effect of room size for either the whole group or each sex considered separately. Affective reactions by the same sex groups were consistent with these measures, males being generally more positive to each other in the experiment in the large room while females were more positive in the small room. It is concluded that crowding does not have a generally negative effect on humans and that what effects it does have are mediated by other factors in the situation. An explanation of the sex-difference is offered.

Retrieval of words from long-term memory

Subjects were shown a noun category paired with either an adjective or a letter, and had to produce a word that fell in the space defined by the two, for instance, “animal-Z,” with the correct response being “Zebra”. The size of the noun category had little effect on reaction time (rho = − .22), and the number of possible correct instances had no effect (rho = .02). This is interpreted as evidence against successive scanning, and is discussed in terms of a complex hierarchical model in which every noun category can be entered directly. Frequency and dominance were both strongly related to reaction time.

Field and Laboratory Studies of Littering

Abstract Four studies are reported. In the first, it was shown that littering rates vary substantially across areas of a large urban region and that the rate for a particular area is correlated with the amount of litter already present. It was also found that males litter more than females and young people more than old. In the second study, a laboratory experiment, a causal relationship between the amount of litter in an area and the likelihood it will be littered was demonstrated. A third study replicated this latter finding, but did not find a relationship between the amount of stress experienced by a subject and the likelihood that he or she would litter. In the fourth study, a field experiment, subjects who were approached and asked to sign a petition about clean streets littered less than control subjects.

Population Density and Pathology: Is There a Relationship?.

Abstract The relationship between population density and pathology is assessed in New York City. Although there are substantial simple correlations between density and various pathologies, controlling for income and ethnicity causes all relationships to disappear except for a slight correlation between density and psychiatric terminations. It is concluded that density, measured as people per acre and persons per room, has little or no independent effect on pathology.

Crowding, contagion, and laughter

Abstract The phenomenon of contagion is analysed in terms of the intensification explanation of the effect of crowding (high density) on humans. According to the analysis, high density should be expected to increase contagion of a models behavior. Groups of three subjects and a confederate listen to humorous tapes under low or high density conditions. In half of the groups the confederate smiles and laughs a good deal during the tapes; in the other half, she does not laugh and smiles only a few times. The subjects are filmed and their reactions to the tapes are rated. As predicted, high density combined with a laughing model results in more laughter by the subjects, while the other three conditions do not differ appreciably. The lack of effect of high density when the model does not laugh is seen as supporting the intensification explanation of crowding as opposed to an arousal explanation.

Retrieval of words from subordinate and superordinate categories in semantic hierarchies

Retrieval from long-term memory was investigated in an experiment in which S was shown a category name and asked to respond with a word belonging to the category (e.g., animal—horse, bird—robin). The reaction time (RT) taken to retrieve a member of a given category was not significantly different from the time taken to retrieve a member of a superset of that category. For example, Ss could produce an instance of the category “bird” as quickly as they could produce an instance of the category “animal.” The time taken to retrieve a category member was found to be strongly related to the Thorndike-Lorge frequency of the most frequent category member. The data support the notion of a semantic organization in which the category name can be located directly, rather than being accessible only via a search along a hierarchical path.

Effect of category-name frequency on the speed of naming an instance of the category

In two experiments Ss were given the name of a familiar category and required to respond with a member of that category. Each category was identified by either a high frequency or low frequency word (e.g., color-hue). Experiment I indicated that speed of producing a category member was faster when high rather than low frequency names were used. Experiment II indicated that this effect persisted even when the time taken to read and identify the category names was removed. Thus, frequency appears to affect the speed of both step I (reading and identification) and step II (search and production) of the retrieval process.

On predicting constrained associates from long-term memory

Forty Ss gave constrained associates to a conceptual category plus an alphabetic letter (e.g., a musical instrument beginning with “V”). The probability of occurrence of each correct response was predicted from Luce’s choice axiom on the basis of associative norms collected by Battig & Montague (1969). For example, the predicted probability of “violin” being given to “musical instrument starting with V” was calculated as the proportion in the norms of “violin” responses to all responses starting with “V” to the category “musical instrument.” The correlation of the predicted and empirical proportions was. 91.

The Human Consequences of Crowding: Where we Stand, Where we should be Going

It is quite a privilege to have been asked to give the keynote address to a conference on the human consequences of crowding, especially since even a few years ago such a meeting would have been impossible. When I started my own work, this was a lonely field. Very few people were doing research on crowding and not many seemed to be interested in what we were doing. The situation has certainly changed. Now everyone is concerned with the population explosion, there are about one billion more people on earth, and at times you would think that a large percentage of them are studying crowding. When I started my research, we could hardly fill my small living room with people doing research on crowding; now a large group of us are gathered here in Turkey in this auditorium, and we represent only a fraction of those working on this issue.

Current Status of Work on Crowding and Suggestions for Housing Design

The population explosion has given birth to an explosion of a different sort—an enormous outpouring of research on the effects of crowding. Ten years ago there were virtually no papers by psychologists on this subject. Five or six years ago the first ones started appearing and since then there has been an exponential increase in their number. Surely the last few years have seen more papers on crowding than appeared in all the time before that. Now that this area has become a recognized topic for research and has attracted a great many psychologists, perhaps it is time to stop for a moment and see what we know now. This is particularly appropriate since it seems to me that we have passed the initial stage of research—laying out some of the problems and discovering the most obvious facts about crowding—and it is now time to enter the second phase, which should consist of studying the more complex issues and explaining some of the early results.