Effects of Crowding in General

Concern with the effects of overcrowding has been expressed for many years. Malthus warned about the danger of overpopulation in terms of natural resources in the 1800s. Benjamin Franklin once stated: “There is in short no bound to the prolific nature of plants or animals but what is made by their crowding and interfering with each other’s means of subsistence” (Franklin, 1969). Today we are expressing similar concerns (Russell, 1984). Starvation, water shortages, pollution, and “eternal” traffic jams are just a few of the obvious symptoms of population pressures in our world. Social scientists have warned about the dangers of overcrowding (Calhoun, 1970; Ehrlich & Ehrlich, 1970; Zlutnick & Altman, 1972). Crowding has been blamed for a variety of social ills such as deteriorating quality of life in cities, crime, and the breakdown of families (Zlutnick & Altman, 1972). These concerns were further stimulated by Calhoun’s (1962) widely publicized studies with rodents showing a variety of deleterious effects of crowding.