Abstract
192 students who were enrolled in introductory psychology courses served as Ss. They participated in an experiment for 1 of 3 density conditions. This study was a Ethnicity (Japanese-Americans, Caucasians)× Sex (male, female)× Density (low, medium, high) factorial design. Each cell had 16Ss. 3 (low), 5 or 6 (medium), or 8 (high) people were confined in a small room for 8 min. They had to stand with their back to the wall and were not allowed to move around or talk. After the confinement, they checked their subjective feelings on 12 seven-point scales of pairs of bipolar adjectives which they experienced during their confinement. Half of the scales were measures of perceived density and the other half was concerned with perceived crowding. Findings showed that the higher density produces higher perceived density and crowding. Japanese were more sensitive to crowding than Caucasians. Japanese males were more sensitive to crowding than females of the same ancestry while there was no obvious sex difference among Caucasian population.