ABSTRACT
An unresolved issue in crowding research has to do with why people feel crowded. Logic and common sense tell that the more people there are in a finite amount of space, the more likely they are to feel a sense of being confined or crowded. Findings from the Toronto crowding study suggest that objective crowding alone accounts for only a small proportion of the subjective sense of being spatially confined. One possibility as to why people feel crowded concerns the effects other potential exogenous variables have on the basic relationship between objective and subjective crowding. Consistent with prior research, the zero-order correlations between the several objective crowding measures and the scales of subjective crowding are in the moderate range. The objective and subjective crowding might be more highly related among women, those living with their in-laws, and among people with low household control.
