Universe 25, 1968–1973 (2022)

> Making the leap from mouse to man, however, was not so simple. “This is where it gets controversial,” Ramsden said, describing how other scientists tried to replicate Calhoun’s results in human populations.

> “How do you map Calhoun’s pathologies onto human society? How do you measure sexual deviancy? [Researchers] chose venereal disease, illegitimacy and divorce. That stirred up some controversy. How do you measure breakdown in maternal behavior? They chose public welfare and child assistance rates.” Others turned to the laboratory. The psychologist Jonathan Freedman recruited high school and university students to carry out a series of experiments that measured the effects of density on behavior. He measured their stress, discomfort, aggression, competitiveness and general unpleasantness. When he declared to have found no appreciative negative effects in 1975, the tide began to turn on Calhoun’s utopia.

> Freedman’s work, Ramsden noted, suggested that density was no longer a primary explanatory variable for society’s ruin. A distinction was drawn between animals and humans.

> “Rats may suffer from crowding; human beings can cope...Calhoun’s research was seen not only as questionable, but also as dangerous.”

> Freedman suggested a different conclusion, though. Moral decay resulted “not from density, but from excessive social interaction,” Ramsden explained. “Not all of Calhoun’s rats had gone berserk. Those who managed to control space led relatively normal lives.” Striking the right balance between privacy and community, Freedman argued, would reduce social pathol- ogy. It was the unwanted unavoidable social interaction that drove even fairly social crea- tures mad, he believed. Culture and upbringing also play key roles in adapting to environment, others suggested.

> Further studies of space design seemed to prove this. One such study compared students living in two different styles of college dormitory—corridor versus a suite style. Those in the corridor perceived the environment as crowded and exhibited increased stress levels. Those in the suite style, where the dormitory was partitioned into a series of separate communal areas, fared better, even though the level of density was similar, Ramsden said. “By comparing the two, [researchers] were able to provide evidence both of pathology and its amelioration through more effective design.

> “Calhoun’s studies remained influential in places,” Ramsden concluded, “but for the social sci- ences more generally, it seemed that simply associating Calhoun’s rodent universes with pathology instead of its amelioration was an opportunity considered too attractive or per- haps too convenient to miss.”

many non-Westernised cultures survive in cramped living conditions. they submariners were not accustomed to it and so suffered more