Effects of resource availability and importance of behavior on the experience of crowding

According to the interference formulation, participants in a crowded setting will experience interference to the extent that behavioral goals conflict with environmental conditions. The importance of the behavioral goals directly affects not only the magnitude of the interference but also the mechanism by which people cope with interference. It was reasoned that important goals would induce a more active coping strategy in a crowded setting than in an uncrowded setting and would maintain task performance at the price of increasing crowding stress. When the behavioral goal is unimportant, decrements in task performance preclude a rise in stress. A laboratory study manipulated group size, in order to vary the availability of resources, and the importance of the task behavior. The predictions were confirmed, and partial confirmation was obtained for predictions involving the effects of the internal-external personality dimension. The meaning of the results is discussed in terms of other findings in the literature on crowding and the mediating role of the type of mechanism used to cope with interference.