Social pressures in informal groups: A study of a housing community

Interviews and sociometric techniques are used to study the friendships and community life in a housing project for 260 married veterans at M. I. T. In this relatively homogeneous group, proximity is a striking factor in the formation of friendships. Group standards, as shown by uniformity of community attitudes, exist within any one housing unit in the measure that there are many friendships (high degree of cohesion) within that unit. There is a chapter by a housing expert and one by an architect applying the author's findings and raising questions about housing which psychologists might help to answer. One chapter is devoted to quantitative techniques for summarizing sociometric data.