A brief encounter group experience and social relationships in a dormitory.

The investigation examined the effects of a brief encounter group experience upon residents in a university dormitory. Women living on three separate floors were designated experimental subjects and provided with a group experience designed to encourage personal interaction, while women on two other floors were assigned to a control group. Preexperimental and followup measures administered to members of both groups showed that experimental subjects evidenced greater improvement in their attitudes toward the importance of spirit in their semantic differential ratings of the social atmosphere of their floor and in the number of peers they subsequently identified as acquaintances.