Students' Perceptions of the College Milieu

Abstract

In order to examine perceptions of the social environment, 109 college undergraduates rated the similarity of all nonredundant pairs of 30 representative social situations. An additional 70 subjects rated each situation on 38 bipolar scales descriptive of the situation's perceived properties and the subject's typical behavior and affect in that situation. A nonmetric multidimensional scaling solution in four dimensions provided an optimal fit to the similarity data. The dimensions were interpreted as Interpersonal Intimacy, Group vs. Individual Activity, Social Isolation, and Behavioral Conformity. The findings are discussed in terms of their relationship to previous investigations of the perception of social episodes and their implications for person-situation interaction research.