Abstract
A telephone survey of French-speaking residents of Montreal and Ste. Marie de Beauce tested the hypothesis that city people, compared to small-town people, are overloaded with acquaintances. It was predicted that city people have more, shorter, and less intimate contacts with acquaintances, and feel a desire for more intimate contacts. Instead, city respondents reported fewer and longer conversations that were as intimate as conversations reported by small-town respondents. Feelings of overload were uncommon in both city and town. Although data from other studies indicate that city people are overloaded with strangers, the present data indicate that city people are not overloaded with acquaintances.
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Reference Note
McCauley, C., & Chebat, J. C. Interpersonal contacts in four communities of Montreal: Research toward an information overload understanding of the experience of living in cities. Unpublished report to the Department of Communications, Ottawa, Canada.
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This research was supported by a contract of the Department of Communications, Ottawa, with James Taylor, Section de Communication, Universite de Montreal.
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McCauley, C., Taylor, J. Is there overload of acquaintances in the city?. J Nonverbal Behav 1, 41–55 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01115464
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01115464