Territorial Spacing on a Beach Revisited: A Cross-National Exploration

A naturalistic American study of territorial spacing on a beach by Edney and Jordan-Edney (1974) was replicated in France and West Germany using theoretical notions developed by Hall (1976). Some of the original Edney and Jordan-Edney patterns were found to have significant cultural variations. Larger groups, mixed-sex groups, and females tended to claim less space per person than smaller groups, same-sex groups and males, while some other patterns were not generalized. The results were consistent with the suggestion that cross-national commonalities in territorial patterns are more important than within-culture variations.