FAMILIARITY BREEDS LACK OF INTEREST, NOT BABIES SUNYA COED DORMS STUDIED.(Local)

Byline: Tim Spofford

The prophets of gloom warned of a pregnancy boom when the first coed dorms opened on college campuses in the late 1960s.

But Irina Paullay, a doctoral candidate in psychology at the State University of New York at Albany, said that boom never arrived and she thinks she knows why.

While conducting a study with three other SUNYA psychologists, Paullay learned that college students are less likely to date people who live in the same dormitory.

"It's possible that when you become real familiar with people - living with them, eating with them and taking a shower just down the hall from them - it's not as mystical," she said. …