社会拥挤普遍存在，但学界关于社会拥挤对美学偏好的影响研究却十分有限。本文拓展了该领域的研究，并深入探究了社会拥挤对形状偏好的影响及其内在的心理机制。1项田野实验和4项情景实验的结果表明，社会拥挤会提升消费者对圆润（vs.棱角）形状的偏好，消费者的主观活力需求在其中起到中介作用。具体来说，社会拥挤会增加消费者主观活力需求，而圆润（vs.棱角）形状与活力概念相关，因而处于拥挤环境中的个体更偏好圆润（vs.棱角）形状的品牌标识或产品。同时，本文发现，群体组成成分为该效应的边界条件，即当拥挤群体为内群体（vs.外群体）时，社会拥挤对圆润形状偏好的提升作用不再显著。本文结论丰富了社会拥挤对形状偏好影响的相关研究，并对品牌和产品的营销管理具有重要指导意义。

This research investigates the effect of social crowdingon shape preference and the underlying mechanism thereof. Across five experiments, the research demonstrates that individuals who are socially crowded prefer circular shapes to angular shapes. Such effect is driven by consumers' needs for vitality, specifically, social crowding increases the needs for vitality, which subsequently makes consumers prefer circular shapes as they are related to vitality in consumers' minds. We also examine the moderating role of composition of the crowd, namely the effect of social erowding on shape preference will attenuate for a crowd composed of in-group(vs. out-group)members. This research enriches the literature on social crowding and shape preference in consumption, and provides managerial implications forbrands and products.