Blogs Krystal D'Costa at Scientific American;
There are an estimated 900,000 elevators in the United States, each serving an average of 20,000 people per year (1). That means approximately 18 billion elevator rides are taken every year. With 310,622,223 people in the United States, that amounts to about 58 elevator rides per person per year (2).
Yet despite the benefits to our lives and the close quarters, elevators have become home to an anthropological coping mechanism where people communicate less than in other venues.

This is beyond elevator phobia, which is not unknown.    That sort of shared space should increase network ties yet many people dread hearing someone else's voice in an elevator.

Read the whole thing.