Spring ApplicationContext Bean Scope

By default a bean created in Spring is of scope singleton, so yes each person will access the same instance in those cases. The alternative is to specify the scope as prototype.

More info on this here, sections 3.4.1 and 3.4.2:

http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/2.5.x/reference/beans.html#beans-factory-scopes-prototype