Social psychologist Muzafer Sherif became interested in attitudes and intergroup conflict in 1935. Sherif studied prejudice by introducing problem between groups of adolescents. Sherif was born in Turkey and moved to United States during 1929. He was a professor at the University of Oklahoma when he conducted his research in “The Robber’s Cave Experiment: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation. Sherif’s research has served as a model for studying the development and consequent reduction of prejudice in groups.
The thesis of this paper is that conflict increases violence between groups but also that violence is reduced when groups are forced to work together to solve a common problem. Sherif’s work shows that cooperation to reach goal is important. Conflict between groups is rooted deep in personal, social, economic, religious and historical forces. The experimental studies of groups that he started in 1948, he worked with Sussman, Huntington, Harvey, White, Hood and Carolyn Sherif.
They wanted to work with groups of the informal type, where group organization and attitudes would come out naturally and spontaneously. The experiment took place in an isolated summer camp because it would make a wonderful experimental setting. This camping decision led to choosing boys around the age of 11 or 12 years old. They selected normal boys of homogeneous background who did not know the other subjects. The boys were not aware that they were in an experiment group. They conducted all their experiments through regular camp activities and games.
The Essay on 1st Sports Memory Group Would Work
As far back as I can recall my first sports memory was when I was about sox years old. Before this time I only have seen sports on TV and my older brothers taking me to the park to play. At the age of six my mother enrolled me in little league baseball. The league I was in was called Kingsbridge little league and I was in the clinic because this was for little kids to develop there skills before ...
Sherif observed the kids behavior and kept a record of it. The experiment started with the boys becoming a coherent group. They were all living together at one large bunk-house. They quickly formed bond with eachother and picked certain people to be their “best friends. ” The object was to minimize the amount of personal attraction in the formation of the groups and were put in different cabins. They separated the boys from their best friend and put them in a different group and cabin.
In each group the the boys pooled their efforts, organized duties and divided up tasks in work and play. One boy excelled in cooking, another led to athletics and the others were not outstanding in any one skill. Some boys sifted toward the bottom of the heap, while others jockeyed for higher positions. As the group became organization, the boys coined nicknames. But members who failed to do things the correct way or who did not contribute their bit to the common effort found themselves receiving the “silent treatment”, ridicule or even threats.
They did a small experiment with a baseball game. The boys overestimated the performances by the most highly regarded members and underestimated the scores of those of low social standing. The two groups in the camp had developed group organization and spirit. The hypothesis made by Sherif was that when two groups have conflicting aims, their members will become hostile to eachother even though the groups are composed of normal well adjusted individuals. To cause controversy they created tournament of games and the games started in a spirit but soon faded.
They disliked the members of opposite group and did not want anything to do with them. The “superordinate” goal will have both of the group working together because it requires effort from the both team. They created a series of urgent, and natural, situations which challenged our boys. The first situation was the breakdown in the water supply. Both groups came together volunteered to search the water line for the trouble and worked together on it. Later on Sherif did an interview on the kids and it was a pleasant surprise.
The Term Paper on Stanley Milgram People Conformity Experiment
Conformity h Conformity focuses upon the ways in which other people exert their influence upon us in such a way that we go along with them. For example some teenagers may go along with what their friends do when they themselves would have preferred to have gone elsewhere. h Conformity normally involves some kind of social pressure in which the individuals intentions conflict with those of the ...
In the interview the boys confirmed that after the group activities, the both group members started liking each other and mentioned their best friend to be from the opposite group. By the end of the camping trip the groups kept trying to find opportunities to mingle with one another. Members of both groups requested that they go home together on the same bus. I think this was an excellent way of informing people about prejudice and group activities. I strongly agree with the psychologist and his theory. I do believe people start disliking other people without any real reason.
I have done that before, I ended up hating people because I was in a competition with them and just kept on hating them for no reason. People can be separated through competition but they can also be united the same way. I liked hi experiment very much because it was strictly observational and very secretive, so the boys did not realize they were part of an experiment. This led them to observe the boys in their real state and not some fake behaviors of theirs. I think this was one of the best experiment, because it was simple, easy to understand and contained no possible error.
