The Robbers Cave Experiment. Muzafer Sherif

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СКАЧАТЬ first establishing that the judgment of the extent of movement for given brief exposures varies markedly from individual to individual, the experiment brings individuals to the situation to make their judgments together. If, during the course of their participation, their judgments converge within a certain range and toward some modal point, we can say they are converging to a common norm in their judgments of that particular situation. It is possible, however, that this convergence may be due to immediate social pressure to adjust to the judgments spoken aloud by the other participants in the situation. Therefore, going a step further, if it is shown that the individual maintains this common range and modal point in a subsequent session on a different day when alone, then we can say that the common range and modal point have become the individual’s own.

      The results substantiate these hunches. When individuals face the same unstable, unstructured situation for the first time together with other participants, a range of judgment and a norm within it are established that are peculiar to that group. After the group range and norm are established, an individual participant facing the same situation alone makes judgments preponderantly in terms of the range and norm brought from the group situation. But convergence of judgments is not as marked as this when individuals first go through individual sessions and then participate in group sessions.

      When the individual gives judgments repeatedly in the alone situation, the judgments are distributed within a range and around a modal point peculiar to the individual. This finding has important theoretical implications. The underlying psychological principle, in individual and group situations, is the same, namely, that there is a tendency to reach a standard in either case. Here we part company with Durkheim and other sociologists who maintained a dichotomy between individual and social psychology, restricting the appearance of emergent properties to group situations alone. In both cases, there are emergent properties. In the individual sessions they arise within the more limited frame of reference consisting of the unstructured stimulus situation and special psychological characteristics and states of the individual; whereas in togetherness situations the norm is the product of all of these features within the particular interaction situation. The norm that emerges in group situations is not an average of individual norms. It is an emergent product that cannot be simply extrapolated from individual situations; the properties of the unique interaction process have to be brought into the picture. Therefore, the fact remains that group norms are the products of an interaction process. In the last analysis, no interaction in groups means no standardized and shared norms.

      In a subsequent unit, it was found that a characteristic mode of reaction in a given unstructured situation can be produced through the introduction of a prescribed range and norm (Sherif 1937). When one subject is instructed to distribute his or her judgments within a prescribed range and around a modal point, which vary for each naive subject, the preponderant number of judgments by the naive subjects come to fall within the prescribed range and around the modal point introduced for them, a tendency that continues in subsequent alone sessions. This trend is accentuated if the cooperating subject has prestige in the eyes of the naive subject. These findings have been substantiated in a number of studies. For example, it has been shown that the tendency to maintain the prescribed range persists after several weeks (Bovard 1948). In a recent experiment Rohrer, Baron, Hoffman, and Swander (1954) found that social norms established in the autokinetic situation revealed a rather high degree of stability even after a lapse of one year. This stability of an experimentally produced norm acquires particular significance in view of the facts in the study that (a) the subjects had first formed individual norms on the basis of actual movement prior to the establishment of divergent norms in a social situation and (b) the norms stabilized in the social situations were revealed after the lapse of one year in alone situations, that is, without further social influence.

      The actual presence of another person who makes judgments within a range prescribed by the experimenter is not essential. Norman Walter (1952) demonstrated that a prescribed norm can be produced through introduction of norms attributed to institutions with high prestige. A prescribed distribution of judgments given by tape recording is similarly effective (Blake and Brehm 1954). A prescribed range can also be established, without social influence, through prior experience in a more structured situation with the light actually moving distances prescribed by the experimenter (Hoffman, Swander, Baron, and Rohrer 1953).

      A technique such as the autokinetic device has two advantages for studying norm formation and other aspects of group relations. First, compared with gross behavioral observations, it yields shortcut precise judgmental indices along definite dimensions reflecting an individual’s own appraisal of the situation. Second, the judgmental or perceptual reaction is an indirect measure; that is, it is obtained in relation to performance and situations that do not appear to the subjects as directly related to their group relations, their positive or negative attitudes. The feasibility of using judgmental variations in this study constituted the basis of its use in subsequent studies dealing with various aspects of group relations.

      At this point, longitudinal research will bring more concreteness to the process of norm formation. As Piaget (1932) demonstrated in his studies of rules in children’s groups, the formation of new rules or norms cannot take place until the child can perceive reciprocities among individuals. Until then the child abides by rules because people important in his or her eyes or in authority say to. But when the child is able to participate in activities and grasp the reciprocities involved and required of the situation, then new rules arise in the course of interaction, and these rules become the autonomous rules to which the child complies with inner acceptance. Although they contrast with some still prevalent psychological theories (e.g., Freud’s), these longitudinal findings are in line with observations on norm formation and internalization in adolescent cliques and other informally organized groups. These considerations are among the ones that led us to an intensive study of ego-involvements and to experimental units tapping ego-involvements in interpersonal relations and among members occupying differing status positions in a group.

      These experimental units represent extensions of the summarized approach to the assessment of positive or negative interpersonal relations, status relations prevailing among the members of ingroups, and positive or negative attitudes toward given outgroups and their members.

      The first units along these lines dealt with interpersonal relations. It was postulated that since estimates of future performance are one special case of judgmental activity in which motivational factors are operative, the nature of relations between individuals (positive or negative) will be a factor in determining variations in the direction of these estimates. This inference was borne out first in a study showing that estimates of future performance are significantly affected by strong positive personal ties between subjects.⁷ In a later unit, the assessment of personal relations through judgments of future performance was extended to include negative as well as positive interpersonal relations (Harvey and Sherif 1951). In line with the hypothesis, it was found that individuals tended to overestimate the performance of subjects with whom they had close positive ties and correspondingly to underestimate the performance of those with whom they had an antagonistic relationship.

      The study of status relations in small groups followed (Harvey 1953). This study is related to feature 3 of the essential properties of groups discussed earlier in this chapter, namely, the rise and effects of a status structure. Observations by the sociologist William F. Whyte gave us valuable leads in formulating the specific problem of this study. During one period, a street corner clique that Whyte observed was engaged seriously in bowling. Performance in bowling became a sign of distinction in the group. At the initial stage, some low-status members proved themselves on a par with high-status members, including the leader. This ran counter to expectations built up in the group hierarchy. Hence, in time, the level of performance stabilized for each member in line with his relative status in the group.

      In his experiment, Harvey first ascertained the status positions of individual members in adolescent cliques. He did so through status ratings by adults in close contact with the subjects, through sociometric ratings from clique members, and through observations of some of the cliques by the СКАЧАТЬ