Muzafer Sherif
Turkish-born American social psychologist
Turkish-born social psychologist who studied group norms with the autokinetic effect and led the 1954 Robbers Cave study of intergroup conflict and cooperation with colleagues including Carolyn Wood Sherif.
Why this person matters
Sherif showed experimentally how shared norms form in groups and how competition and cooperation shape relations between groups. The Robbers Cave report had five authors, including O. J. Harvey, B. Jack White, William R. Hood and Carolyn W. Sherif, and was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. After leaving Turkey in 1945 he worked at Princeton, Yale, Oklahoma and Penn State.
Main contributions
Group norms and the autokinetic effect
His Columbia dissertation (1935), published in 1936 as A Psychology of Social Norms, had groups judge the apparent movement of a light in a dark room. Estimates converged on a shared norm, and participants later kept to it when tested alone.
Robbers Cave experiment
In 1954, 22 boys of about 11, screened as psychologically normal, attended a summer camp at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma, where the researchers posed as staff. Two groups formed. Competition produced hostility, and tasks needing joint effort towards superordinate goals reduced it.
Social judgment theory
Social Judgment (1961), written with Carl Hovland, described assimilation and contrast effects in how people judge messages and change attitudes.
Context and limits
Gina Perry's book The Lost Boys examines the researchers' manipulation of the children and possible confirmation bias by Sherif. One account notes that in the earlier camp studies the boys sometimes turned on the experimenters, which suggests they knew they were being manipulated. An attempt in 1953 at Middle Grove, New York, was abandoned. The 22 boys were white, Protestant and middle-class, so the sample is narrow.
In your introductory course
Social psychology.Sherif appears in the social psychology chapter on conformity, group norms, prejudice and intergroup conflict. Robbers Cave is the standard example of superordinate goals.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 12.5. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1935
Received his Columbia PhD under Gardner Murphy.
- 1949
Moved to the University of Oklahoma, where he later founded the Institute of Group Relations.
- 1954
Led the Robbers Cave study, first released as a report in August that year.
- 1961
Published Social Judgment and the book version of the Robbers Cave report.
Sources
- Classics in the History of Psychology (York University), Sherif et al., Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation, 1961 prefaceOriginal work. Abstract inspected.
- The Psychologist (British Psychological Society), The unknown Muzafer SherifSociety or association. Institutional biography inspected.
- Encyclopaedia Universalis, Sherif Muzafer (1906-1988)Reference work. Reference article inspected.
- Wikipedia, Robbers Cave experimentReference work. Reference article inspected.
- Wikipedia, Muzafer SherifReference work. Reference article inspected.