Muzafer Sherif (born Muzaffer Şerif Başoğlu; July 29, 1906 – October 16, 1988) was a Turkish-American social psychologist. He helped develop social judgment theory and realistic conflict theory.
Sherif was a founder of modern social psychology who developed several unique and powerful techniques for understanding social processes, particularly social norms and social conflict. Many of his original contributions to social psychology have been absorbed into the field so fully that his role in the development and discovery has disappeared. Other reformulations of social psychology have taken his contributions for granted, and re-presented his ideas as new.
Life and career
Early life, education and political involvement Muzafer Sherif was born as Muzaffer Şerif Başoğlu and grew up in a wealthy family that included five children, of whom he was the second born. He attended Elementary School in Ödemiş for six years and then attended Izmir International College from which he received a Bachelor of Arts in 1926. Sherif then obtained MA degree from the Istanbul University in 1928, where he also expressed his support for the modernization of Turkey during political debates and gathered interest in goal-oriented behaviour, or hormic psychology as proposed by British psychologist William McDougall.
Sherif grew up through the Italo-Turkish War, the Balkan Wars, World War I. Additionally, Izmir underwent occupation by Greek and Turkish soldiers from 1918 to 1924 in the Turkish War of Independence while he attended the college.
Sherif went to America during the peak of the Great Depression, earning an MA from Harvard University where his teachers were Gordon Allport and Caroll Pratt. He visited Berlin in 1932 during the rise of the Nazi Party to attend Wolfgang Köhler's lectures on Gestalt Psychology, whereafter Sherif planned to use Gestalt principles for a new social perception theory.
He returned to the U.S. in 1933 and re-enrolled at Harvard for his Doctoral studies, but later switched to Columbia University, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1935 under Gardner Murphy. Sherif gained a position at Ankara University upon his return to Turkey and developed ties with the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP). He criticized members of the bureaucracy and Nazi-supporters in his works as fascism became more prevalent. He was briefly detained along with other members of the TKP in 1944 following political conflicts at Ankara University, where he sided with Communists. Sherif went back to the U.S. permanently in 1945.
Early career and marriage In 1945, Sherif married Carolyn Wood, and they collaborated productively on subsequent projects for many years, on scholarly books (e.g., Sherif & Sherif, 1953) and a textbook (Sherif & Sherif, 1969). They had three daughters: Ann, Sue and Joan.
In 1947, he published his first book, The Psychology of Ego Involvements, co-written with Hadley Cantril. In it, he compared Soviet and American societies, by showing different values and beliefs of the nations which flowed from different social and cultural contexts. With it, he posited that individualistic, competitive and conflictual society is avoidable.
Life in the US Sherif fled back to America shortly after his detainment in Turkey in 1945 due to fear of a harsher and longer punishment for his association with the Communist Party.Kayaoğlu, A., Batur, S., & Aslitürk, E. (2014). The unknown muzafer sherif. The Psychologist, 27(11), 830-833. Retrieved from The social academic environment during Sherif's first years in America supported Sherif's Marxist views and inspired The Psychology of Ego Involvements (1947), published from Princeton University.Russell, G. (2016). A variation on forced migration: Wilhelm peters (prussia via britain to turkey) and muzafer sherif (turkey to the united states). Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 25(3), 320-347. doi:10.1080/0964704X.2016.1175
By 1951 Sherif's relationship with Turkey had been completely damaged. He'd lost all contact with close friends and colleagues during Turkey's anti-Communist shutdown and his relationships with family dwindled.
Despite Sherif's influence in the Social Psychology academic scene, he remained stateless.Harvey, O. J. (1989). Muzafer sherif (1906–1988). American Psychologist, 44(10), 1325-1326. doi:10.1037/h0091637 Sherif no longer held rights in Turkey and was not granted US citizenship. Sherif was listed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Communist sympathizer list and was interrogated by the FBI, which caused him to be more discreet about his socio-political views.
Sherif was officially fired as a professor at Ankara University, and was legally liable for salary debt to the Turkish government during his residence in the U.S. Sherif's marriage to his American wife, Carolyn Wood, led to his dismissal because it violated policies banning the marriage of Turks to foreigners.
Although mostly recognized as a psychologist, Sherif was the first to obtain the Cooley-Mead Award for Contributions to Social Psychology from the American Sociological Association. His academic appointments included Yale University, the University of Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania State University.
Mental illness and late life Sherif had difficulties with mental illness as he was diagnosed with manic depression and had attempted suicide. Sherif's mental health worsened after his wife's death in 1982. According to his daughter, Sue, with whom Sherif was living at that time, Sherif was in good spirits when he was stricken with a fatal heart attack. He died on October 16, 1988, in Fairbanks, Alaska, at the age of 82.
Contributions to psychology Sherif made contributions to social psychological theory, field and laboratory methodology, and to the application of research to social issues. He wrote more than 60 articles and 24 books. The majority of his research was done with his wife, Carolyn Wood Sherif.
Autokinetic effect experiments Sherif's dissertation was titled "Some Social Factors In Perception", and the ideas and research were the basis for his first classic book, The Psychology of Social Norms.
The topic of the dissertation was social influence in perception, and the experiments have come to be known as the "autokinetic effect" experiments. Sherif's experimental study of autokinetic movement demonstrated how mental evaluation norms were created by human beings. In an otherwise totally dark room, a small dot of light is shown on a wall, and after a few moments, the dot seemingly appears to move. This apparent motion is an illusion, resulting from the complete lack of a "frame of reference" for the movement. Three participants enter the dark room, and watch the light. It appears to move, and the participants are asked to estimate how far the dot of light moves. These estimates are made out loud, and with repeated trials, each group of three converges on an estimate. Some groups converged on a high estimate, some low, and some in-between. The critical finding is that groups found their own level, their own "social norm" of perception. This occurred naturally, without discussion or prompting.
When invited back individually a week later and tested alone in the dark room, participants replicated their original groups' estimates. This suggests that the influence of the group was informational rather than coercive; because they continued to perceive individually what they had as members of a group, Sherif concluded that they had internalized their original group's way of seeing the world. Because the phenomenon of the autokinetic effect is entirely a product of a person's own perceptual system, this study is evidence of how the social world pierces the person's skin, and affects the way they understand their own physical and psychological sensations.
Realistic conflict theory and the Robbers Cave experiment In 1961, Sherif and Carolyn Wood Sherif developed realistic conflict theory, which has been described as "account[ing] for inter group conflict, negative prejudices, and stereotypes as a result of actual competition between groups for desired resources." This theory was based in part on the 1954 Robber's Cave experiment. The 1954 experiment, and an abandoned 1953 experiment have come under recent scrutiny, with particular interest in the manipulation and provocation of the child participants by the scientists, and possible confirmation bias by Sherif.Gina Perry (2019) The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif's Robbers Cave Experiment
In the 1954 experiment, "22 white, fifth grade, 11 year old boys with average-to-good school performance and above average intelligence with a protestant, two parent background were sent to a special remote summer camp in Oklahoma, Robbers Cave State Park." The failed 1953 experiment took place in Middle Grove, New York with the same criteria in place for choosing participants. The participants were carefully screened to be psychologically normal, and they did not know each other. Sending them to such a remote location was done to reduce the influence of external factors and better allow "the true nature of conflict and prejudice" to be studied.
Researchers, who doubled as counsellors at this summer camp, divided the participants into two different groups, and each group were assigned cabins far from the other. During the first phase, groups did not know the existence of the others. "The boys developed an attachment to their groups throughout the first week of the camp by doing various activities together: hiking, swimming, etc. The boys chose names for their groups, The Eagles and The Rattlers, and stenciled them onto shirts and flags". In this "ingroup formation" phase, members of the groups got to know each other, social norms developed and leadership and structure emerged.
Then the second, group conflict or "friction" phase began, in which the groups came into contact with each other. Researchers set up a four-day competitions between those groups with promised prizes to the winners. Prejudice became apparent between the two groups. The prejudice was initially only verbally expressed, such as through taunting or name calling, but as the competition progressed, the prejudice began being expressed more directly, such as with one group burning the other's flag or ransacking their cabin. The groups became too aggressive with each other to control; the researchers had to separate them physically.
Researchers then gave all boys a two-day cooling-off period, and asked them to list characteristics of the two groups. The boys tended to characterize their own group highly favourably and the other group very negatively. The researchers then attempted to reduce the prejudice between the groups, and found that simply increasing their contact with each other made matters worse. In contrast, "Forcing the groups to work together to reach superordinate goals, or common goals, eased the prejudice and tension among the groups". Thus, in this "integration" or conflict resolution phase, it was shown that superordinate goals reduce conflict significantly more effectively than communication or contact did.
Crisis in social psychology In 1977, Sherif published a paper Sherif, M. (1977). Crisis in social psychology: Some remarks towards breaking through the crisis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 3(3), 368-382. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/014616727700300305 identifying problem areas in Social Psychology as well as solutions towards them.
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