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Robbers Cave Study

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Muzafer Sherif and colleague’s (1961) classic Robbers Cave study, including the concept of shared goals and the contact hypothesis Introduction The classic study of social norms was conducted by Sherif 1936 a generation ago. The Robbers Cave experiment on intergroup conflict and co-operation was carried out by Muzafer and Carolyn Sherif and others as a part of research program at the University of Oklahoma. This large-scale Intergroup Relations Project was established as an interdisciplinary "psychological" and "sociological" approach to the testing of a number of hypotheses about intergroup relations. (1) When individuals having no established relationships are brought together to interact in group activities with common goals, they …show more content…

These boys moreover were to be well-adjusted psychologically, of normal physical development and in the same year of schooling. In the event 22 such young persons were selected and were divided by the researchers into two groups with efforts being made to balance the physical, mental and social talents of the groups. They were then, as individual groups, picked up by bus on successive days in the summer of 1954 and transported to a 200 acre Boy Scouts of America camp which was completely surrounded by Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. An explanation of the study results: What happened? Were there any unexpected findings? What did the authors conclude? What did the results mean, and what are their implications? The Sherif (1936), asked his subjects to seat themselves in a darkened room where they were to observe a pinpoint of light located at some distance from them. The subject was to report when the light started to motivate and to indicate how far it had moved. In actuality, the light never moved at all, but there was an almost universal trend to perceive movement, a phenomenon that is termed the auto kinetic When Sherif asked the subjects to report how far the light had moved, he found, or a series of one hundred exposures, that each person tended to resolve down to a narrow range of estimates however three to four inches, …show more content…

Many express their acceptance of the norm engaging in as many forms linked normative behaviors as possible, while others engage in merely a few. Different cultural, ethnic, or gender groups, the basis for assigning these characteristics is less obvious, even though the general agreement may be reached regarding gender groups. Most of which due to the basic personality tendencies, which in turn are attributable to hereditary factors. As humans, culturally there is considerable fluctuation from one cultivation to another with respect to what is expected of each individual. In this experiment some variation showed some graphics how groups norms took dominance over individual norms and how they develop as divided frames of reference out of shared experiences, that facilitated communication and other strains of social interaction within a given

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