Notes on Musafer Sherif

Taken from: Muzafer Sherif's, IN COMMON PREDICAMENT, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1966.(p. 74 - 81)

Stage of Spontaneous Interpersonal Friendship Choices

Hypotheses:

• A. When unacquainted individuals with similar backgrounds meet in interaction situations of common appeal to them, interpersonal friendship clusters will develop on the basis of personal attractions, common interests, and affinities.

• B. These spontaneous friendship ties will be reversed in favor of fellow group members when friends participate separately in the formation of different groups.

Stage of Group formation

Hypotheses:

• 1. When a number of individuals without previously established relationships interact in conditions that embody goals with common appeal value to the individuals and that require interdependent activities for their attainment, a definite group structure consisting of differentiated status positions and roles will be produced.

• 1A. Appraisals of performance by group members will vary with the status of the member being judged, status being defined as effective initiative in group interaction. The higher an individual's status the greater will be the tendency to overestimate his/her performance.

• 2. When individuals interact under the conditions stated in Hypotheses 1, norms regulating their behavior in relations with one another and in activities commonly engaged in will become standardized, concomitant with the rise of group structure.

Stages of Intergroup Conflict

• 1. When members of two groups come into contact with one another in a series of activities that embody goals which each urgently desires, but which can be attained by one group only at the expense of the other, competitive activity toward the goal changes, over time, into hostility between the groups and their members.

• 2. In the course of such competitive interaction toward a goal available only to one group, unfavorable attitudes and images (stereotypes) of the out-group come into use and are standardized, placing the out-group at a definite social distance from the in-group.

• 3. Conflict between two groups tends to produce an increase in solidarity within the groups.

• 4. The heightened solidarity and pride in the group will be reflected in overestimation of the achievements by fellow group members and lower estimates of the achievements by members of the out-group.

• 5. Relations between groups that are of consequence to the groups in question, including conflict, tend to produce changes in the organization and practices within the groups.

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