Group Conflict and Co-operation

Their Social Psychology

Muzafer Sherif

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317508687
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1966 the author challenges the accepted theories of group conflict of the time, such as frustration and maladjustment. For him conflict and its accompanying aggressiveness are features of interaction between groups and he supports this theory with a detailed experimental study of controlled groups.

At the time of publication, Dr Otto Klineberg, Director of the International Centre for Intergroup Relations at the Sorbonne wrote: 'Social scientists everywhere owe a great debt of gratitude to Professor Sherif. The distinguished series of publications for which he and his co-workers are responsible have an honoured place in our libraries. In particular, his contributions to the field of intergroup relations are outstanding; his concept of "superordinate goals", based on a combination of theoretical insight and brilliant experimentation, has become a household word for those concerned with this significant problem. In his new volume, Group Conflict and Co-operation, he carries his analysis much further, not only describing the results of several original investigations, but also building a theoretical appraisal of an extensive research literature. The author has made still another significant contribution toward a better understanding of one of the most complex and disturbing phenomena of our time.'

1
Problem

This book presents the psychology of the most overriding, the most anxiety-ridden, and therefore the most challenging of human problems in the modem world. The problem is subsumed under the label "intergroup relations," a label increasingly in the limelight on the contemporary scene. The label "intergroup relations" has come to refer to the states of friendship or enmity, cooperation or competition, conflict or harmony, alignment or nonalignment between groups and combinations of groups, small or large.

Intergroup relations include the vexing problems of minority peoples in various nations who are struggling to achieve equal rights, against prevailing arrangements based on supremacy premises. They encompass labor-management friction, and the search for more lasting solutions to prevent their recurrence. They encompass alignments and nonalignments between political parties, factions, and ideological camps. Towering above all intergroup problems are those raised by the alignments, nonalignments, and counteralignments among various nations: both the old established nations and the newly emerging nations who are restless, yet determined to claim their place in the sun on an equal footing with former mentors or rulers.

Intergroup attitudes revealing like or dislike, love or hate, trust or distrust, good will or malicious intent, claims of supremacy or equality are powerful emotional instigators of people's designs and deeds in their dealings with others. But these strong emotions, powerful passions, intense attitudes, and their associated images are not self-generated springs to action. They do not erupt spontaneously from human nature in the raw to instigate their design and action toward others. These instigators of feeling and action are generated psychologically when people transact with other people, in the course of carrying out activities and pursuing goals within the design of living they have patterned.

Any unit of people, small or large, poor or rich, downtrodden or mighty, has some unique sense of self-identity or of common predicament. But this sense of identity as a unit of people is not a primitive intuition that unfolds spontaneously. The sense of self-identity emerges with all its unique characteristics and shadings when people are shaping the unit itself.

There is no predetermined or immutable blueprint for the formation of a given number of persons into a new human unit. People form and re-form human groupings when they feel the necessity of participating together in toil toward common objectives, or as they share success or failure, glory or humiliation. During the process of formation, the experiences shared by people result in a sense of identity differentiating themselves as a unit. For example, people who are downtrodden, subjugated, or oppressed, barely surviving in dire poverty, begin to forge a sense of identity when they formulate their common rejection of the oppressor and join in opposition to him.

The formation of a human grouping wider than the bounds of family and immediate locality enlarges the psychological relatedness of persons composing it so that a wider physical territory is appropriated as theirs. The scope for the new psychological bounds of the identity depends on the size, technological means, political orientation, and common interests of the unit in question. Thus, while expanding the experience of human relatedness, the formation of enlarged human groupings once again circumscribes the sense of identity of their members within new bounds, at times making it highly exclusive.

Every human grouping generates goals that are revealed through the strivings of its identified members. The scope and character of these goals, as well as the zeal and efficiency with which they are pursued, are affected by the organizational structure of the grouping, its political orientation, its human, material, and technological resources. In pursuing their goals, human groupings and their subunits necessarily come into relationship with other units with goals and designs of their own.

Goal objects and facilities, coveted real estate and resources, people courted as allies, people discarded and detested by a group do not exist in a special universe reserved for the designs of one particular grouping. They are within the range of the designs of other human groupings. The real or imagined compatibility or incompatibility between one group's attainment of goal objects and the designs of other people arouses moves to pull together with those other people or to pull away from them, to help or hinder them. As these moves proceed, they are accompanied by feelings of cooperativeness or jealousy, mutual support or resentment, liking or disliking, compromise or unyielding opposition.

Speaking generally, the mere awareness of other groups within the range of our designs generates a process of comparison between "us" and the others. This tendency seems to be one of the fundamental facts in the psychology of judgment. In this comparison process, we evaluate and categorize other groupings of people, comparing them with our notions of ourselves, our conceptions of our place in life and the places of others. The basis for the evaluation is a scheme for defining the scope and character of humanity that has been built into our particular groupings and practiced as we pursue cherished goals. The attitudes and images of any human grouping toward other peoples are codifications justifying our actions toward others. This proposition is clarified and documented in Chapter 2.

The Problem and the World Today

It follows from our discussion of the feelings, emotions, and attitudes toward other people that the psychology of intergroup attitude and action necessarily becomes social psychology. Specification of the enormous task at hand as a task of social psychology simply underscores our starting point: intergroup attitudes with their emotions that instigate our actions toward other groupings are not self-generated psychologically. They are generated in the course of interchanges among people who have formed a sense of identity, as they pursue their goals in a world peopled by others who also have their own aspirations and make their own moves to attain them. This conclusion has implications for theories of human aggression, as we shall see in Chapter 3.

The psychological events (intergroup attitudes) as well as the decisions and lines of actions in various nations today are related to the living context of which they are parts. If this context is omitted, the psychology of intergroup relations is doomed to the fate of being inconsequential. It can only yield incoherent bits of contradictory information. The living context of intergroup attitudes and actions consists of the interlocking ties among ever enlarging human groupings, many of them new. It represents an irreversible state of dependence between peoples across continents.

With modern facilities, nations and blocs are now within easy reach of one another, within easier reach than Philadelphia or Paris for people who lived within the radius of a few hundred miles from these cities at the times of the American and French Revolutions. They are also very much within the scope of each other's concerns. They are mutually mindful of happenings everywhere. They are highly sensitized to evaluate events for their bearing on themselves. Nations and blocs of nations regard it as imperative to look over one another's shoulders constantly. They feel duty-bound to be up to date on the political stability, industrial development, resources, accomplishments, and weaknesses of other nations and blocs. They are concerned about the strengthening or weakening of their ties and commitments to others.

Even the mightiest and wealthiest nations have become interested in knowing their image in the eyes of others. They want to have a favorable image, even in the eyes of peoples in far corners of the world, people with different skin colors, people with customs that seem to them strange and "wild" who live in locations they once considered out of their world with names only a few consider worth pronouncing correctly. They go far out of their way in efforts to improve their image.

Such concerns are symptoms of a state of dependence among groupings that cuts across traditional cultures, religions, political bodies, and ways of life. It effective scope is no narrower than the world itself. Apart from this state of dependence how can anyone in his right mind make sense of contemporary events? A once mighty empire, which dazzled others in its splendid exclusiveness in social relations, sends dignitaries from the apex of its social hierarchy to represent it at the independence celebrations of new nations that were once possessions, like India, Ghana, or Kenya. Full power is transferred to leaders who only a few years earlier were thrown in jail by the same empire as disorderly and incorrigible enemies of peace and order. Full honor is accorded to those who were once represented as villains responsible for destruction of life, orderly progress, and civilized conduct.

Should we, in search of an explanation, resort to the versatile vocabulary of psychological jargon? Could such events indicate a tendency toward self-inflicting masochism? Is there a tendency inherent in the depths of human nature to "identify with the aggressor"? We can only say that if human nature has such inherent tendencies, they must be of recent origin. In earlier periods, the formation of new nations did not enjoy the representation of such a galaxy of dignitaries from former rulers. The United States of America, for example, was not so honored by King George.

In the heyday of a great colonial power, the tearing of its flag, the loss of life by a few of its citizens, the damage of their property or other interests were followed, as a rule, by show of force. Naval might, land forces, or marines appeared. A great power once did not hesitate to take the law into its own hands, even over rather minor disputes, with little or no regard for the feelings and reactions of the rest of the world.

Today, facing deeds of greater proportions, the decision-making process toward possible courses of action is guided with somewhat more restraint and with more deliberate anticipation of consequences. There is concern over the impact on neighbor and stranger, friend and foe in the rest of the world. Today, a nation that takes the law into its own hands to subdue another by force is subject to denunciations by peoples around the globe. No matter how great its power, it must expect a swelling chorus of protests to join the lonely voice of its victims.

Today, policy-makers can ill afford to consider decisions solely in terms of the slight or damage inflicted upon some of their citizens. Their policy is not dictated entirely by the designs of their own people or by interest groups clamoring for action. At the same time, policy-makers must be mindful of how others, outside their national boundaries, will evaluate the lines of action in question. How "the rest of the world" will evaluate and label a course of action has to be taken into account, no matter how strongly the policy-makers themselves may feel that the course of action is justified.

Psychologists who theorize on the role of frustration in producing aggressive intent and action can ill afford not to broaden their perspective through the analysis made by political scientists on the use of force in the context of the present state of affairs. For example, Rupert Emerson (1960) concluded after a comprehensive survey of relations between older and emerging nations: "The use of force, once so easily engaged in, had now become more damaging than helpful and had lost its stamp of legitimacy. The evidence indicated that anti-colonialists could take to arms to better effect and with greater impunity than could the once mighty Europeans" (p. 402).

The neat framework of the usual psychological research truncates the context of aggressive action by chopping off the past and the future consequences. It would require a tortuous string of psychological terms from that framework to tackle the intergroup attitudes, decisions, and lines of action that characterize the traffic between nations today. The existence, the viability, and the development of every nation today are regarded by the rest of the world as more than just "internal affairs" of that particular nation. These matters have become an urgent concern for all, no matter how remotely the nation is situated, no matter how "underdeveloped" it is, no matter how different its way of life may appear in Western eyes, according to orthodox Western premises.

The great powers are diverting huge sums of money, earthly goods, facilities, and skilled manpower into various aid programs to many nations all over the globe, despite unfinished business at home urgently calling for solutions, despite pockets of poverty at home and unfinished plans to streamline home industry in phase with the tempo of the nuclear age. At times the great powers compete to be the foremost in such aid programs. They even congratulate themselves when their aid program is accepted by a new nation, especially one they consider strategic.

This state of affairs may be examined fruitfully from the point of view of another psychological mode of analysis: the effects of rewards and punishments in controlling behavior. The response in the nation receiving aid from another country is by no means always gratitude and alignment with the donor. Cases of alignment with rivals of the donor are not rare. As cogently concluded by Rupert Emerson (1960) from rich illustrative material, "the outlook for gratitude among nations is not encouraging. States are likely to accept aid where they find it, without too scrupulous examination of the source, as witness India, Egypt, and Guinea among others" (p. 414).

Doubtless, the disappointment of the donor when a recipient reveals ingratitude on a series of trials is a punishing experience. But the donor's response is not always an unmeditated reversal of policy, contrary to the prediction of psychological theories of reinforcement formulated within the narrow context of the orthodox psychological research.

Neither recipient nations nor donors regulate their attitudes and actions solely in terms of immediate rewards, reversals, or rebuffs. The recipient nations no doubt find the aid rewarding, as well as the expressions of cordial acceptance and the public declarations of equality accorded them, especially by their former rulers. But they view the aid as the means for standing on their own feet and for developing themselves in the family of nations. Rightly or wrongly, they often view the aid as overdue partial payment for plunder they endured over long decades in the past. They may consider the declarations of equality, cordiality, and zealous attention to their dignity as acts of atonement for the humiliation and exploitation they suffered at the hands of their former rulers, who justified their acts on premises of superiority.

Many new nations see their present and future predicament tied to that of other nations who have also emerged from degrading humiliations of the past. Thus, the effective framework within which the orientations, attitudes, decisions, and actions of new nations are forged is not defined solely by the reward or withdrawal of aid. The effective framework includes forms such as Pan-Africa, Pan-Asia, or Pan-Africa-Asia movements and councils. Nations tend to chart their courses, their alignments, nonalignments, and orientations to the future within such frameworks, not exclusively in terms of their problems within their present boundaries. With the past still fresh in their memory, they are highly sensitive to the grim consequences of divide-and-rule policies so effectively utilized in the past.

Unless such guideposts to the framework shaping the attitudes and decisions by new nations are examined, there is little possibility of explaining their behavior. This is the context in which many new nations appear sensitive, suspicious, and ready to hurl labels of "schemer," "aggressor," and "imperialist" at the designs and actions of former colonial rulers and their allies, even when a particular plan may have been advanced with the purest of intentions from thoroughly humanitarian motives.

The illustrative examples of contemporary intergroup attitudes and actions are not presented to pass a value judgment on any nation. There is no intention of assessing "who is to blame" in any such case. In the present state of increasing dependence of nation upon nation and continent upon continent, there are research tasks much more pressing than assessing "who is to blame" in a particular dispute. Probably it is more important to assess what typically happens when determination of blame is attempted.

Casting blame by peoples actively confronting each other in disputes is usually futile for arriving at a solution. It ordinarily intensifies the stand of each party, strengthening their negative views of each other and thus sustaining animosities. Assessment of blame for contemporary intergroup conflicts embroils both re searcher and participants in a vicious circle spiralling back into time. It is an ideal medium for revealing the particular select...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• EDITOR'S FOREWORD
• PREFACE
• 1. Problem
• 2. When the Past Becomes a Heavy Hand
• 3. Doctrine and Fact on the Psychological Springs of Aggression
• 4. Guideposts for Recasting Research Orientation
• 5. The Experiments
• 6. Verification and Extension of the Experiments
• 7. Traditional Ways of Dealing with Inter group Problems: Casting Blame and Deterrence
• 8. Measures That Can Reduce Inter group Conflict
• 9. Creative Alternative to the Predicament
• REFERENCES
• INDEX OF NAMES
• INDEX OF SUBJECTS