1st Edition

Social Interaction Process and Products

By Muzafer Sherif Copyright 1967

    Reflecting the many contributions of Muzafer Sherif to social psychology during the past thirty years, this volume presents selections from among Sherif's most widely known essays and provides a systematic overview of his evolving interests, concepts, methods and research findings. Twenty-five essays are divided into five sections according to content; the theoretical and methodological problems at the heart of Sherif's work; the experimental model for interaction process and products; problems of self and reference groups; concepts, attitudes and ego-involvements; and contributions to problems of in-group and intergroup relations through experimental and field research. Though the selections range over a broad spectrum each is characterized by the precise and incisive work techniques Sherif devised as well as by its intrinsic relevance to significant issues. Sherif writes to clarify theory, to define conceptual tools, and to use tools and theory to demonstrate the substantive results of his researches. Each research finding is added to its predecessors as the author advances to his goal of a social psychology that is consistent as it moves from the most basic psychological processes to the complexities of individual involvement in collective activity

    Introduction; I: Interdisciplinary Relations and Methodology; One: If Basic Research is To have Bearing on Actualities . . .; Two: Social Psychology, Anthropology, and The “Behavioral Sciences”; Three: Social Psychology: Problems and Trends in Interdisciplinary Relationships; Four: The “Institutional” vs. “Behavioral” Controversy in Social Science, with Special Reference to Political Science; Five: Analysis of The Social Situation; II: Experimental Models for Social Interaction; Six: Some Social Factors in Perception: The Orientation; Seven: Formation of Social Norms: The Experimental Paradigm; Eight: Differential Influence: Process Underlying Social Attitude; Nine: The Psychology of Slogans; Ten: Conformity-Deviation, Norms, and Group Relations; Eleven: A Study in Ego Functioning: Elimination of Stable Anchorages in Individual and Group Relations; III: The Self and Reference Groups; Twelve: The Self and Reference Groups: Meeting Ground of Individual and Group Approaches; Thirteen: The Problem of Inconsistency in Intergroup Relations; Fourteen: The Adolescent in His Group in Its Setting; Fourteen: The Adolescent in His Group in its Setting; IV: Concepts, Attitudes, and Ego-Involvement; Fifteen: Some Social-Psychological Aspects of Conceptual Functioning; Sixteen: Some Needed Concepts in The Study of Attitudes: Latitudes of Acceptance, Rejection, and Noncommitment; Seventeen: The Social Judgment-Involvement Approach to Attitude and Attitude Change; Eighteen: The Own Categories Procedure in Attitude Research; V: Experimental and Field Research: Man in In-Group and Intergroup Relations; Nineteen: The Necessity of Considering Current Issues as Part and Parcel of Persistent Major Problems; Twenty: Integrating Field Work and Laboratory in Small Group Research; Twenty-One Experimental Study of Intergroup Relations; Twenty-Two Approach, Hypotheses, and General Design of Intergroup Experiments; Twenty-Three Superordinate Goals in The Reduction of Intergroup Conflict; Twenty-Four Creative Alternatives to A Deadly Showdown; Twenty-Five Conflict and Cooperation Between Functionally Related Groups

    Biography

    Muzafer Sherif