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Psychology of Communication: social influence
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Psychology of Communication: social influence
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Several years ago I taught European Studies. When looking over European conflicts of the recent past and at the possibility of renewed conflict, I got the students to play a game. The game was originally used by Oxfam to demonstrate how difficult it can be for Third World countries with few resources to break out of their poverty.
Every student chose a number of counters at random out of a bag. There were relatively few red counters, rather more blue and a lot of white ones. The red counters had a high points value, the blue ones a medium value and the white ones a very low value. By having more colours of a particular colour, one obtained a bonus. The aim of the game was to maximise one's points. To this end, 'trading session' were arranged, where players could bargain with any other player to trade counters, perhaps trading for counters of a higher value, perhaps trying to obtain a bonus by gaining more of the same colour. If a player was unwilling to trade, that player folded their arms and refused to speak.
A couple of players who, by chance, were quite 'well off' at the beginning, refused to trade from the outset. By the second trading session, more refused to trade. Things started to get heated as the 'poorer' players tried to persuade them to trade. By the third session, as the 'poor' players became desperate to persuade the more fortunate to trade, tempers became very heated indeed and I had to intervene to prevent physical violence.
The conflict had arisen out of the fight for scarce resources. The point of the game was of course to show that if a country has no wealth to start with, then it has no chance of ever gaining a share of wealth, at least not as long as our world is organised as it is.
Sherif helped to run a summer camp at Robber's Cave Park, Oklahoma. The boys were chosen to be 'normal', healthy, well-adjusted individuals. None of them knew one another. They were divided at random into two separate housing units: 'The Eagles' and 'The Rattlers'.
At first group cohesion was low, as they didn't know one another. Sherif gave each group a set of problems to solve which required that the boys in each group must co-operate (separately from the other group). Group cohesion grew rapidly.
Sherif then introduced contests between the two groups. Either group could win a prize only at the expense of the other group. Very rapidly, the groups began calling one another names, fights broke out regularly and there were raids on one another's camps.
As with my students, it seems that competition for limited resources had created conflict.
Having set the two groups against each other, Sherif attempted to bring them back together.
The first method he tried was to unite them by giving them a common enemy. This was fairly effective to the extent that the Eagles and the Rattlers became closer, but conflict was not reduced, strictly speaking, because they held hatred for their common enemy. It's not clear either what might have happened once the enemy had been seen off and they had to co-exist again. The Western powers and the USSR who made common cause against Hitler didn't exactly hit it off after the war. At the time I am writing, Croats and Bosnian Muslims occasionally join together against the Bosnian Serbs, but seem to be prepared to fight one another again once the Serbs have been seen off.
The next year Sherif again set the groups against each other and then tried resolving the conflict by bringing them together in pleasant surroundings to eat excellent food and watch movies. That didn't work as all they did was fight.
Sherif then tried confronting the two hostile groups with a common threat. For example, a water shortage 'suddenly developed' or the trucks bringing their food 'broke down' when the boys were particularly hungry. In these cases, the problems could only be solved if they co-operated.
This technique worked.
Sherif suggests that intergroup conflict can be reduced by giving the groups 'overriding, superordinate goals' (McConnell et al (1992) p. 590). But, he says, many of the group leaders will continue to see co-operation on solving such common problems as a sign of weakness.
It is generally accepted that joint problem-solving is an effective way of reducing conflict between groups and individuals and of increasing cohesion within a group. Ideally, though, this needs to be in a non-competitive situation.
If you think, for example, of the threat posed by global warming, it would seem to be in the interests of all the countries in the world to avoid it. Progress towards doing anything about it is painfully slow, however. The low-lying countries of the world want CO2 emissions cut dramatically. The oil-producing countries don't. Not surprisingly many Third World countries see the issue as yet another con by developed countries to keep them in dependency. The common threat is real enough, but the inter-group competition is so great in other respects that it seems to push the common threat into second place.
Conformity
Diffusion of responsibility
Obedience
Rebellion
Minority influence
Power of social roles
Groups and Teams
Mass Media Effects Research
Political Propaganda and Persuasion
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