Education
Sherif received a B.A. at the Izmir American College in Turkey in 1926, and an M.A. at the University of Istanbul in 1928. Sherif then went to America, earning an M.A. from Harvard University. He enrolled at Columbia University, and in 1935 earned a Ph.D. with Gardner Murphy. His dissertation was titled "Some Social Factors In Perception" and the ideas and research were the basis for his first classic book "The Psychology of Social Norms."
The topic of his dissertation was social influence in perception, and the experiments have come to be known as the "autokinetic effect" experiments. In an otherwise totally dark room, a small dot of light is shown on a wall, and after a few moments, the dot appears to move. This effect is entirely inside-the-head, and results from the complete lack of "frame of reference" for the movement. Three participants enter the dark room, and watch the light. It appears to move, and the participants are asked to estimate how far the dot of light moves. These estimates are made out loud, and with repeated trials, each group of three converges on an estimate. Some groups converged on a high estimate, some low, and some in-between. The critical finding is that groups found their own level, their own "social norm" of perception. This occurred naturally, without discussion or prompting.
When invited back individually a week later and tested alone in the dark room, participants replicated their original groups' estimates. This suggests that the influence of the group was informational rather than coercive; because they continued to perceive individually what they had as members of a group, Sherif concluded that they had internalized their original group's way of seeing the world. Because the phenomenon of the autokinetic effect is entirely a product of a person's own perceptual system, this study is evidence of how the social world pierces the person's skin, and affects the way they understand their own physical and psychological sensations.
Read more about this topic: Muzafer Sherif
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“In England, I was quite struck to see how forward the girls are madea child of 10 years old, will chat and keep you company, while her parents are busy or out etc.with the ease of a woman of 26. But then, how does this education go on?Not at all: it absolutely stops short.”
—Frances Burney (17521840)
“It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organisation upon the natural organisation of the body.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (18251895)
“Since [Rousseaus] time, and largely thanks to him, the Ego has steadily tended to efface itself, and, for purposes of model, to become a manikin on which the toilet of education is to be draped in order to show the fit or misfit of the clothes. The object of study is the garment, not the figure.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (18381918)