Let us start with the term small group itself. The term is coming to mean all things to all people. If the concept of small groups is considered at the outset, research on small groups will gain a great deal in the way of selection of focal problems for investigation and hence effective concentration of efforts.
Small group may mean simply a small number of individuals. If this is the criterion, any small number of individuals in a togetherness situation would be considered a small group. But a conception of small groups in terms of numbers alone ignores the properties of actual small groups that have made their study such a going concern today.
One of the objectives of concentrating on small group research should be to attain valid generalizations that can be applied, at least in their essentials, to any group and to the behavior of individual members. Accordingly, one of our first tasks was to extract from sociological work some minimum essential features of actual small groups. This task poses a methodological advantage in concentrating on informally organized groups, rather than formally organized groups in which the leader or head and other positions, with their respective responsibilities, are appointed by a higher authority, such as a commanding officer or board. In informally organized groups, group products and the particular individuals who occupy the various positions are determined to a much greater extent by the actual interaction of individuals. If care is taken at the beginning to refer to the general setting in which small groups form and function, their products and structure can be traced through longitudinal observation of the interaction process.
Based on an extensive survey of sociological findings, we abstracted the following minimum features in the rise and functioning of small groups:
1. Individuals share a common goal that fosters their interacting with one another.
2. The interaction process produces differential effects on individual behavior; that is, each individual’s experience and behavior is affected in varying ways and degrees by the interaction process in the group.2
3. If interaction continues, a group structure consisting of hierarchical status and role relationships is stabilized and is clearly delineated as an ingroup from other group structures.
4. A set of norms regulating relations and activities within the group and with nonmembers and outgroups is standardized.3
Interaction is not made a separate item in these minimum features because interaction is the sine qua non of any kind of social relationship, whether interpersonal or group. Since human interaction takes place largely on a symbolic level, communication is here considered part and parcel of the interaction process.
When group structure is analyzed in terms of hierarchical status positions, the topic of power necessarily becomes an integral dimension of the hierarchy. Power relations are brought in as an afterthought only if this essential feature of group hierarchy is not made part of the conception of a group. Of course, power does in many cases stem from outside of the group, and in these cases the nature of established functional relations between groups in the larger structure has to be included in the picture.
Our fourth feature relates to the standardization of a set of norms. The term social norm is a sociological designation referring generically to all products of group interaction that regulate members’ behavior in terms of the expected or even the ideal behavior. Therefore, norm does not denote average behavior.4 The existence of norms, noted by sociologists, has been experimentally tested by psychologists in terms of convergence of judgments of different individuals (Sherif 1936), and in terms of reactions to deviation (Schachter 1952). A norm denotes not only expected behavior but a range of acceptable behavior, the limits of which define deviate acts. The extent of the range of acceptable behavior varies inversely with the significance or consequence of the norm for the identity, integrity, and major goals of the group.
With these minimum essential features of small informally organized groups in mind, a group is defined as a social unit that consists of a number of individuals who, at a given time, stand in more or less definite interdependent status and role relationships with one another, and that explicitly or implicitly possesses a set of norms or values regulating the behavior of the individual members, at least in matters of consequence to the group.
Common group attitudes or sentiments are not included in this definition because individuals form social attitudes in relation to group norms as the individuals become functioning parts in the group structure. At the psychological level, then, the individual becomes a group member to the extent that he or she internalizes the major norms of the group and carries on the responsibilities and meets expectations for the position occupied. As pointed out by various authors, individuals’ very identity and self conception, their sense of security, become closely tied to their status and role in the group through the formation of attitudes relating to their membership and position. These attitudes may be termed ego-attitudes, which function as constituent parts of the individual’s ego system.
On the basis of findings at a sociological level, hypotheses concerning the formation of small ingroups and relations between them were derived and tested in our 1949 camp experiment (Sherif and Sherif 1953). One of the principal concerns of that study was the feasibility of experimentally producing ingroups through controlling the conditions of interaction among individuals with no previous role and status relations.
We tested two hypotheses:
1. When individuals having no established relationships are brought together to interact in group activities with common goals, they produce a group structure with hierarchical statuses and roles.
2. If two ingroups thus formed are brought into functional relationship under conditions of competition and group frustration, attitudes and appropriate hostile actions in relation to the outgroup and its members will arise and will be standardized and shared in varying degrees by group members.
As sociologists will readily recognize, testing these hypotheses is not so much for the discovery of new facts as for getting a clearer picture of the formative process under experimentally controlled conditions. The testing aims at singling out the factors involved in the rise of group structure, group code or norms, and ingroup-outgroup delineations, which will make possible their intensive study with appropriate laboratory methods on the psychological level.
To test these hypotheses, 24 boys of about 12 years of age, from similar lower middle-class, Protestant backgrounds were brought to an isolated camp site wholly available for the experiment. The early phase (Stage 1) of the study consisted of a variety of activities permitting contact among all the boys and observation of budding friendship groupings. After being divided into two groups of 12 boys each, to split the budding friendship groupings and at the same time constitute two similar units, the two groups lived, worked, and played separately (Stage 2). All activities introduced embodied a common goal (with appeal value to all), the attainment of which necessitated cooperative participation within the group.
At the end of this stage, unmistakable group structures developed, each with a leader and hierarchical statuses, and also with names and appropriate group norms, including sanctions for deviate behavior. Friendship preferences were shifted and reversed away from previously budding relationships toward ingroup preferences. Thus our first hypothesis concerning ingroup formation was substantiated.
In the final phase (Stage 3) of the 1949 experiment, the two experimentally formed ingroups were brought together in situations that were competitive and led to some mutual frustration as a consequence of the behavior of the groups in relation to each other. The result of intergroup contact in these conditions was, on the one hand, enhancement of ingroup solidarity, democratic interaction within groups, and ingroup friendship. On the other
