Necessarily collectivistic

摘要

The corpus of work produced by Muzafer Sherif, including the Boys Camp Studies, reminds us that groups have both a material reality and psychological validity. This work directs us to examine group processes and intergroup relations at the appropriate group and intergroup level. And it admonishes us to achieve these ends through sound conceptual clarity. The Boys' Camp Studies themselves remain a valuable model for creating psychologically meaningful groups with, among other things, histories, norms and real intergroup relations. They highlight the theme that runs through all of Sherif's work, that individual behaviour - made possible only through individual minds - cannot be understood through analyses of those individual minds removed from the social context.