A study of some social factors in perception
Sherif seated naive male students in a dark, sound-proof room facing a small light with no distance cues and asked them to signal when it appeared to move, a drift that is an illusion. Judging alone, the participants each settled on a personal range and typical value, and these differed widely between people. Participants who judged together converged on a shared value, those who began in a group converged almost at once, and members who had been in a group kept a norm close to the group's when later tested alone. Only about a quarter of participants believed other people's judgements had influenced them. Reading depth: full text of the design and results chapters; figures used are 19 individual participants, medians from under half an inch to nearly ten inches, and about a quarter.
Sherif seated naive male students in a dark, sound-proof room facing a small light with no distance cues and asked them to signal when it appeared to move, a drift that is an illusion. Judging alone, the participants each settled on a personal range and typical value, and these differed widely between people. Participants who judged together converged on a shared value, those who began in a group converged almost at once, and members who had been in a group kept a norm close to the group's when later tested alone. Only about a quarter of participants believed other people's judgements had influenced them. Reading depth: full text of the design and results chapters; figures used are 19 individual participants, medians from under half an inch to nearly ten inches, and about a quarter.
Written from the chapters 2 and 3 of the monograph (Mead Project text), 2026-11-01.
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Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
- New York: R. S. Woodworth. No DOI; library catalogue record https://bdu.siu.edu.ar/bdu/Record/B-53-152302