Experimental Social Psychology

Abstract

The series of experiments were conducted at the Harvard Psychological Laboratory between the years 1916–1919. A variety of tasks were set: word, number, and spatial tests were used; a reasoning test was added; and, finally, a judgment test. The experiments were carried out over several years' time. Such sophisticated variations of the testing situation were introduced that comparisons with the earlier researchers of Floyd Allport and Muzafer Sherif do not carry us far. The experiments were divers, the technology was elaborate, and this time a different subject population was drawn upon— professional and business men and college-trained women. Generally the leveling effect of the group experimental situation has risen to prominence over the years since Allport's work. In Muzafer Sherif's experiments, which have already been briefly explained, a new terminology was created. Experimentalists either accepted the emergent group norm as their social reality or fell back on behavioral descriptions of contagion, imitation, or facilitation.

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