PS124 Unit 2 Assignment

Unit 2 Assignment

Introduction to Psychology

For this assignment, I will be watching a video and writing about it. The video I chose to write about is by Bo Bennett and was posted on YouTube September 10, 2013. The name of his video is called “Robber’s Cave Experiment.” In this video Bo Bennett talked about a social psychologist named Muzafer Sherif. Sherif and his colleagues decided to do research on why groups have a lot of tension between them and what can be done to reduce the tension. This study used 2 separate groups that had about 20 boys each that were between the ages of 11 and 12. There were four different stages to the study. During stage 1 of the study, the 2 groups of boys were completely separated and both groups didn’t even know there was another group. The boys were able to form a bond with their group. The 2nd stage of this study, the two groups were able to meet and have interaction with each other. During the 2nd stage, the researches created competition for resources so there could only be one winner and the other team would be the losers. This competition created a lot of tension between the two groups. Both groups became very hostile. First it started off with name calling then it became were both groups were stealing and vandalizing things. At one point of this competition there was physical violence and the researchers had to physically separate the boys. During the 3rd stage, the researchers created fake situations in where the two groups had to work together to solve the problem. One of the situations where the groups had to work together was, the researches pretended the water was shut off due to the vandalism and the groups had to figure out how to turn the water back on. At the end of the 3rd stage, they found that the boys between both groups, liked each other a lot more because of the team building activities that took place. This whole study was a confirmation of Sherif’s conflict theory in which when there is competition for resources, conflict will arise.

The scientific method is a serious of steps that are followed by scientific researchers to answer specific questions. For the video I watched, the question was why there is so much tension between groups. To figure out the answer to this question, the researchers conducted an experiment with the groups and observed the groups. The type of research method that I believe was used during this experiment is naturalistic observation. I believe this research is used because the researchers were able to observe the boys’ behaviors before and after they met the second group. I think this historical research was ethical. I believe this because this study helped the researchers understand what can cause so much tension between groups and they were able to solve the problem by making the two groups of boys work together.

References:

Bennett, B. (2013, September 10). Robbers Cave Experiment. Retrieved February 15, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QGNxRGgBwM

Spielman, R. M. (2014, December 08). Psychology. Retrieved February 15, 2019, from https://cnx.org/contents/[email protected]:iMyFZJzg@10/2-2-Approaches-to-Research

Place an Order

Plagiarism Free!

Scroll to Top