Muzafer Sherif

Lore & Background

Muzafer Sherif, born Muzaffer Şerif Başoğlu, grew up in a wealthy household as the second of five children. He attended elementary school in Ödemiş for six years before earning a Bachelor of Arts from Izmir International College in 1926. He obtained a Master of Arts from Istanbul University in 1928, where he engaged in political debates supporting Turkey’s modernization and developed an interest in hormic psychology, a goal-oriented approach proposed by British psychologist William McDougall. His childhood was marked by the Italo-Turkish War, the Balkan Wars, World War I, and the Greek and Turkish occupation of Izmir during the Turkish War of Independence. During the Great Depression, Sherif traveled to America, earning a second MA from Harvard University under Gordon Allport and Caroll Pratt. He visited Berlin in 1932 to attend Wolfgang Köhler’s lectures on Gestalt psychology, planning to apply Gestalt principles to social perception. He returned to the U.S. in 1933, initially pursuing doctoral studies at Harvard before switching to Columbia University, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1935 under Gardner Murphy. After returning to Turkey, he joined Ankara University and developed ties with the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), criticizing bureaucrats and Nazi supporters in his writings. He was briefly detained in 1944 during political conflicts at the university. In 1945, he married Carolyn Wood, with whom he collaborated on numerous scholarly books and a textbook; they had three daughters. Sherif permanently fled to the U.S. in 1945, fearing harsher punishment for his Communist associations. He remained stateless, losing Turkish citizenship rights and being denied U.S. citizenship, and was listed as a Communist sympathizer by the FBI. He was fired from Ankara University and owed salary debt to the Turkish government. His academic appointments included Yale University, the University of Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania State University. He was the first recipient of the Cooley-Mead Award from the American Sociological Association. Sherif suffered from manic depression and attempted suicide; his mental health declined after his wife’s death in 1982. He died of a heart attack on October 16, 1988, in Fairbanks, Alaska, at age 82.

Reader's Guide

Sherif's significance lies in his foundational contributions to social psychology, particularly through the autokinetic effect experiments and realistic conflict theory. The autokinetic effect experiments demonstrated how social norms are created and internalized, showing that group influence can shape individual perception even in ambiguous situations. Realistic conflict theory, developed with Carolyn Wood Sherif and based on the Robbers Cave experiment, accounted for intergroup conflict and prejudice as resulting from competition for resources. These works provided powerful techniques for understanding social processes, though many of his ideas have been later re-presented as new. His legacy includes over 60 articles and 24 books, and he was the first recipient of the Cooley-Mead Award for Contributions to Social Psychology from the American Sociological Association.

Did You Know?

• Sherif was the first to obtain the Cooley-Mead Award for Contributions to Social Psychology from the American Sociological Association.
• He was listed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Communist sympathizer list and was interrogated by the FBI.
• His marriage to his American wife, Carolyn Wood, led to his dismissal from Ankara University because it violated policies banning marriage of Turks to foreigners.
• Sherif's autokinetic effect experiments showed that groups converged on a shared estimate of light movement, which participants later replicated individually.