Realistic Conflict Theory

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Recommended: Chapter 2 social psychology

Social psychology is "the scientific investigation of how the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of the individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other." (Allport, 1954) Social psychologist uses scientific methods such as observational experiments, case studies and laboratory experiments etc. in order to construct and test the theories of human behaviour, thoughts, feeling, intentions and goals under the influence of other people's presence or while imagining other people's presence. Although their findings and theories are highly relevant to society phenomena to a certain extent, it is still widely debated about how applicable the theories are in addressing real social issues. There are many studied areas in …show more content…

First of all, ethnocentrism existed in in-group even before the intergroup competition, this may suggest that not only goal influence on intergroup behaviour. For example racist between black and white people, gender discrimination between man and women and disable discrimination between blind and normal people, are all not cause by the nature of goal but the characteristic of an individual. Secondly, this study has gender bias since it only include boys but not girls. Thirdly, realistic conflict theory might explain some of the phenomena in the society but it is too simple since there might be other reasons then nature of goal that causes different intergroup behaviour. Tyerman & Spencer (1983) replicated Sherif study but with all Scouts participants knowing each other before the study, they found that conflict between groups and individuals did not occur. Therefore, maybe there are more reasons that then nature of goal to determined intergroup behaviour (Turner, 1981) and it is not enough to explain the intergroup behaviour of Hong Kong riot. With realistic conflict theory, it is only possible to help understand one of the reasons of protesters and the police consider themselves as two separate groups since they have the same goal but cannot explain the hostility between two parties with a different …show more content…

"Depersonalization refers to a process whereby individuality and concomitant unshared beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and behaviours are replaced by an in-group prototype that prescribes shared beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and behaviours." (Hogg & Grieve, 1999) This explains why the protesters and polices act the same when there are no clear guidelines on how to

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