The Stranger in Laboratory Culture

Abstract

THIS laboratory study will show how taking the role of stranger affects certain responses made by the individual. Theoretically, it stems from an interest in marginality demonstrated by sociologists, anthropologists and historians. For example, Teggart 1 pointed out that contact between groups tends to emancipate the individual in thought and action. Park 2 and Stonequist 3 urged attention to the marginal man as a kind of concentration of the dynamics of culture. More recently, acculturation studies by scholars like Hallowell,4 Caudill,5 and Voget 6 have focussed on the characteristics of marginal individuals. Barnett 7 has incorporated Teggart's idea into his theory of innovation. He mentions the conjunction of differences as a factor that may stimulate innovation by an individual. Finally, and more specifically, we are indebted to Simmel 8 for pointing out the stranger as an important object of study. Methodologically, this study derives from a small-group experiment by Rose and Felton 9 in which a Rorschach card stimulus was presented repeatedly to a small group of subjects over a number of epochs. Each epoch consisted of a two-minute observation period followed by an explanation period in which each subject pointed out to the others in his group the concepts he had seen. Responses were classified as invention (perception of a new concept by a subject), borrowing (perception of a concept reported in an earlier epoch by a subject with whom the individual was in contact), and habit (perception by an individual of a concept which he, himself, had perceived in an earlier epoch.10 By moving individuals in and out of groups, the authors created three kinds of societies (new, closed and open) for which the rates of the different kinds of responses could be compared. While Rose and Felton maintain that they have created the mechanisms and processes of culture change in their laboratory, they warn against applying their results to the world outside. In our study we sought to compare the response rates of individuals playing different roles in the experimental framework suggested by Rose and Felton. Our experimental procedure is indicated in Figure 1. After a preliminary trial, groups of four subjects met for three epochs during which time some kind of consensus would, presumably, develop. Then one of the subjects, selected at random, was moved into a foreign group for three * This experiment was a project of the 1956 senior research seminar in Sociology-Anthropology at Middlebury College. We are indebted to the students of the seminar for carrying through the experimental procedures, to Edward Rose of the University of Colorado and William Felton of the University of Maryland for having suggested the specific research design to us, to James Sakoda of the University of Connecticut for statistical assistance, to Melford E. Spiro of the University of Connecticut for help in explaining our findings, and to June Shmelzer of the University of Connecticut for assistance in preparing the manuscript. 1 Frederick F. Teggert, Processes of History, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1918. 2 Robert E. Park, Human Migration and the Marginal American Journal of Sociology, 33 (May, 1928), pp. 881-893. 3 Everett V. Stonequist, The Marginal Man, New York: Scribners, 1937. 4A. I. Hallowell, Personality and Acculturation, in Sol Tax (editor), Acculturation in the Americas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952, pp. 105-112. 5 William Caudill, Psychological Characteristics of Acculturated Wisconsin Ojibwa Children, American Anthropologist, 51 (July-September, 1949), pp. 409-427. 6 Fred Voget, Individual Motivations in the Diffusion of the Wind River Shoshone Sundance to the Crow Indians, American Anthropologist, 50 (October-December, 1948), pp. 634-646. 7 Homer Barnett, Innovation, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953. 8 Georg Simmel, from Soziologie, 1908. Translated in Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924, pp. 322-327. 9 Edward Rose and William Felton, Experimental Histories of Culture, American Sociological Review, 20 (August, 1955), pp. 383-392. 10 Rose and Felton also classified culbits (habits which originated as borrowings rather than inventions). We have not found it necessary to differentiate such a response here.