Experiment in Intergroup Relations-a Ten-Year Summary

Experiment in Intergroup Relations-a Ten-Year SummaryAuthor(s): James H. S. BossardSource: Social Forces, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Mar., 1954), pp. 217-221Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2573237 .

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Volume 32 Number 3

SOCIAL FORCES March, I9 5 4

EXPERIMENT IN INTERGROUP RELATIONS- A TEN-YEAR SUMMARY

JAMES H. S. BOSSARD

University of Pennsylvania

N AN age of ideological conflict, the op- portunity for people of different group and cultural backgrounds to sit down together and

talk over their differences is of primary importance. Progress in the development of this process may be as significant as success in splitting the atom; in fact, it may be the answer to it. At any rate, this article presents an analysis of an experiment in the art and practice of conference, as a contribution to the literature in the sociology of intergroup relations. Six aspects of this project will be summarized: (1) its nature and purpose, (2) its constituent personnel, (3) the purpose of the sponsor, (4) the topics discussed, (5) the procedures followed, and (6) some selected results.

NATURE AND PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT

The project has been known throughout its history as the Philadelphia Discussion Group. Over a period of ten years it has involved a series of 50 meetings of a primary or face-to-face group of persons of markedly diverse viewpoints, for the purpose of a frank discussion of current issues of their own selection. Most of the persons thus meeting were previously unknown or only slightly known to each other. Its entire development was sponsored by the Esso Standard Oil Company in recognition of the difficulty that people with different interests and viewpoints have in finding a common meeting place and of the public re- sponsibility of a large corporation to contribute to the solution of that difficulty. Representatives of the Company have been present as hosts at all meetings; they have participated in the discussions but in no way have they sought to dominate or direct them. This Philadelphia project is one of four similarly sponsored by the

Esso Company. The others are in Massachusetts, North Carolina, and West Virginia. The peculiar success of the Philadelphia project, however, and the length of its unbroken continuance give it a unique importance.

ITS CONSTITUENT PERSONNEL

The group began with 13 members, selected by several educators and Company representatives. Further selections have been quite informal and have been governed by two basic considerations: 1) that of diversity of interests, to the end that as many viewpoints as possible are represented; and 2) that of interest and active participation in discussion. Most contacts with new members begin with their attendance as guests; the informal rule after that has been: "If you come twice and are interested, you are a member."

In character, the membership has been highly diverse. Of the 13 original members, five were engaged in business, but of varying kinds; five were educators, representing sociology, economics, political science, and the law; and one was a lawyer. At the end of five years, there were 39 active members. The number of businessmen had grown to 11, representing either ownership or management; nine were educators; there were five clergymen, from four different denominations; four were practising lawyers; four were labor leaders, from the American Federation of Labor and the Committee for Industrial Organization; three were bankers; and there was one dairy farmer, one public school administrator, and one university administrator. Currently, at the end of a decade, the active membership has grown to 49. A total of 42 different interest groups are in- cluded. Among the newcomers during the past

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five years have been an insurance broker, a physician, and a newspaper columnist.

There has been some turnover in membership of the group, but on the whole this has been small so that a substantial core has remained throughout the period. Of the 13 original members, eight are still active; of the 39 actives at the end of the first five years, 26 remain. Resignations are few; most of the membership losses have been the result of death or change of residence.

The meetings of the discussion group vary in size between 25 and 30 at any particular date. A few occasions brought forth as many as 50, in- cluding guests; at several meetings the number in attendance fell as low as 20; for the most part, however, a number between 25 and 30 has been maintained consistently.

The chief problem in regard to personnel, apart from that of finding persons who are interested in the discussion of public issues and who are articu- late and sufficiently tolerant, has been a certain suspicion concerning the "real" motives of the sponsors: What does Esso want? Why are they doing this? What are they really after? There must be some catch to all this. Comments of this kind tended to be raised by persons when they first contacted the experiment. Curiously enough, certain representatives of the Company were equally inclined to be skeptical, thinking that the persons who would come might have ulterior motives. Gradually, however, these attitudes were changed, the participants came to recognize the real nature of the experiment, educated their friends, and in many cases recruited them as members.

PURPOSE OF THE SPONSORS

The question of the "real" purpose of the sponsor, just alluded to, needs to be faced and answered. In essence, this answer is a two-fold one. First, the project has been offered, even as it has served, as a public service to adult education and to good citizenship. This is in keeping with the policy of various large corporations in recent years, to realize their responsibilities to the public weal. A second purpose, more prosaic and specific, has been to enable Esso personnel to ascertain and to assess what other groups in their communities were thinking. Business does not function in a vacuum, and no enterprise can operate successfully if its representatives are isolated from the life and thought about them.

These meetings, then, while serving the interests of the larger community, have also served the Esso Company in enabling its personnel to maintain direct and recurrent contacts with the thought of that larger community. All this is stated frankly and clearly by Mr. Stanley C. Hope, President of the Esso Company. In a state- ment for the author, Mr. Hope puts it this way:

Businessmen have for a long time realized the difficulties of communicating with non-business groups. Facts and figures can be published but the men and motives behind them are known to others more by report than by contact and the reports must be interpreted by those who hear them according to their own interests, background and life experience. If this is true of businessmen, it seemed to us that it might also be true of other groups, of those in the field of labor, of education and of religion. We thought we might contribute something and gain much if we could bring together in an informal atmosphere people from these groups. We decided to try it in Philadelphia a little more than ten years ago. We invited a small group of people of different pursuits to meet and dis- cuss subjects that were of interest and import to all of them, but about which they could be expected to hold widely different views. We wanted our local management people to get to know the points of view of the people from these different groups in their communities and in turn wanted them to be understood and accepted as persons rather than as symbols of business.

THE TOPICS DISCUSSED

Topics for discussion are selected by a steering committee consisting of nine members which meets at luncheon several weeks before the stated bimonthly meetings of the larger group. This steering committee consists of two lawyers, a labor leader, a businessman, a physician, a professor of industry, a professor of law, and two sociologists. Any member of the discussion group may suggest a topic to the steering committee, which then makes a selection and announces it to the entire group. The process is a highly flexible one, so that the topics reflect the issues of the moment and the interests of its members. If pertinent published material bearing on the topic is available, the Esso Company and/or individual members of the group may make such materials available to the members.

The topics discussed have varied tremendously, ranging from those of broad international scope, such as "What Is Our National Foreign Policy?"



EXPERIMENT IN INTERGROUP RELATIONS 219

or "What Is the Russian Threat?" or "The Marshall Plan," to those purely local, such as "Problems of Public Education in Philadelphia" or "The Philadelphia Charter." By far the greater number, however, have been national in scope, but within this general category there have been many variations. Some have been broadly sociological in nature, like "Our Aging Population: What Are the Problems They Represent And What Are the Alternate Methods of Solution?" Others have been more specifically economic: "Wages and Prices," "What Can We Do To Stop Inflation?" and "Is Too Large A Part Of Our National Income Going Into Taxation?" Still other topics have kept abreast of the political scene, such as "What Are the Issues That Should Be Considered by the Presidential Candidates in 1952?" or "What Will Be the Effects of the Republican Victory on Domestic and Foreign Policies?" Because of the makeup and particular interests of the group, many topics have dealt with labor relations, such as "What Are The Common Aims of Labor and Capital?" or "How Can We Make Collective- Bargaining More Effective?" Still another group of discussions have centered around problems of citizenship: "What Does It Mean To Be Loyal To America?" or "What Are the Justifiable Limitations on the Freedom of Expression and Assembly Today?" or "What Does Democracy Mean in Government, Business, Industry, Education, Church and Home?" At times, one topic has been carried over for several meetings; at other times, a series of topics in the same general field have been discussed. On the whole, however, the programs have varied as much as the interests of the members and the vagaries of the times have dictated.

PROCEDURES OF DISCUSSION

Much of the success of an experiment of this kind depends on the procedures that are followed, some of which are rather detailed and prosaic. The more important of the procedures that have been utilized are summarized briefly.

1. A social half hour and dinner precede the discussion period. These extend from 6:30 p.m. to about 8:00. The dinner and meetings are held in a private dining room of a leading hotel in Philadelphia. The Esso Company is host for these occasions.

2. The physical setting for such a discussion is important. Members of the group are seated at a

relatively narrow table, arranged in three sides of a square. This permits close sitting together. Discussions thus can be and are conducted in a conversational tone and with the participants seated.

3. The meeting is opened by a moderator, who states the topic and presents the problem as he sees it. At times, several members have been asked to make brief introductory statements, sketching selected aspects of the problem. Occasionally, some expert in a field has come in as a guest and has been invited to participate or lead the discussion. Formal speeches and lengthy statements have been avoided.

4. Each member of the group is given op- portunity to participate. If one or two members seem to lag, the moderator may attempt to draw them into the discussion; if someone talks too much, the moderator may deliberately "toss the ball" to someone else. Persons present are there as individuals, not as delegates or representatives of their company or organization, and the opinions which they express are wholly their own.

5. No notes are taken of the proceedings, and no reporters are present. There is no record of the discussions and no publicity is ever given to any of the meetings or any of the views expressed.

6. No attempt is made to arrive at a conclusion. The aim is not directed toward agreement or any program of action. The group never votes on an issue or on any part thereof. The essential purposes are the enlargement and synthesis of knowledge on a given topic and the fuller development of the democratic principles by which we live. The moderator may attempt to summarize the discussion, indicating points of agreement and differences. Some moderators have done so, others have not. It is believed that these features are particularly important. A great deal of discussion currently tends to be manipulated, involving adroit handling and direction designed to lead a group to a conclusion or a point that had been decided upon in advance by the manipulators. There has been no evidence of this in any of the 50 meetings of this particular discussion group.

7. Rotation of moderators is practiced. In the early years of the project, the same person acted as moderator, but since then at least six different members of the group have taken turns at serving in this capacity. Among these have been an attorney, a labor leader, an expert in personnel, a public school man, and two sociologists. While all



220 SOCIAL FORCES

the moderators have conformed to the general plan of procedure, each one has presented the topic and guided the discussion to some degree according to his own ideas and interests. This diversity has prevented too great a rigidity of program and has enriched the variety of interests that were stressed.

8. Among the personal elements in the procedure that seem of very great importance are the roles played by members of the Esso staff. The sponsorship of the program has been continued during the tenure of three Company representatives, the first of whom, Mr. E. H. Collins, left because of a promotion; the second, Mr. Walter E. Black, left the Company by retirement, but continues as a member of the group; the third is Mr. J. F. Dixon, the official succeeding Mr. Black. Of the Company representatives, two should be singled out for special comment. One of these is Mr. Black who, until his recent retirement, served as Division Manager of the Pennsylvania Division of the Esso Standard Oil Company. A veteran of almost fifty years of Company service, "Uncle Walter," as he is affectionately called, has been the perfect genial host. His has been the "father role" in the proceedings. A good listener, he has preserved a benign silence while "the boys" have run rampant with their arguments. The other person has been Mrs. Charlotte Browne-Mayers of the Public Relations Department of the Standard Oil Company, New Jersey. With very few ex- ceptions, she has been the only woman present at the meetings. Serving as hostess, she has helped to build the emotional bridges essential to a good rapport within the group. The presence of a woman has been, in the judgement of the male members, an excellent arrangement, for it has given an added touch of respectability to the proceedings and has kept the discussion always within the limits of a proper decorum.

SELECTED RESULTS

At the end of ten years, the group spent an entire evening in an evaluation of its experience. The author kept a careful record of the points that were stressed. Subsequently, officials of the Esso Company, who had been in contact with the group throughout its history, were interviewed. Finally, the author's own reactions, recorded as a sociologist during the years, have been drawn upon. The composite of these three sources is presented in summary form.

1. The project has made it very clear that

persons with the most diverse backgrounds and interests can sit down together repeatedly and over a long period of time to talk over current issues. For the entire or most of the period summarized, a labor leader and a business executive, a Negro school administrator sensitive to the needs of his people and a corporation lawyer alert to the interests of his clients, a professor of sociology interested in child development and the manager of a large mail-order house have been seated side-by-side and have exchanged their thoughts on a wide variety of issues.

2. These contacts have served to personify different interest groups to each other. This is important because current ideological and occu- pational groups tend to become stereotyped in our minds. What happens in continuing con- ferences of this kind is that the ogre myth dis- appears and one comes to see the idea in terms of the person who holds it. The idea is made flesh. The person image is substituted for the ogre image. Instead of conceiving of the banker as a financial Simon Legree or the labor leader as a ranting radical, one sees them as persons. We sit next to them, we hear them talk as persons, we learn that they are also husbands, fathers, and citizens. Two men with diametrically opposite points of view learn, for example, that they both have boys of high school age and are wrestling with the same problems of parenthood. A number of comments indicating this type of rapport have been made during the ten-year period.

3. Complementary to this personalization of concept has been the interpretation of different types to each other. This again is of current importance because a number of contemporary types in our society have become indifferent to, or even contemptuous of, any necessity of interpreting themselves to other groups. The businessman, the labor leader, the corporation lawyer, the banker, and even the college professor often are little known, understood, and liked by other groups. To a large extent, this has been due to their relative isolation from each other. Their tra- ditional attitude has been that they are respon- sible to their stockholders, members, and clients, respectively, and possibly to their consciences- and to no one else. This isolation, this chasm between groups, has grown with the development of industrialism and urbanism, where specialization has separated people in their work and in their opportunities to get together.



EXPERIMENT IN INTERGROUP RELATIONS 221

Discussion groups of the kind presented here provide in more ways than one a substitute for the logrollings, quilting bees, cracker barrels, and town meetings of an earlier day. Here various occupa- tional types are on the spot; they are out in the open in democratic glare of the common meeting of many different kinds of persons. Here each must explain himself to all, and this is as salutary for the self as it enlightening to the other.

4. There is a therapeutic value in telling it, and particularly in telling it to certain other persons. In this particular discussion group, the businessman tells the public official about taxes, a parent tells the school administrator, a labor leader tells management, and a sociologist tells the lawyer. Two other aspects of this process also became apparent. One is the mental hygiene value of a chance for self-expression. The opinionated get a chance to sound off, the combative ones proceed to clash, the evangelical proclaim the gospel, the quiet one has the privilege of listening, and the student continues to learn-each is served according to his need. Again, much satisfaction was displayed whenever the once-conceived ogre type stepped out of character, as it were, agreed with his foe and ceded a point. Ceding a point appeared in the experience of this group to be a very effective way of building a bridge to a common understanding between different minded persons.

5. Another striking result was the demonstra- tion of a primary discussion group as a method of adult education. It is a method that abjures lectures, books, and other forms of canned material. It is an informal method-friendly, stimulating, and spontaneous. Learning comes as a by-product of discussion. Specific testimony on this, in addition to the experiences stated by members, is con- tributed by Mr. Stuart Chase, who attended one session as guest observer. The subject on this occasion was the problem of the aged, and concerning this meeting Mr. Chase has written as follows: "For two hours the discussion surged back and forth. All the members took part, as well as a visitor or two.... It so happened that I had been making aln independent study of industrial pension systems at the time and had spent two months investigating what seemed to be the major points-financial, psychological, historical, sociological. Every single one of those points came out in that two hour discussion."'

6. The experience of this group underscores the problem of semantics in interpersonal relations and ideological discussions. One comes to see how great the problem of words is, how great the danger of being misunderstood, how often the major difference between two points of view is one between tweedledee and tweedledum. Over and over again, the basic ideas of members of the group were similar, with only the words used to couch them being different. This is another problem that has been aggravated by the specialization of contemporary life, in which each group in its relative isolation tends to develop its own lingo to clothe its own frame of reference.

7. If there is progress in interpretation, in the art of communication, and in the procedures of discussion, how much convincing has there been of members by each other? Who can tell? Where do we get our ideas? How many ideas come through a process of unconscious osmosis? Obviously, even the most closed mind cannot resist the impact of 50 discussion meetings, so that there is no member who would deny at least some modification of understanding and viewpoint. To be sure, there were instances when viewpoints were changed, at times completely so. The evaluation meeting of the group, previously referred to, produced some frank, even humorous, admissions of such changes. But beyond these, agreement is general that what happens basically is that a new ideological emergent appears from the discussions. If few, or even none, are convinced in the sense of moving over completely to the viewpoint of another, former convictions may still appear in a new light or new form. And this implies more than mere tolerance, although that were enough, but really a new synthesis of our ideas and understanding. The appearance of a new emergent, then, is essentially a creative process, involving the cross-fertilization of ideas.

8. Finally, between the lines of all the comments of members and notes on discussion behavior, there is evidence of experience in the discipline of getting along with people who disagree with each other. A face-to-face discussion group, in its long continuance, becomes then an experiment and a discipline in social living, involving give-and- take, compromise, tolerance, self-expression and self-restraint, which are the ingredients of the democratic way of life.

' Stuart Chase, Roads to Agreement (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1951), p. 113.



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Experiment in Intergroup Relations-a Ten-Year Summary