The Robbers Cave Experiment

10 Key excerpts on "The Robbers Cave Experiment"

• 

  eBook - PDF

  Group Dynamics

  • Donelson Forsyth(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  SOURCE: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation. The Robbers Cave Experiment , by M. Sherif, O. J. Harvey, B. J. White, W. R. Hood, and C. W. Sherif, 1961. Norman, OK: Institute of Group Relations. 446 C H A P T ER 14 Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. conflict, but not its inevitability: The chapter closes with an analysis of the ways intergroup conflicts can be resolved (De Dreu, Aaldering, & Saygi, 2015; Dovidio, Gaertner, & Thomas, 2013; Tropp & Molina, 2012). 1 4 -1 IN T E R G R O U P C O N F LI C T : U S V E R S U S T H E M The researchers ’ plans for The Robbers Cave Experiment worked all too well. In just two weeks, they created a full-fledged war-in-miniature between the Rattlers and the Eagles, complete with violent schemes, hostility, and mistreatment of each side by the other. The Sherifs, by starting with two newly formed groups with no history of rivalry, suc-ceeded in documenting the social and psychological factors that pushed these two groups into an escalat-ing conflict. 14-1a Competition and Conflict On the ninth day of The Robbers Cave Experiment, the Rattlers and the Eagles saw the tournament prizes for the first time: the shining trophy, medals for each boy, and — best of all — four-blade camping knives. The boys wanted these prizes, and nothing was going to stand in their way. From then on, all group activities revolved around the ultimate goal of winning the tournament. Unfortunately, although both groups aspired to win the prizes, success for one group meant failure for the other.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Psychoanalysis, Classic Social Psychology and Moral Living

  Let the Conversation Begin

  • Paul Marcus(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  4 INTERGROUP CONFLICT VERSUS COOPERATION Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment (1954) “Civilized society,” said Freud in Civilization and its Discontents, “is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another” (1961, p. 112). In the last paragraph of his essay, Freud observed, “Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man” (ibid., p. 145). Indeed, Freud’s troubling words written in 1930 are incredibly timely. As of 2011, there were 37 armed conflicts throughout the world (Themner & Wallensteen, 2012), and there are currently about 25 armed conflicts and nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran that have serious bearing on American foreign policy and world stability. 1 Taken together, wars and genocides have led to about 200 million deaths in the twentieth century (Bohm et al., in press, p. 1). It is within this ominous context that the pioneering intergroup relations and conflict studies of Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues (henceforth, Sherif) from the early 1950s 2 should be appreciated (Sherif et al., 1988). For as the late Harvard social psychologist Roger Brown noted, the Robbers Cave study, the most famous of the Boys’ Camp studies, as they are collectively known 3, was “the most successful field experiment ever conducted on intergroup conflict” (Platow & Hunter, 2017, p. 147). 4 What makes Sherif’s experiments so important is that they demonstrate to what extent real-life group behavior is context-dependent and setting-specific, compared to individual dispositional/personality factors, biological considerations or ingroup dynamics (ibid., p. 146). Specifically, Sherif demonstrated that intergroup conflict and hostility surfaces when there is competition for limited resources, prompting group members to think and behave negatively toward the other group. Conversely, as Carolyn W

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Social Psychology

  How Other People Influence Our Thoughts and Actions [2 volumes]

  • Randal W. Summers(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  There were actually a series of three experiments, begun in Connecticut in 1954 and concluded in Oklahoma in 1961. Twenty-two 11- to 12-year-old boys were taken to a summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma. The boys were from middle-class families and were carefully screened and found to be psychologically normal. The boys were not aware that they were subjects in an experiment. The researchers randomly divided the boys into two groups before they arrived at the camp. The purpose was to create social groups that eventually came into conflict with each other. To administer the experiment procedures, the researchers played the role of camp counselors. The experiments had three phases: (1) group formation, 2) group conflict, and (3) conflict resolution. In phase one, each group settled in a different area of the camp and initially were not aware of the other group. Members within a group got to know each other, social norms developed, and leadership and structure emerged. In phase two (group conflict) groups came into contact with each other. They competed in games, challenges, and also competed for control of territory. A lot of animosity and low-level violence occurred between the groups. In phase three (conflict resolution), the experimenters tried various ways to bring peace and cooperation between the two groups by increasing communication and contact between them and introducing superordinate goals for the groups.

  The results of Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiments indicated not only how prejudice and conflict build up between groups but also how integration and socialization through the introduction of superordinate goals were effective in reducing conflict. Superordinate goals were large goals that required both groups working together to achieve. Subsequent to this experiment, studies confirmed that intergroup socialization is the most effective way to reduce prejudice and discrimination.

  Further Reading

  McLeod, S. “Robbers Cave.” Simply Psychology, 2008. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/robbers-cave.html .

  Muzafer Sherif, et al., Intergroup conflict and cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment (Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961). Reprint edition, (Wesleyan University Press, 1988).

  Sherif, M., O. J. Harvey, B. Jack White, William R. Hood, and Carolyn W. Sherif. “Intergroup conflict and cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment.” Classics in the History of Psychology, 1954/1961. Retrieved from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Sherif .

  1958—Harlow’s “Wire/Cloth” Monkey Experiments, Harry Harlow

  Harry Harlow (born Harry Israel in 1905) obtained his PhD from Stanford University and then became a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin in 1930. His famous research into the social behavior of monkeys resulted in significant impact on the areas of affection, motivation, and learning. His findings in the field of comparative psychology on the need for “contact” have been generalized to the study of child psychology.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Social Identifications

  A Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations and Group Processes

  • Dominic Abrams, Michael A. Hogg(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The next stage was designed to see what would happen when the two groups came into contact, particularly when this contact involved competition for a prize. The two groups were pitted against one another in an organized tournament involving a variety of games such as baseball and a treasure hunt. The initial spirit of goodwill disappeared as the tournament progressed. The boys began to taunt and jeer at members of the other group, denouncing them as ‘snakes’ and ‘stinkers’. By the end of the tournament the two groups virtually refused to talk to each other and began to launch secret raids and attacks on each other’s cabin. In the Robbers Cave study the groups took part in a game where each had to collect as many (scattered) beans as possible in a set time. The beans supposedly collected by each person were displayed briefly on a screen, and the boys had to estimate how many there were. Although only thirty-five beans were actually shown each time, the boys overestimated the number collected by ingroup members and underestimated the number retrieved by outgroup members (cf. Blake and Mouton 1962). This stage demonstrated that, as a result of intergroup competition, an apparently amiable and well-adjusted collection of boys had been transformed. They now appeared ‘wicked, disturbed, and vicious’ (Sherif 1966:85).

  The conclusions to be drawn from this third stage in the studies (the 1953 study had to be terminated due to the extremity of intergroup antipathy!) were as follows. First, cultural, physical, and personality differences are not necessary for (and hence cannot be the only causes of) the emergence of intergroup conflict. Second, the existence of two groups in competition for a goal which only one can attain (competitively interdependent) is a sufficient condition for (and hence can be the sole cause of) intergroup hostility.

  The final stage of The Robbers Cave Experiment was designed to repair the relations between the groups and reduce intergroup conflict. One attempt to achieve this involved giving lectures on brotherly love and forgiveness at the Sunday services. Despite enjoying the services as a whole the boys seemed to have completely ignored the peaceful messages, and rapidly reverted to their preoccupation with beating or avoiding the outgroup. In the 1949 study, one successful means of ameliorating tensions between the two groups had been the introduction of a common enemy (a third competing group). However, as Sherif notes, this solution was undesirable since it simply meant a widening of intergroup conflict to a larger scale, ‘and would not lead to a lasting change in attitudes between the two original groups (Sherif 1966).

  At Robbers Cave two other methods were employed to create more friendly intergroup relations. First, the two groups were brought into equal status contact . As Williams (1947) and then Gordon Allport (1954) had argued, direct interpersonal contact between members of equal-status groups should lead to a reduction in intergroup prejudice as a result of the development of rewarding interpersonal relationships between members of the two groups (see Ch. 4 below; Miller and Brewer 1984; Hewstone and Brown 1986, for a recent overview of this hypothesis). However, Sherif hypothesized that contact would not be sufficient to reduce conflict. An additional requirement would be that the groups must meet, ‘under conditions embodying goals that are compelling for the groups involved, but cannot be achieved by a single group through its own efforts and resources’ (Sherif 1966:88). Such goals are termed superordinate goals

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Encyclopedia of Social Psychology

  • Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs, Roy Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  First, the groups were pro-vided with noncompetitive opportunities for increased contact, such as watching movies and sharing meals together. However, these getting-to-know-you opportu-nities did little to defuse intergroup hostility. In fact, many of these situations resulted in an exchange of verbal insults and, occasionally, food fights. As an alternative strategy, the groups were placed in situations that required them to cooperate with one another (i.e., the situations involved superordinate goals). For instance, one situation involved a broken-down truck carrying supplies to the camp. Another involved a problem with the camp’s water supply. In both cases, the groups needed to work together because the resources at stake were important to everyone involved. This cooperation resulted in more harmo-nious relations between groups, as friendships began to develop across group lines. As a telling sign of their newfound harmony, both groups expressed a desire to return home on the same bus. Implications and Importance The Robbers Cave Experiment has had an enormous impact on the field of social psychology. First, this study has implications for the contact hypothesis of prejudice reduction, which, in its simplest form, posits that contact between members of different groups improves how well groups get along. This experiment illustrates how contact alone is not enough to restore intergroup harmony. Even after the competition between the boys ended, the hostility did not disappear during future contact. Competition seemingly became incorporated into the groups’ identities. The hostility did not finally calm down until the context changed and cooperation between groups was required. Thus, beyond mere contact, groups also need to be interde-pendent and have common goals. Second, this study validated the claims of realistic conflict theory, which specifies that prejudice and discrimination result when groups are placed in competition for valuable resources.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Social Psychology

  • Jane Callaghan, Lisa Lazard(Authors)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Learning Matters

    (Publisher)

  In the first instance, they tried simple contact-based activities such as getting together for fireworks or to watch a film. This produced no real reduction in intergroup hostilities (one attempt at reconciliation ended with a food fight. . .). Once simple contact had failed, the research team introduced co-operative activities focused on a unifying superordinate goal. For example, boys were told that vandals had damaged the water system that supplied the camp with water from the local reservoir. The boys went out to try to resolve this problem and found a full tank of water with a tap that had been blocked with a sack. If the boys wanted to drink or use the toilets, they would have to fix the problem. Faced with a problem that threatened both groups of boys, they began to work co-operatively to solve the problem, suggesting and trying out solutions together. When the water came through, the boys celebrated together and were gracious in the distribution of water. Several co-operative tasks of this sort were introduced as part of camp life, and functioned to reduce intergroup hostility. Sherif and his colleagues suggested that the reduction of hostility was a result of joint activity in pursuit of superordinate goals as well as the joint celebration of achievement. On the final day, most of the boys agreed that they would prefer to share the bus home, and boys did not sit in their in-groups on the bus on the way home. So what does The Robbers Cave Experiment tell us about intergroup prejudice and racism? Dixon and Durrheim (2003) suggest that conflict and threat often precede racial intolerance. When groups are perceived as having different goals, or goals that clash with each other, and are competing for resources such as housing, jobs etc., intergroup conflict is often an outcome. While this kind of threat perception can produce conflict between groups without interference in the modern world, we often see this manipulated by interest groups

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Group Conflict and Co-operation

  Their Social Psychology

  • Muzafer Sherif(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  et al., 1961). A composite picture of the conduct and findings of the three studies will be presented here, with specification of the source when this is feasible without confusing the account. The first experiment, conducted in 1949 in Connecticut, was carried through the stage of intergroup conflict. All the hypotheses presented here were formulated before the second study, but the systematic sequence of stages in that study had to be terminated after the rise of intergroup hostility. The third experiment, conducted at Robbers Cave, Oklahoma, was carried through the sequence of group formation, intergroup conflict, and reduction of intergroup conflict which was contingent upon cooperative activities between erstwhile hostile groups.

  Choice of Subjects

  Because the experiments were performed at camp sites, subjects were selected who would find camping a natural and fascinating activity: boys between eleven and twelve years old. In order to eliminate, as much as possible, alternative explanations for events that transpired in the experiments, the selection procedures were long and careful. Interviews were held with each boy's teachers, school officials, and family. School and medical records were studied, and scores were obtained on psychological tests. Each boy was observed in natural give-and-take with agemates in the classroom and during athletic and informal interpersonal activities.

  As a result of the methods of selecting subjects, the results could not be explained in any of the following alternative ways: 1. Previous acquaintance or personal ties among the boys. Boys were chosen from different schools and neighborhoods to eliminate this possibility.

  2. Neurotic tendencies, undue instability, or excessively frustrating situations in past history. The boys were healthy, well adjusted in school and neighborhood, members of stable families with both parents living at home (no broken homes), and with no record of past disturbances in behavior. Members of minority groups who might have suffered from social discrimination were not included.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Stress of War, Conflict and Disaster

  • George Fink(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  Sometimes two approaches are combined. The PD paradigm coupled with Richardson’s formal mathematical model of the arms race led to a creative proposal by Charles Osgood to de-escalate a conflict environment and obtain peace in the absence of ideological agreement. Pilisuk and Skolnick then investigated Osgood’s propositions through a formal game.

  Quantitative political science frequently reverses the dominant investigative process just described. The data are the events themselves as recorded in history. The patterns of cooperation and conflict among political states, including the escalation and de-escalation of wars and rivalries, are then evaluated based on the historical facts. Both psychological and structural concepts are employed, including grievances, power of the disputants, regime type, threat, and transitions in culture and political organization.

  Political scientists are more likely than psychologists to test psychological explanations of intergroup conflict against the actual events. The relationship of frustration, relative deprivation, and justice to group conflict, and the effects of stress on the decision-making process are examples.

  Finally, the anthropological–historical investigations are predominantly structurally oriented with emphasis on environmental circumstances, social organization, and in-group interaction patterns. Their valuable contributions include the identification of societies that are relatively conflict-free. A fascinating irony is that these investigations return full circle to some of the principles derived from the Robbers Cave observations.

  Defining Research

  Competition, Conflict, and Superordinate Goals

  The robbers cave studies

  During the 1950s, Muzafer Sherif conducted a series of investigations at boys camps, one of which was the Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. To the participants, the experience was indistinguishable from any other 3-week summer camp even though it was staffed and engineered by social scientists. The camp session was divided into distinct stages, each lasting about a week.

  The boys were assigned to two groups that were brought separately to the camp. For the first few days, each did not know of the existence of the other. Strong personal ties developed along with identifying group names and emblems. Each cabin became aware of the other’s existence shortly before the second phase, the formal competitive period. The ‘tournament’ consisted of a range of contests among which were sporting events. During this competitive stage, friendship patterns were almost exclusively in-group and overt hostility emerged including fights and dormitory raids.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Introduction to Sociology

  • Frank van Tubergen(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  f ) could, in principle, result in a spiral of increasing inter-group violence—and it sometimes does, as in Hindu–Muslim violence in India and the Protestant–Catholic conflict in Northern Ireland, to name only a few cases that followed this pattern. Relatedly, research findings indicate that terrorist attacks in the name of Muslim extremists resulted in more negative views towards Muslims in several European countries (Legewie, 2013) and the 2004 Al Qaeda terrorist bombing in Madrid, which killed 191 people, resulted in a tendency of Spaniards to avoid living in close proximity to Arab immigrants (Edling, Rydgren, & Sandell, 2016).

  8.7 Chapter resources

  Key concepts

  Group Affiliation network Civil society Organizational cohesion Intergroup cohesion Group-bonding tie Group-bridging tie Endogamy Exogamy Consolidation Foci Minimal group paradigm Social identity

  Key theories and propositions

  • Structural opportunity theory
  • Homophily theory
  • Third party theory
  • Social identity theory
  • Group threat theory.

  Key stylized facts

  • Group segregation
  • Homophily phenomenon
  • In-group favoritism.

  Summary

  • Individuals belong to groups, also called affiliation networks. Group affiliation can be assigned in different ways: as membership, participation and identification.
  • Groups have the capacity to generate collective benefits, such as overcoming problems of cooperation. For this reason, scholars study organizational cohesion.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Norms, Groups, Conflict, and Social Change

  Rediscovering Muzafer Sherif's Psychology

  • Ayfer Dost-Gozkan(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  It is certainly the case that a proper reading of the field of social psychology necessarily includes the works of Sherif and his colleagues. And, we venture a guess, if any reading is to be had, it will be of the field-study examining intergroup relations conducted at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. There are good reasons for this: the procedures were engrossing and the findings were intriguing. As a result, the study is able both to inspire thousands of first-year psychology students every year, and to capture the imagination of the wider public. Our suspicion, however, is that the vividness of this field study, coupled with its apocryphal dissent into some form of tribal collective unconscious, is what impresses (if not impassions) imaginations. We must remind ourselves, then, that in sharp contrast to the popularized fiction with which these field studies are often compared, Sherif’s science revealed fundamentally the interdependent nature of collective life and individual psychologies. Sherif was not, say, William Golding, and Sherif’s participants did not become savages—there was, of course, no tribal dissent. As we have noted elsewhere (Platow &Hunter, 2014), good fiction should not be conflated with good science.

  Equally as important as not conflating Sherif’s science with fiction, however, is not letting the Robbers Cave study blind us to the larger body of his work. Indeed, and in clear contradistinction from much of the popular fiction, Sherif’s earliest social-psychological work—his PhD thesis, in fact—demonstrated the establishment, rather than degeneration, of group norms (Sherif, 1935). Again, it is a rare first-year psychology student who does not know of the famous autokinetic-ef-fect studies of norm formation. These studies persuasively showed the manner in which people develop a consensual understanding of the physical reality confronting them. Despite initial idiosyncratic and, hence, varied understandings of an identical reality, group interaction bound observers together through a shared

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book