robbers cave experiment debunked

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The Stanford Prison Experiment was massively influential. We just learned it was a fraud.

The most famous psychological studies are often wrong, fraudulent, or outdated. Textbooks need to catch up.

by Brian Resnick

The Stanford Prison Experiment, one of the most famous and compelling psychological studies of all time, told us a tantalizingly simple story about human nature.

The study took paid participants and assigned them to be “inmates” or “guards” in a mock prison at Stanford University. Soon after the experiment began, the “guards” began mistreating the “prisoners,” implying evil is brought out by circumstance. The authors, in their conclusions, suggested innocent people, thrown into a situation where they have power over others, will begin to abuse that power. And people who are put into a situation where they are powerless will be driven to submission, even madness.

The Stanford Prison Experiment has been included in many, many introductory psychology textbooks and is often cited uncritically . It’s the subject of movies, documentaries, books, television shows, and congressional testimony .

But its findings were wrong. Very wrong. And not just due to its questionable ethics or lack of concrete data — but because of deceit.

Philip Zimbardo defends the Stanford Prison Experiment, his most famous work

A new exposé published by Medium based on previously unpublished recordings of Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford psychologist who ran the study, and interviews with his participants, offers convincing evidence that the guards in the experiment were coached to be cruel. It also shows that the experiment’s most memorable moment — of a prisoner descending into a screaming fit, proclaiming, “I’m burning up inside!” — was the result of the prisoner acting. “I took it as a kind of an improv exercise,” one of the guards told reporter Ben Blum . “I believed that I was doing what the researchers wanted me to do.”

The findings have long been subject to scrutiny — many think of them as more of a dramatic demonstration , a sort-of academic reality show, than a serious bit of science. But these new revelations incited an immediate response. “We must stop celebrating this work,” personality psychologist Simine Vazire tweeted , in response to the article . “It’s anti-scientific. Get it out of textbooks.” Many other psychologists have expressed similar sentiments.

( Update : Since this article published, the journal American Psychologist has published a thorough debunking of the Stanford Prison Experiment that goes beyond what Blum found in his piece. There’s even more evidence that the “guards” knew the results that Zimbardo wanted to produce, and were trained to meet his goals. It also provides evidence that the conclusions of the experiment were predetermined.)

Many of the classic show-stopping experiments in psychology have lately turned out to be wrong, fraudulent, or outdated. And in recent years, social scientists have begun to reckon with the truth that their old work needs a redo, the “ replication crisis .” But there’s been a lag — in the popular consciousness and in how psychology is taught by teachers and textbooks. It’s time to catch up.

Many classic findings in psychology have been reevaluated recently

The Zimbardo prison experiment is not the only classic study that has been recently scrutinized, reevaluated, or outright exposed as a fraud. Recently, science journalist Gina Perry found that the infamous “Robbers Cave“ experiment in the 1950s — in which young boys at summer camp were essentially manipulated into joining warring factions — was a do-over from a failed previous version of an experiment, which the scientists never mentioned in an academic paper. That’s a glaring omission. It’s wrong to throw out data that refutes your hypothesis and only publicize data that supports it.

Perry has also revealed inconsistencies in another major early work in psychology: the Milgram electroshock test, in which participants were told by an authority figure to deliver seemingly lethal doses of electricity to an unseen hapless soul. Her investigations show some evidence of researchers going off the study script and possibly coercing participants to deliver the desired results. (Somewhat ironically, the new revelations about the prison experiment also show the power an authority figure — in this case Zimbardo himself and his “warden” — has in manipulating others to be cruel.)

The Stanford Prison Experiment is based on lies. Hear them for yourself.

Other studies have been reevaluated for more honest, methodological snafus. Recently, I wrote about the “marshmallow test,” a series of studies from the early ’90s that suggested the ability to delay gratification at a young age is correlated with success later in life . New research finds that if the original marshmallow test authors had a larger sample size, and greater research controls, their results would not have been the showstoppers they were in the ’90s. I can list so many more textbook psychology findings that have either not replicated, or are currently in the midst of a serious reevaluation.

Social priming: People who read “old”-sounding words (like “nursing home”) were more likely to walk slowly — showing how our brains can be subtly “primed” with thoughts and actions.
The facial feedback hypothesis: Merely activating muscles around the mouth caused people to become happier — demonstrating how our bodies tell our brains what emotions to feel.
Stereotype threat: Minorities and maligned social groups don’t perform as well on tests due to anxieties about becoming a stereotype themselves.
Ego depletion: The idea that willpower is a finite mental resource.

Alas, the past few years have brought about a reckoning for these ideas and social psychology as a whole.

Many psychological theories have been debunked or diminished in rigorous replication attempts. Psychologists are now realizing it’s more likely that false positives will make it through to publication than inconclusive results. And they’ve realized that experimental methods commonly used just a few years ago aren’t rigorous enough. For instance, it used to be commonplace for scientists to publish experiments that sampled about 50 undergraduate students. Today, scientists realize this is a recipe for false positives , and strive for sample sizes in the hundreds and ideally from a more representative subject pool.

Nevertheless, in so many of these cases, scientists have moved on and corrected errors, and are still doing well-intentioned work to understand the heart of humanity. For instance, work on one of psychology’s oldest fixations — dehumanization, the ability to see another as less than human — continues with methodological rigor, helping us understand the modern-day maltreatment of Muslims and immigrants in America.

In some cases, time has shown that flawed original experiments offer worthwhile reexamination. The original Milgram experiment was flawed. But at least its study design — which brings in participants to administer shocks (not actually carried out) to punish others for failing at a memory test — is basically repeatable today with some ethical tweaks.

And it seems like Milgram’s conclusions may hold up: In a recent study, many people found demands from an authority figure to be a compelling reason to shock another. However, it’s possible, due to something known as the file-drawer effect, that failed replications of the Milgram experiment have not been published. Replication attempts at the Stanford prison study, on the other hand, have been a mess .

In science, too often, the first demonstration of an idea becomes the lasting one — in both pop culture and academia. But this isn’t how science is supposed to work at all!

Science is a frustrating, iterative process. When we communicate it, we need to get beyond the idea that a single, stunning study ought to last the test of time. Scientists know this as well, but their institutions have often discouraged them from replicating old work, instead of the pursuit of new and exciting, attention-grabbing studies. (Journalists are part of the problem too , imbuing small, insignificant studies with more importance and meaning than they’re due.)

Thankfully, there are researchers thinking very hard, and very earnestly, on trying to make psychology a more replicable, robust science. There’s even a whole Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science devoted to these issues.

Follow-up results tend to be less dramatic than original findings , but they are more useful in helping discover the truth. And it’s not that the Stanford Prison Experiment has no place in a classroom. It’s interesting as history. Psychologists like Zimbardo and Milgram were highly influenced by World War II. Their experiments were, in part, an attempt to figure out why ordinary people would fall for Nazism. That’s an important question, one that set the agenda for a huge amount of research in psychological science, and is still echoed in papers today.

Textbooks need to catch up

Psychology has changed tremendously over the past few years. Many studies used to teach the next generation of psychologists have been intensely scrutinized, and found to be in error. But troublingly, the textbooks have not been updated accordingly .

That’s the conclusion of a 2016 study in Current Psychology. “ By and large,” the study explains (emphasis mine):

introductory textbooks have difficulty accurately portraying controversial topics with care or, in some cases, simply avoid covering them at all. ... readers of introductory textbooks may be unintentionally misinformed on these topics.

The study authors — from Texas A&M and Stetson universities — gathered a stack of 24 popular introductory psych textbooks and began looking for coverage of 12 contested ideas or myths in psychology.

The ideas — like stereotype threat, the Mozart effect , and whether there’s a “narcissism epidemic” among millennials — have not necessarily been disproven. Nevertheless, there are credible and noteworthy studies that cast doubt on them. The list of ideas also included some urban legends — like the one about the brain only using 10 percent of its potential at any given time, and a debunked story about how bystanders refused to help a woman named Kitty Genovese while she was being murdered.

The researchers then rated the texts on how they handled these contested ideas. The results found a troubling amount of “biased” coverage on many of the topic areas.

But why wouldn’t these textbooks include more doubt? Replication, after all, is a cornerstone of any science.

One idea is that textbooks, in the pursuit of covering a wide range of topics, aren’t meant to be authoritative on these individual controversies. But something else might be going on. The study authors suggest these textbook authors are trying to “oversell” psychology as a discipline, to get more undergraduates to study it full time. (I have to admit that it might have worked on me back when I was an undeclared undergraduate.)

There are some caveats to mention with the study: One is that the 12 topics the authors chose to scrutinize are completely arbitrary. “And many other potential issues were left out of our analysis,” they note. Also, the textbooks included were printed in the spring of 2012; it’s possible they have been updated since then.

Recently, I asked on Twitter how intro psychology professors deal with inconsistencies in their textbooks. Their answers were simple. Some say they decided to get rid of textbooks (which save students money) and focus on teaching individual articles. Others have another solution that’s just as simple: “You point out the wrong, outdated, and less-than-replicable sections,” Daniël Lakens , a professor at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, said. He offered a useful example of one of the slides he uses in class.

Anecdotally, Illinois State University professor Joe Hilgard said he thinks his students appreciate “the ‘cutting-edge’ feeling from knowing something that the textbook didn’t.” (Also, who really, earnestly reads the textbook in an introductory college course?)

And it seems this type of teaching is catching on. A (not perfectly representative) recent survey of 262 psychology professors found more than half said replication issues impacted their teaching . On the other hand, 40 percent said they hadn’t. So whether students are exposed to the recent reckoning is all up to the teachers they have.

If it’s true that textbooks and teachers are still neglecting to cover replication issues, then I’d argue they are actually underselling the science. To teach the “replication crisis” is to teach students that science strives to be self-correcting. It would instill in them the value that science ought to be reproducible.

Understanding human behavior is a hard problem. Finding out the answers shouldn’t be easy. If anything, that should give students more motivation to become the generation of scientists who get it right.

“Textbooks may be missing an opportunity for myth busting,” the Current Psychology study’s authors write. That’s, ideally, what young scientist ought to learn: how to bust myths and find the truth.

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Robbers Cave Experiment | Realistic Conflict Theory

Saul McLeod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

Learn about our Editorial Process

Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

The Robbers Cave experiment, conducted by Muzafer Sherif in the 1950s, studied intergroup conflict and cooperation among 22 boys in Oklahoma. Initially separated into two groups, they developed group identities. Introducing competitive tasks led to hostility between groups. Later, cooperative tasks reduced this conflict, highlighting the role of shared goals in resolving group tensions.

The hypotheses tested were:

When individuals who don’t know each other are brought together to interact in group activities to achieve common goals, they produce a group structure with hierarchical statuses and roles.
Once formed, two in-groups are brought into a functional relationship under conditions of competition, and group frustration, attitudes, and appropriate hostile actions about the out-group and its members will arise; these will be standardized and shared in varying degrees by group members.

Study Procedure

Phase 1: in-group formation (5-6 days).

The members of each group got to know one other, social norms developed, leadership and group structure emerged.

Phase 2: Group Conflict (4-5 Days)

The now-formed groups came into contact with each other, competing in games and challenges, and competing for control of territory.

Phase 3: Conflict Resolution (6-7 Days)

Sherif and colleagues tried various means of reducing the animosity and low-level violence between the groups.

The Drinking Water Problem

The problem of securing a movie, realistic conflict theory.

Realistic conflict theory posits intergroup hostility and conflict arise when groups compete for limited resources. It emphasizes that competition over scarce resources (material goods, power, or social status) can lead to prejudice, discrimination, and animosity between groups.

Resource Scarcity and Competition : When groups perceive that they compete for limited resources, hostility can arise.
Formation of Ingroup and Outgroup Dynamics : Through competition, groups develop a strong sense of “us” (ingroup) versus “them” (outgroup). This distinction can lead to negative stereotyping and increased animosity.
Superordinate Goals : Intergroup hostility can be reduced when conflicting groups collaborate on goals that neither group can achieve on its own. These goals supersede their smaller individual goals and encourage cooperation.

Critical Evaluation

Key takeaways.

In the Robbers Cave field experiment, 22 white, 11-year-old boys were sent to a special remote summer camp in Oklahoma, Robbers Cave State Park.
The boys developed an attachment to their groups throughout the first week of the camp by doing various activities together, like hiking, swimming, etc.
The boys chose names for their groups, The Eagles and The Rattlers.
During a four-day series of competitions between the groups prejudice began to become apparent between the two groups (both physical and verbal).
During the subsequent two-day cooling-off period, the boys listed features of the two groups. The boys tended to characterize their own in-group in very favourable terms, and the other out-group in very unfavorable terms.
Sherif then attempted to reduce the prejudice, or inter-group conflict, shown by each group. However, simply increasing the contact of the two groups only made the situation worse.
Alternatively forcing the groups to work together to reach common goals, eased prejudice and tension among the groups.
This experiment confirmed Sherif’s realistic conflict theory (also called realistic group conflict theory), the idea that group conflict can result from competition over resources.

Further Information

Allport’s Intergroup Contact Hypothesis: Its History and Influence
Aslam, Alex. “War and Peace and Summer Camp.” Nature, vol. 556, 17 Apr. 2018, pp. 306-307.

10 Psychological Experiments That Could Never Happen Today

Nowadays, the American Psychological Association has a Code of Conduct in place when it comes to ethics in psychological experiments. Experimenters must adhere to various rules pertaining to everything from confidentiality to consent to overall beneficence. Review boards are in place to enforce these ethics. But the standards were not always so strict, which is how some of the most famous studies in psychology came about.

1. The Little Albert Experiment

At Johns Hopkins University in 1920, John B. Watson conducted a study of classical conditioning, a phenomenon that pairs a conditioned stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus until they produce the same result. This type of conditioning can create a response in a person or animal towards an object or sound that was previously neutral. Classical conditioning is commonly associated with Ivan Pavlov, who rang a bell every time he fed his dog until the mere sound of the bell caused his dog to salivate.

Watson tested classical conditioning on a 9-month-old baby he called Albert B. The young boy started the experiment loving animals, particularly a white rat. Watson started pairing the presence of the rat with the loud sound of a hammer hitting metal. Albert began to develop a fear of the white rat as well as most animals and furry objects. The experiment is considered particularly unethical today because Albert was never desensitized to the phobias that Watson produced in him. (The child died of an unrelated illness at age 6, so doctors were unable to determine if his phobias would have lasted into adulthood.)

2. Asch Conformity Experiments

Solomon Asch tested conformity at Swarthmore College in 1951 by putting a participant in a group of people whose task was to match line lengths. Each individual was expected to announce which of three lines was the closest in length to a reference line. But the participant was placed in a group of actors, who were all told to give the correct answer twice then switch to each saying the same incorrect answer. Asch wanted to see whether the participant would conform and start to give the wrong answer as well, knowing that he would otherwise be a single outlier.

Thirty-seven of the 50 participants agreed with the incorrect group despite physical evidence to the contrary. Asch used deception in his experiment without getting informed consent from his participants, so his study could not be replicated today.

3. The Bystander Effect

Some psychological experiments that were designed to test the bystander effect are considered unethical by today’s standards. In 1968, John Darley and Bibb Latané developed an interest in crime witnesses who did not take action. They were particularly intrigued by the murder of Kitty Genovese , a young woman whose murder was witnessed by many, but still not prevented.

The pair conducted a study at Columbia University in which they would give a participant a survey and leave him alone in a room to fill out the paper. Harmless smoke would start to seep into the room after a short amount of time. The study showed that the solo participant was much faster to report the smoke than participants who had the exact same experience, but were in a group.

The studies became progressively unethical by putting participants at risk of psychological harm. Darley and Latané played a recording of an actor pretending to have a seizure in the headphones of a person, who believed he or she was listening to an actual medical emergency that was taking place down the hall. Again, participants were much quicker to react when they thought they were the sole person who could hear the seizure.

4. The Milgram Experiment

Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram hoped to further understand how so many people came to participate in the cruel acts of the Holocaust. He theorized that people are generally inclined to obey authority figures, posing the question , “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” In 1961, he began to conduct experiments of obedience.

Participants were under the impression that they were part of a study of memory . Each trial had a pair divided into “teacher” and “learner,” but one person was an actor, so only one was a true participant. The drawing was rigged so that the participant always took the role of “teacher.” The two were moved into separate rooms and the “teacher” was given instructions. He or she pressed a button to shock the “learner” each time an incorrect answer was provided. These shocks would increase in voltage each time. Eventually, the actor would start to complain followed by more and more desperate screaming. Milgram learned that the majority of participants followed orders to continue delivering shocks despite the clear discomfort of the “learner.”

Had the shocks existed and been at the voltage they were labeled, the majority would have actually killed the “learner” in the next room. Having this fact revealed to the participant after the study concluded would be a clear example of psychological harm.

5. Harlow’s Monkey Experiments

In the 1950s, Harry Harlow of the University of Wisconsin tested infant dependency using rhesus monkeys in his experiments rather than human babies. The monkey was removed from its actual mother which was replaced with two “mothers,” one made of cloth and one made of wire. The cloth “mother” served no purpose other than its comforting feel whereas the wire “mother” fed the monkey through a bottle. The monkey spent the majority of his day next to the cloth “mother” and only around one hour a day next to the wire “mother,” despite the association between the wire model and food.

Harlow also used intimidation to prove that the monkey found the cloth “mother” to be superior. He would scare the infants and watch as the monkey ran towards the cloth model. Harlow also conducted experiments which isolated monkeys from other monkeys in order to show that those who did not learn to be part of the group at a young age were unable to assimilate and mate when they got older. Harlow’s experiments ceased in 1985 due to APA rules against the mistreatment of animals as well as humans . However, Department of Psychiatry Chair Ned H. Kalin, M.D. of the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health has recently begun similar experiments that involve isolating infant monkeys and exposing them to frightening stimuli. He hopes to discover data on human anxiety, but is meeting with resistance from animal welfare organizations and the general public.

6. Learned Helplessness

The ethics of Martin Seligman’s experiments on learned helplessness would also be called into question today due to his mistreatment of animals. In 1965, Seligman and his team used dogs as subjects to test how one might perceive control. The group would place a dog on one side of a box that was divided in half by a low barrier. Then they would administer a shock, which was avoidable if the dog jumped over the barrier to the other half. Dogs quickly learned how to prevent themselves from being shocked.

Seligman’s group then harnessed a group of dogs and randomly administered shocks, which were completely unavoidable. The next day, these dogs were placed in the box with the barrier. Despite new circumstances that would have allowed them to escape the painful shocks, these dogs did not even try to jump over the barrier; they only cried and did not jump at all, demonstrating learned helplessness.

7. Robbers Cave Experiment

Muzafer Sherif conducted the Robbers Cave Experiment in the summer of 1954, testing group dynamics in the face of conflict. A group of preteen boys were brought to a summer camp, but they did not know that the counselors were actually psychological researchers. The boys were split into two groups, which were kept very separate. The groups only came into contact with each other when they were competing in sporting events or other activities.

The experimenters orchestrated increased tension between the two groups, particularly by keeping competitions close in points. Then, Sherif created problems, such as a water shortage, that would require both teams to unite and work together in order to achieve a goal. After a few of these, the groups became completely undivided and amicable.

Though the experiment seems simple and perhaps harmless, it would still be considered unethical today because Sherif used deception as the boys did not know they were participating in a psychological experiment. Sherif also did not have informed consent from participants.

8. The Monster Study

At the University of Iowa in 1939, Wendell Johnson and his team hoped to discover the cause of stuttering by attempting to turn orphans into stutterers. There were 22 young subjects, 12 of whom were non-stutterers. Half of the group experienced positive teaching whereas the other group dealt with negative reinforcement. The teachers continually told the latter group that they had stutters. No one in either group became stutterers at the end of the experiment, but those who received negative treatment did develop many of the self-esteem problems that stutterers often show. Perhaps Johnson’s interest in this phenomenon had to do with his own stutter as a child , but this study would never pass with a contemporary review board.

Johnson’s reputation as an unethical psychologist has not caused the University of Iowa to remove his name from its Speech and Hearing Clinic .

9. Blue Eyed versus Brown Eyed Students

Jane Elliott was not a psychologist, but she developed one of the most famously controversial exercises in 1968 by dividing students into a blue-eyed group and a brown-eyed group. Elliott was an elementary school teacher in Iowa, who was trying to give her students hands-on experience with discrimination the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, but this exercise still has significance to psychology today. The famous exercise even transformed Elliott’s career into one centered around diversity training.

After dividing the class into groups, Elliott would cite phony scientific research claiming that one group was superior to the other. Throughout the day, the group would be treated as such. Elliott learned that it only took a day for the “superior” group to turn crueler and the “inferior” group to become more insecure. The blue eyed and brown eyed groups then switched so that all students endured the same prejudices.

Elliott’s exercise (which she repeated in 1969 and 1970) received plenty of public backlash, which is probably why it would not be replicated in a psychological experiment or classroom today. The main ethical concerns would be with deception and consent, though some of the original participants still regard the experiment as life-changing .

10. The Stanford Prison Experiment

In 1971, Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University conducted his famous prison experiment, which aimed to examine group behavior and the importance of roles. Zimbardo and his team picked a group of 24 male college students who were considered “healthy,” both physically and psychologically. The men had signed up to participate in a “ psychological study of prison life ,” which would pay them $15 per day. Half were randomly assigned to be prisoners and the other half were assigned to be prison guards. The experiment played out in the basement of the Stanford psychology department where Zimbardo’s team had created a makeshift prison. The experimenters went to great lengths to create a realistic experience for the prisoners, including fake arrests at the participants’ homes.

The prisoners were given a fairly standard introduction to prison life, which included being deloused and assigned an embarrassing uniform. The guards were given vague instructions that they should never be violent with the prisoners, but needed to stay in control. The first day passed without incident, but the prisoners rebelled on the second day by barricading themselves in their cells and ignoring the guards. This behavior shocked the guards and presumably led to the psychological abuse that followed. The guards started separating “good” and “bad” prisoners, and doled out punishments including push ups, solitary confinement, and public humiliation to rebellious prisoners.

Zimbardo explained , “In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress.” Two prisoners dropped out of the experiment; one eventually became a psychologist and a consultant for prisons . The experiment was originally supposed to last for two weeks, but it ended early when Zimbardo’s future wife, psychologist Christina Maslach, visited the experiment on the fifth day and told him , “I think it’s terrible what you’re doing to those boys.”

Despite the unethical experiment, Zimbardo is still a working psychologist today. He was even honored by the American Psychological Association with a Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Science of Psychology in 2012 .

Exploring the dark side of a widely-celebrated psychological experiment

The robbers cave experiment is lauded for demonstrating that conflict can be overcome by teamwork.

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A judge who was part of a group of boys unknowingly subjected to an experiment in "realistic conflict theory" in 1953 remembers how they were goaded into competing with each other — with a knife offered as the grand prize to the winners.

"They had it up on the mantel in the little dining area where we all ate, and this was going to be the ultimate prize to each of the 12 members of the winning team," said Doug Griset, who was an unwitting participant in the experiment as an 10-year-old.

"I kind of remember the other kids feeling the same way, that this was gold. And that is so vivid that I think I can see it in my mind 60 years later."

The experiment

The study, known as the Robbers Cave Experiment, was the brainchild of Turkish-American social psychologist Muzafer Sherif. The study was framed as a three-week boys' summer camp, with one hosted in Middle Grove, New York in 1953 and a followup at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma in 1954.

Sherif focused on how the dozens of boys — all between 10 and 12 years old — interacted with one another in a group setting during different manufactured scenarios. The researcher's goal was to demonstrate realistic conflict theory, which states that intergroup hostility is a result of competition, and that such conflict could be resolved if a group worked together to achieve a common goal.

"[The] theory says that conflict comes about between groups of people, not because it's part of our human nature, but because when you put groups of people together competing against one another, hostility and stereotyping is inevitable and — hostility and violence is a result of that," said Gina Perry, author of The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif's Robbers Cave Experiment.

The boys were split into teams and offered the ultimate prize — a knife that displayed in the centre of their dining hall — upon beating their opponents in various challenges.

The researchers, posing as camp staff, worked to sow discord among the boys.

Perry cited one example wherein one of Sherif's assistants tore down a tent that one of the teams was staying in, trampling the campers' belongings into the ground. When the boys returned to the campsite, they presumed the opposing team had destroyed their campsite.

Later on, the boys were encouraged to cooperate in order solve a problem as a team, which they did, thus appearing to prove Sherif's theory.

Re-thinking the ethics

"It was a very optimistic message for its time because it said peace could be engineered," said Perry.

Griset, however, doesn't remember the Robbers Cave Experiment in such a pleasant light.

"What they did, meaning the counsellors, was set up a plan to prove a point rather than letting circumstances play out and see what happened and what point was proven," he said.

A tiny zap of electricity to the brain could reduce violent intentions, study suggests

"They had an idea that they wanted us to fight each other, and they did everything they could to create that situation … I would say smart adults manipulating 10 and 11-year-old children — way too easy."

Click 'listen' near the top of this page to hear the full conversation.

Written by Émilie Quesnel. Produced by Howard Goldenthal.

What Was the Robbers Cave Experiment in Psychology?

A Landmark Study on Group Conflict

Martin Barraud / Getty Images

Archaeology
Ph.D., Psychology, University of California - Santa Barbara
B.A., Psychology and Peace & Conflict Studies, University of California - Berkeley

The Robbers Cave experiment was a famous psychology study that looked at how conflict develops between groups. The researchers divided boys at a summer camp into two groups, and they studied how conflict developed between them. They also investigated what did and didn't work to reduce group conflict.

Key Takeaways: The Robbers Cave Study

The Robbers Cave experiment studied how hostilities quickly developed between two groups of boys at a summer camp.
The researchers were later able to reduce the tensions between the two groups by having them work towards shared goals.
The Robbers Cave study helps to illustrate several key ideas in psychology, including realistic conflict theory, social identity theory, and the contact hypothesis.

Overview of the Robbers Cave Experiment

The Robbers Cave experiment was part of a series of studies conducted by social psychologist Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues in the 1940s and 1950s. In these studies, Sherif looked at how groups of boys at summer camps interacted with a rival group: he hypothesized that “when two groups have conflicting aims… their members will become hostile to each other even though the groups are composed of normal well-adjusted individuals.”

The participants in the study, boys who were approximately 11-12 years old, thought that they were participating in a typical summer camp, which took place at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma in 1954. However, the campers’ parents knew that their children were actually participating in a research study, as Sherif and his colleagues had gathered extensive information on the participants (such as school records and personality test results).

The boys arrived at camp in two separate groups: for the first part of the study, they spent time with members of their own group, without knowing that the other group existed. The groups chose names (the Eagles and the Rattlers), and each group developed their own group norms and group hierarchies.

After a short time, the boys became aware that there was another group at camp and, upon learning of them, the campers group spoke negatively about the other group. At this point, the researchers began the next phase of the Robbers Cave experiment: a competitive tournament between the groups, consisting of games such as baseball and tug-of-war, for which the winners would receive prizes and a trophy.

What the Robbers Cave Experiment Researchers Found

After the Eagles and Rattlers began competing in the tournament, the relationship between the two groups quickly became tense. The groups began trading insults, and the conflict quickly spiraled. The teams each burned the other group’s team flag and raided their cabin. The researchers also found that the group hostilities were apparent on surveys distributed to the campers: campers were asked to rate their team and the other team on positive and negative traits, and the campers rated their own group more positively than their rivals. During this time, the researchers also noticed a change within the groups as well: the groups became more cohesive.

How Conflict Was Reduced

To determine the factors that could reduce group conflict, the Robbers Cave experiment researchers first brought the campers together for fun activities (such as having a meal or watching a movie together). However, this didn’t work to reduce conflict; for example, meals together devolved into food fights.

Next, Sherif and his colleagues tried having the two groups work on what psychologists call superordinate goals , goals that both groups cared about, which they had to work together to achieve. For example, the camp’s water supply was cut off (a ploy by the researchers to force the two groups to interact), and the Eagles and Rattlers worked together to fix the problem. In another instance, a truck bringing the campers food wouldn’t start (again, an incident staged by the researchers), so members of both groups pulled on a rope to pull the broken truck. These activities didn’t immediately repair the relationship between the groups (at first, the Rattlers and Eagles resumed hostilities after a superordinate goal was achieved), but working on shared goals eventually reduced conflict. The groups stopped calling each other names, perceptions of the other group (as measured by the researchers’ surveys) improved, and friendships even began to form with members of the other group. By the end of camp, some of the campers requested that everyone (from both groups) take the bus home together, and one group bought beverages for the other group on the ride home.

Realistic Conflict Theory

The Robbers Cave experiment has often been used to illustrate realistic conflict theory (also called realistic group conflict theory ), the idea that group conflict can result from competition over resources (whether those resources are tangible or intangible). In particular, hostilities are hypothesized to occur when the groups believe that the resource they’re competing for is in limited supply. At Robbers Cave, for example, the boys were competing for prizes, a trophy, and bragging rights. Since the tournament was set up in a way that it was impossible for both teams to win, realistic conflict theory would suggest that this competition led to the conflicts between the Eagles and Rattlers.

However, the Robbers Cave study also shows that conflict can occur in the absence of competition for resources, as the boys began speaking negatively about the other group even before the researchers introduced the tournament. In other words, as social psychologist Donelson Forsyth explains, the Robbers Cave experiment also demonstrates how readily people engage in social categorization , or dividing themselves into an ingroup and an outgroup.

Critiques of the Robbers Cave Experiment

While Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment is considered a landmark study in social psychology, some researchers have critiqued Sherif’s methods. For example, some, including writer Gina Perry , have suggested that not enough attention has been paid to the role of the researchers (who posed as camp staff) in the creation of group hostilities. Since the researchers usually refrained from intervening in the conflict, the campers may have assumed that fighting with the other group was condoned. Perry also points out that there are potential ethical issues with the Robbers Cave experiment as well: the children did not know they were in a study—and in fact, many did not realize that they had been in a study until Perry contacted them decades later to ask them about their experience.

Another potential caveat to the Robbers Cave experiment is that one of Sherif’s earlier studies had a very different result. When Sherif and his colleagues conducted a similar summer camp study in 1953, the researchers were not successfully able to create group conflict (and, while the researchers were in the process of trying to incite hostilities between the groups, the campers figured out what the researchers were trying to do).

What Robbers Cave Teaches Us About Human Behavior

Psychologists Michael Platow and John Hunter connect Sherif’s study to social psychology’s social identity theory : the theory that being part of a group has powerful effects on people’s identities and behaviors. Researchers studying social identity have found that people categorize themselves as members of social groups (as the members of the Eagles and Rattlers did), and that these group memberships can lead people to behave in discriminatory and hostile ways towards outgroup members. However, the Robbers Cave experiment also shows that conflict isn’t inevitable or intractable, as the researchers were eventually able to reduce tensions between the two groups.

The Robbers Cave experiment also allows us to evaluate social psychology’s contact hypothesis . According to the contact hypothesis, prejudice and group conflict can be reduced if members of the two groups spend time with one another, and that contact between groups is especially likely to reduce conflict if certain conditions are met. In the Robbers Cave study, the researchers found that simply bringing the groups together for fun activities was not enough to reduce conflict. However, conflict was successfully reduced when the groups worked together on common goals—and, according to the contact hypothesis, having common goals is one of the conditions that makes it more likely that conflict between the groups will be reduced. In other words, the Robbers Cave study suggests it’s not always enough for groups in conflict to spend time together: instead, the key may be to find a way for the two groups to work together.

Sources and Additional Reading

Forsyth, Donelson R. Group Dynamics . 4th ed., Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006. https://books.google.com/books/about/Group_Dynamics.html?id=VhNHAAAAMAAJ
Haslam, Alex. “War and Peace and Summer Camp.” Nature , vol. 556, 17 Apr. 2018, pp. 306-307. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04582-7
Khan, Saera R. and Viktoriya Samarina. “Realistic Group Conflict Theory.” Encyclopedia of Social Psychology . Edited by Roy F. Baumeister and Kathleen D. Vohs, SAGE Publications, 2007, 725-726. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412956253.n434
Konnikova, Maria. “ Revisiting Robbers Cave: The Easy Spontaneity of Intergroup Conflict. ” Scientific American , 5 Sept. 2012.
Perry, Gina. “The View from the Boys.” The Psychologist , vol. 27, Nov. 2014, pp. 834-837. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04582-7
Platow, Michael J. and John A. Hunter. “Intergroup Relations and Conflict: Revisiting Sherif’s Boys’ Camp Studies.” Social Psychology: Revisiting the Classic Studies . Edited by Joanne R. Smith and S. Alexander Haslam, Sage Publications, 2012. https://books.google.com/books/about/Social_Psychology.html?id=WCsbkXy6vZoC
Shariatmadari, David. “A Real-Life Lord of the Flies: The Troubling Legacy of the Robbers Cave Experiment.” The Guardian , 16 Apr. 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/16/a-real-life-lord-of-the-flies-the-troubling-legacy-of-the-robbers-cave-experiment
Sherif, Muzafer. “Experiments in Group Conflict.” Scientific American vol. 195, 1956, pp. 54-58. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24941808
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The Robbers Cave Experiment: Realistic Conflict Theory

Categories Social Psychology

Psychologist Muzafer Sherif suggested that conflict between groups was the result of competition for limited resources. To put this theory to the test, he conducted a series of experiments that are today referred to as the Robbers Cave Experiment.

In this article, learn more about what happened in the Robbers Cave Experiment and the conclusions that Sherif made about what these findings meant with regard to intergroup conflicts. Also, explore some of the criticisms of the study and the impact the research had on the field of social psychology .

Table of Contents

An Overview of the Robbers Cave Experiment

During the summer of 1954, 22 boys between the ages of 11 and 12 arrived at a 200-acre camp at the Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma for what they believed was just a normal summer camp. What they didn’t know is that they were really about to take part in what would become one of the best-known psychological experiments , known today as the Robbers Cave Experiment.

Group Formation and Bonding Phase of the Experiment

The boys, all from similar backgrounds, were randomly assigned to one of two different groups. During the first week of the experiment, the two groups were kept separate and neither had any inkling that the other group even existed.

The boys in each group spent this time bonding with one another by participating in activities like hiking and swimming. As the researchers predicted, each group established its own norms, hierarchy, and practices. They also selected names for their groups (the Rattlers and the Eagles) and had their names emblazoned on their shirts and camp flags.

What Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues were interested in was looking at how intergroup conflicts were influenced by factors such as competition, prejudice, and stereotypes.

The Competition Phase of the Robbers Cave Experiment

In phase two of the experiment, the two groups were made aware of each other’s existence and placed in direct competition with one another in a series of activities that included such things as swimming, baseball, and tug-of-war. The groups engaged in competitive activities in which both group prizes (a trophy) and individual prizes (a pocket knife and a medal) were awarded to the winning team.

As soon as each group learned of the other’s existence, conflicts arose. It began with various forms of verbal abuse such as name-calling and taunting. Once the two groups were placed in real competition with each other, the conflicts became even more pronounced.

As the competitions wore on, the hostilities became much greater. The teams refused to eat in the same room and they began making up derogatory songs about the competing team. One team burned the opposing team’s flag, while both teams raided and vandalized each other’s cabins. At one point, the conflict became so great that the researchers had to separate the groups and give them a two-day period to calm down.

At this point, the researchers asked the boys to describe the features of each group. What they found was that while they tended to describe their own group in very favorable terms, they held unfavorable opinions of the opposing group.

The Integration Phase of the Robbers Cave Experiment

During the third and final phase of the Robbers Cave Experiment, the boys were brought together in an attempt to reduce or eliminate the previous friction generated by the competitions. The boys watched films, lit fireworks, and participated in contests, but the researchers found that none of these activities had any impact on the amount of tension between the members of each group.

In their next attempt to reconcile the groups, the experimenters took all the boys to a new location and engaged them in a series of problem-solving activities. For example, the boys were informed that the drinking water had been sabotaged and that they would need to work together to fix the water faucet.

After cooperating to solve a number of similar problems, it was clear that peace had finally formed between the groups. By the end of the study, the two groups even chose to ride home together on the same bus. When they stopped for refreshments, the group that won prize money in the earlier competitions offered to use that money to pay for milkshakes for the boys from both groups.

Sherif’s Conclusions

Sherif noted that the researchers had made painstaking efforts to ensure that the boys were from similar ethnic, religious, family, and socio-economic backgrounds. None had behavioral problems or past issues with violence.

Since the boys were of similar, stable backgrounds, the results suggest that intergroup conflicts are not the result of mere group differences. Instead, Sherif suggested, each group establishes its own norms, rules, and patterns of behavior.

It is these self-created structures and hierarchies that lead to competition and conflict between groups.

The implications of Sherif’s study go beyond what creates conflict in groups, however. It also offers hope that these intergroup conflicts can be reconciled. Just as the boys in the Eagles and Rattlers learned to work together and eventually achieved amity, the results imply that perhaps such peace could also be reached between opposing groups and warring nations.

Criticisms of the Robbers Cave Experiment

As a field experiment, the Robbers Cave study attempted to create the sort of intergroup conflict that impacts people from all walks of life the world over. While the study was a success and had a good outcome, critics argue that the study suffers from a number of possible problems.

Artificially-created situation : First, while Sherif and his colleagues attempted to create as realistic a situation as possible, the reality was that both the groups and the competition between the groups were artificial. The situation simply could not replicate the deeply rooted beliefs and other influences that can impact real-world conflicts, such as ideology-based wars or long-held sports rivalries.
Ethical concerns : The study has also been criticized on ethical grounds since the boys did not know they were participating in a psychological study and did not give consent. The attempts to generate conflict and aggression also exposed the children to both psychological and physical harm.

Perhaps one of the greatest criticisms of the Robbers Cave Experiment is that it simply doesn’t tell the whole story. What the study does not mention is that Sherif and his colleagues had actually performed two previous versions of the experiment that were far less successful.

In the first version of the study, the two groups ended up ganging up on a shared enemy, while in the second study, they ended up turning on the experimenters themselves.

While the Robbers Cave experiment is not without criticism, it did have an important influence on our understanding of intergroup conflict. The results supported Sherif’s Realistic Conflict Theory, which suggested that intergroup conflicts arise from competition for resources and opposing goals. The study also reveals how such conflicts contribute to things like prejudice and stereotyping.

The study also hints that one of the best ways to overcome such conflicts is to focus on getting people to work together toward a shared goal. Through this type of socialization, out-group conflicts, prejudice, and discrimination can be effectively reduced.

Cherry F. The ‘Stubborn Particulars’ of Social Psychology: Essays on the Research Process . Florence, KY: Taylor & Francess/Routledge; 1995.

Dean J. War, peace and the role of power in Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment . Psyblog. Published 2007.

Sherif M, Harvey OJ, White BJ, Hood WR, Sherif CW. Intergroup conflict and cooperation: The Robbers Cave experiment (Vol. 10). Norman, OK: Universi ty Book Exchange; 1961.

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The Stanford Prison Experiment was bunk, an exposé reveals. What's next for psychology's 'replication crisis?'

One of psychology's most famous studies was little more than an "academic reality show," according to previously unpublished documents and recordings—and it's not the only foundational psychology study being called into question, Brian Resnick writes for Vox .

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Inside the stanford experiment.

In recent months, many of psychology's classic findings have come under scrutiny, Resnick writes. The most recent occurring in an exposé by Medium 's Ben Blum that challenged one of the most famous psychological studies in history: The Stanford Prison Experiment.

For the experiment, Philip Zimbardo created a mock prison at Stanford University and enlisted students, including several of his own, to serve as either "inmates" or "guards." Not long after the experiment began, the "guards" began mistreating the "inmates," leading Zimbardo to conclude that when given power over others innocent people are likely to abuse that power, while the powerless become submissive. The experiment has been cited as evidence to explain the psychological process behind the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and other tragic events. It's also become a "cultural touchstone that's been the subject of books, documentaries, and feature films — even an episode of 'Veronica Mars,'" Blum wrote.

However, previously unpublished recordings from Zimbardo and interviews Blum conducted with the study's participants suggest "guards" in the study were coached to be cruel. According to the exposé, the most memorable moment of the study—in which an "inmate" began screaming "I'm burning up inside!"—was all an act. Douglas Korpi, the "prisoner" who had the outburst and who is now a forensic psychologist, last year told Blum, "Anybody who is a clinician would know that I was faking."

Dave Eshelman, who played a guard in the study, said he viewed the entire experiment "as a kind of an improv exercise." He told Blum, "I believed that I was doing what the researchers wanted me to do."

Other notable psychology experiment takedowns

The Stanford Prison Experiment is far from the only famous psychological experiment to have been debunked in recent years, resulting in what Resnick calls a "replication crisis" in psychology. For instance, he notes that Gina Perry, a science journalist, recently discovered that the famous "Robbers Cave" experiment—a 1950s study in which researchers essentially manipulated boys at a summer camp into joining fighting factions—was a repeat of a previous version of the experiment that had failed.

Perry also found inconsistencies in another famous experiment, the Milgram electroshock test, in which an authority figure told participants to deliver what they thought were lethal doses of electricity to an unseen person. According to Perry's investigation, there's evidence that the researchers went off script and may have coerced participants to deliver their desired results, Resnick writes.

Researchers also recently found holes in the methodology of the famous " marshmallow test ," which has been held up as proof that a child's self-control leads to success later in life. When the study was replicated with a larger and more diverse pool of participants, the researchers found limited support for the initial findings.

Textbooks aren't keeping up, research suggests

But there's evidence that these debunked studies are not being accurately updated in psychology textbooks, Resnick writes. A 2016 study published in Current Psychology found that "introductory textbooks have difficulty accurately portraying controversial topics with care or, in some cases, simply avoid covering them at all." Further, the study said readers of these textbooks "may be unintentionally misinformed on these topics."

That's not to say educators aren't aware of the "replication crisis," Resnick writes. In a recent survey of 262 psychology professors, more than half said replication issues had affected their teaching. To account for the issues, some teachers avoid using textbooks and focus more on teaching with individual articles, Resnick writes, while others verbally address the issues in studies (Resnick, Vox , 6/13; Blum, Medium , 6/7).

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Conflict and Cooperation: Psychological Insights from the Robbers Cave Experiment

The Robbers Cave Experiment, conducted by social psychologist Muzafer Sherif back in 1954, remains a landmark study in understanding group dynamics, conflict, and the process of people coming together in cooperation. This field experiment, set in a summer camp for boys, sought to explore the origins of intergroup conflict and the conditions under which it could be resolved.

By examining the methodology, findings, and implications of the Robbers Cave Experiment, we gain profound insights into the nature of human behavior, prejudice, and mechanisms of conflict resolution.

Methodology and Design

The Robbers Cave Experiment was meticulously designed to study the emergence and resolution of intergroup conflict among boys aged 11 to 12. Conducted at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma, the experiment involved 22 boys who were unaware that they were part of a study. The boys were divided into two groups, each unaware of the other’s existence initially. These groups, named the Eagles and the Rattlers, were kept separate during the first phase, encouraging strong within-group bonds through cooperative activities such as hiking and team games.

In the second phase, the groups were introduced to one another and placed in direct competition through a series of contests designed to foster rivalry. These competitions included sports and other camp activities, with rewards for the winning group, thereby intensifying intergroup conflict. The researchers meticulously observed the behaviors and interactions of the boys, noting the development of animosity, derogatory attitudes, and aggression between the groups.

Key Findings

The Robbers Cave Experiment’s findings were both revealing and impactful. As competition between the groups intensified, the boys exhibited strong in-group favoritism and out-group hostility. Name-calling, physical altercations, and other forms of aggressive behavior became prevalent, demonstrating how easily intergroup conflict could arise from competitive circumstances. The experiment illustrated the power of group identity and the tendency for individuals to favor their own group while devaluing others.

However, the most significant insights emerged during the third phase of the experiment, which aimed to reduce the intergroup conflict. The researchers introduced superordinate goals—tasks that required cooperation between the groups to achieve a common objective. These tasks included repairing a broken water supply and pooling resources to watch a movie. Through these shared challenges, the boys gradually overcame their differences, developing positive intergroup relationships and reducing hostilities.

Implications for Understanding Group Dynamics

The Robbers Cave Experiment provided empirical evidence supporting the idea that intergroup conflict arises not from inherent differences between groups but from situational factors that promote competition and division. This understanding has profound implications for addressing prejudice and conflict in various contexts, from classrooms to workplaces to international relations. The experiment underscored the importance of creating environments that encourage cooperation and shared goals, rather than competition and rivalry.

By demonstrating that conflict could be resolved through superordinate goals, the Robbers Cave Experiment highlighted the potential for common objectives to unite disparate groups. This insight has been instrumental in developing conflict resolution strategies that focus on fostering cooperation and mutual understanding. The study suggested that when groups work together towards a common goal, they are more likely to see each other as allies rather than adversaries, reducing biases and promoting harmony.

Ethical Considerations

While the Robbers Cave Experiment yielded valuable insights, it also raised ethical concerns about the use of deception and the potential psychological impact on participants. The boys were unaware that they were part of an experiment, and the induced conflict could have caused emotional distress. Modern ethical standards emphasize the importance of informed consent, protecting participants from harm, and debriefing them after the study. The ethical controversies surrounding the Robbers Cave Experiment have influenced the development of guidelines to ensure the responsible conduct of research involving human subjects.

Broader Societal Impact

The Robbers Cave Experiment’s insights extend beyond academic discourse, offering practical applications for contemporary society. In educational settings, understanding the roots of intergroup conflict can inform the design of programs that promote inclusivity and cooperation among students. Educators can create collaborative projects and activities that encourage teamwork across diverse groups, fostering a sense of unity and reducing prejudices.

In organizational contexts, the principles derived from the Robbers Cave Experiment can guide efforts to manage diversity and mitigate workplace conflict. By emphasizing common goals and creating opportunities for collaboration, organizations can cultivate a more cohesive and harmonious work environment. Leaders can use team-building exercises and shared objectives to bridge divides and enhance intergroup relations, ultimately improving organizational performance and employee well-being.

Theoretical Contributions

The Robbers Cave Experiment made significant contributions to social psychology theories, particularly in understanding realistic conflict theory and social identity theory. Realistic conflict theory posits that intergroup conflict arises from competition over limited resources, leading to negative attitudes and behaviors towards out-groups. The experiment provided empirical support for this theory, demonstrating how competition can exacerbate tensions and drive conflict.

Additionally, the study contributed to social identity theory , which explores how group membership influences self-concept and behavior. The experiment showed that individuals derive a sense of identity from their group affiliations and are motivated to maintain a positive group image. This understanding of social identity has been pivotal in exploring the dynamics of in-group favoritism and out-group discrimination.

The Robbers Cave Experiment conducted by Muzafer Sherif remains a cornerstone in the study of group dynamics, conflict, and cooperation. Through its innovative design and rigorous methodology, the experiment revealed the powerful influence of situational factors in shaping intergroup relations. The findings underscored the potential for conflict to arise from competition and the effectiveness of superordinate goals in fostering cooperation and reducing hostilities.

As we reflect on the Robbers Cave Experiment, its lessons continue to resonate in various domains, from education to organizational management to international diplomacy. The study highlights the importance of creating environments that promote shared objectives and collaborative efforts, demonstrating that unity and cooperation are achievable even in the face of division. By applying these insights thoughtfully, we can address the root causes of conflict and build more inclusive and harmonious communities.

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Robbers Cave Experiment

Life imitates art, and art imitates life. Many say, for example, that the Robbers Cave Experiment and Lord of the Flies are an example of art imitating life.

Did you read Lord of the Flies in middle school or high school? Even if you skimmed over the book, you might remember what it’s about. A group of boys finds themselves stranded on a desert island without adult supervision. As they try to establish a society, they turn on each other in desperation, and things get brutal.

The book has become a staple of Young Adult fiction and is known for being a reflection of society. It warns that anyone has the potential to get violent if they are desperate enough for scarce resources.

Lord of the Flies came out in 1954. The year before, the Rockefeller Foundation gave psychologist Muzafer Sherif $38,000 to conduct a fascinating research experiment. Tired of working with lab rats, Sherif set out to do something unusual - an experiment that one could say mirrored Lord of the Flies. He ended up putting together the Robbers Cave Experiment.

What Is the Robbers Cave Experiment?

The Robbers Cave experiment, once known for its fascinating insight into group conflict theory, is now more infamous than famous. Regardless of its reputation, it remains one of the most well-known social psychology experiments of the 20th century. It attempted to reveal fascinating insights into group conflict and how easily people turn against each other.

Who is Muzafer Sherif?

Muzafer Sherif is the man behind the Robber’s Cave Experiment. Born in Turkey, he witnesses a lot of violence due to the separation of ethnic groups. The violence encouraged him to become a psychologist and attend Harvard University. When he originally published the Robbers Cave Experiment, he earned praise for his work. In recent years, however, criticisms of the Robbers Cave experiment have overshadowed his accomplishments.

How the Robbers Cave Experiment Was Conducted

Sherif’s theory.

Sherif wanted to show how easily groups could turn on each other when they were fighting for limited resources. But he also wanted to show how easily those groups could set aside their differences and come together to defeat a common enemy. Observing these group dynamics couldn’t be done in a lab with rats or dogs. So he took his experiments to a summer camp.

The 22 boys at Robber’s Cave State Park did not know that their summer camp experience would be part of a larger social experiment. They didn’t even know how many people would be at the camp until the second day. On the first day, researchers posing as counselors established two groups of campers: The Eagles and the Rattlers. After the boys bonded within their groups, they were introduced to the others.

Setting Up the Robbers Cave Experiment

The researchers set up a series of competitions over 4-6 days, like baseball games and tug-of-war. Winners received prizes - and the losers would receive nothing. Eventually, they began to set up additional conflicts. For example, one group got access to food while the others were told to wait.

The boys eventually started to develop an “us vs. them” mentality. At first, they only exchanged threats and engaged in verbal conflict. Quickly, however, things became more physical. One group burned the other group’s flag, and one group raided the other group’s cabin and stole items from the boys in that group. Things got violent. In surveys taken during this period, the boys shared negative thoughts and stereotypes against the boys in the other group. This proved the first part of Sherif’s theory.

But he wasn’t done.

Final Results of Robbers Cave Experiment

The Robber’s Cave Experiment then went into a final “friction reduction” phase. All 22 boys were given tasks that would benefit the group as a whole. At one point, the researchers set up a challenge in which a truck delivering food was stuck and couldn’t deliver meals. The boys worked together to get the truck unstuck so they could all eat. In another challenge, the boys formed an assembly line to remove rocks that blocked access to the camp’s water tower. Even though the boys had originally felt hostile toward the boys in the opposing group, they were all able to work together to reach a goal that would benefit the whole group.

One thing to note here is that the boys still did not know they were a part of an experiment. Sherif never revealed this information to them. As you'll read later in this article, they didn't find out about their participation in the experiment until 50+ years later. That's a long time to not knowing that you impacted psychology forever!

Realistic Conflict Theory

This experiment would go on to be key evidence in the Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT.) Donald Campbell coined this term a few years after Sherif’s experiment. At the time, psychologists had talked about group conflict using sex, food, and other basic needs as motivations. Campbell broadened the theory to include larger goals and a wider categorization of resources.

Thus, realistic conflict theory is based on the assumption that group conflict will become tense whenever these groups must compete for limited resources. These resources could be food, but may also be things like respect, power, or recognition. This tension may lead to stereotyping, violence, and other extreme forms of behavior.

Criticisms of the Robbers Cave Experiment

The Robbers Cave Experiment has continued to be one of the most well-known experiments in the world of social psychology. But not all psychologists sing Sherif’s praises. In fact, the Robbers Cave Experiment has become one of the most well-known experiments due to its questionable ethics.

The purpose of an experiment is to test out a hypothesis. If you cannot support your hypothesis with your experiment, the problem is with the hypothesis - not the experiment. When a psychologist approaches an experiment as a way to prove their hypothesis, things can get tricky. Some critics say that’s what Sherif did with the Robbers Cave Experiment.

Middle Grove Experiment

Before the Robbers Cave Experiment, Sherif conducted a similar experiment at a camp called Middle Grove. But the results didn’t work out like he thought they would. The boys never turned on each other - the bond that they had made at camp before the experiment began was too strong. The “counselors” and Sherif set up pranks to pit the boys against each other, but the boys ended up turning on the counselors instead. They eventually figured out they were being manipulated.

These results were thrown out and only came to light in recent years. With these new findings, psychologists began to refrain from using Robbers Cave as an example in textbooks and lectures.

Eventually, with tweaks to the experiment (rather than the hypothesis,) Sherif came up with a scenario that would support his theory. With results that supported his hypothesis, Sherif felt more comfortable publishing his results. The results attempted to reveal the deeper parts of humanity, but the process surrounding Robbers Cave really just revealed a lot about Sherif.

Robbers Cave Experiment vs. Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies didn't exactly have the same resolution as the Robbers Cave experiment. Although the book and experiment are often compared, there are significant differences in how the boys interacted and how their "stories" ended.

(If you haven't read Lord of the Flies, skip to the next section. There are spoilers ahead!)

In Lord of the Flies, (which, keep in mind, is a fictional story,) a group of boys are stranded on an island after their plane is shot down. They are immediately in distress. They also aren't split up into two groups, although ingroups and outgroups begin to form based on age later in the book. At first, the process of finding food and building a fire is fairly democratic. Rifts really form after individuals or pairs make mistakes. The violence also escalates far beyond what would have been allowed in the Robbers Cave experiment. One boy, Piggy, is killed.

The resolution in the Robbers Cave experiment is the result of a problem that all the boys work to solve together. These tasks start from the very beginning of Lord of the Flies. (The book ends with all the boys sobbing after they have been rescued.)

Remember that Lord of the Flies was fiction and came from the mind of William Golding. Although, many might argue that the results of the Robbers Cave Experiment were also manipulated...

Legacy of the Robbers Cave Experiment and Muzafer Sherif

Lord of the Flies will likely be on reading lists for decades to come. Will Sherif's experiment also stand the test of time? It might not. A 2018 book by Gina Perry suggests that the experiment was not as groundbreaking or revealing as it might seem.

Gina Perry is a psychologist and the author of two books that dive into psychology's most famous experiments. (In 2013, Perry published "Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments." The book looks at Stanley Milgram 's personal life and how it may have affected the results of his experiment.) Her take on Sherif's work is particularly fascinating. She shows how Sherif actively worked to manipulate the results of the Robbers Cave Experiment to prove his theory.

Two interesting points stand out from her book, although the entire story is worth a read.

The participants didn't know that they were a part of the study until Perry contacted them herself.
Sherif was so proud of his experiment that he went back to Robbers Cave to celebrate his 80th birthday.

If you are interested in reading more about the legacy of the Robbers Cave experiment, buy Gina Perry's book "The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif's Robbers Cave Experiment" or check it out of your local library. Learning the context behind the experiment puts the results into a different perspective.

Other Examples of Realistic Conflict Theory

While RCT’s most well-known experiment is no longer known for being ethically sound, there is still evidence to support this theory. A lot of this evidence comes from data related to racial tensions and immigration policy.

In 1983, a paper was published on the opposition to school busing and integration. Data taken around that time supported the idea that opposition to busing wasn’t just fueled by racism itself. Group conflict motives also played a role. The threat of another “group” taking scarce resources (access to education) scared whites during that time period.

We hear similar arguments in the present day. Have you ever heard one of your relatives or talk show commentators argue that “immigrants are taking our jobs?” Never mind the validity behind the threat - the perceived threat is enough to cause hostility and tension.

More data and experiments are looking at realistic conflict theory. Psychologists may change their perspectives on intergroup conflict and other related topics. But for now, the Robbers Cave Experiment offers an important reminder that experiments cannot be conducted simply to prove a hypothesis.

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A New Look at the Classic Robbers Cave Experiment

A sports tournament led boys to something like inter-tribal war..

Posted December 9, 2009

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I begin with a research story, a true one.

In the early 1950s, the social psychologist Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues conducted a now-classic experiment, on intergroup conflict and resolution of conflict, with 11- and 12-year-old boys at a summer camp in Oklahoma's Robbers Cave Park.[1] Sherif's procedure involved three phases:

(1) He began by dividing the boys, by a random procedure, into two distinct groups, who slept in different parts of the camp and were given separate sets of chores and activities, so they could develop a sense of group identity .

(2) Then he established conditions designed to induce hostility between the two groups. (Experiments of this sort could be done in the 1950s--a time before the era of research ethics review boards, and a time, before cell phones, when parents did not feel compelled to check up on their camping kids. The boys did not know they were participants in an experiment; they thought that they had been invited to take part in a regular camping experience.)

(3) Once the groups were sufficiently hostile, he tried various methods to reduce the hostility.

The famous result of the experiment--repeated in most introductory psychology textbooks, including my own--was that hostilities were best reduced by establishing superordinate goals , defined as goals that were desired by both groups and could be achieved best through intergroup cooperation . For example, to create one such goal the researchers staged a breakdown in the camp's water supply. In response to this crisis, the boys temporarily forgot their differences and worked cooperatively to explore the mile-long water line and find the break. With each such cooperative adventure, hostilities between the groups abated, and by the end of a series of such adventures the boys were arranging many friendly cross-group interactions on their own initiative.

Sherif's focus in this experiment was on ways to reduce intergroup hostility, but my focus here is on his method for creating the hostility, something not generally discussed in the textbooks. His procedure was remarkably simple. In phase two he invited the two groups of boys to compete with one another in a tournament involving a series of competitive games--including several games of baseball, touch football, and tug of war--all refereed by the camp staff. The members of the winning team would receive prizes, such as pocketknives, that were much valued by the boys. Formal sports conducted for prizes--that was how Sherif and is colleagues generated animosity between the groups. It apparently worked like a charm, not just in this experiment, but also in others that Sherif and his colleagues had conducted earlier.

As the series of games progressed, the two groups became increasingly antagonistic. Initial good sportsmanship gave way gradually to name-calling, harassment, accusations of cheating, and cheating in retaliation. As the hostilities mounted, they spread to camp life outside of the games as well as in the games. Even though the boys all came from the same background (white, Protestant, middle class) and had been divided into groups by a purely random procedure, they began to think of the boys in the other group as very different from themselves--as dirty cheaters who needed to be taught a lesson. Serious fistfights broke out on several occasions. Raids were conducted on the cabin of the opposing group. Some boys carried socks with stones in them, to use as weapons "if necessary." One group pulled down and burned the other group's flag. Many of the boys declared a desire not to eat meals in the same mess hall with the other group; and joint meals, when held, became battlegrounds where boys hurled insults and sometimes food at members of the other group. What at first was a peaceful camping experience turned gradually into something verging on intertribal warfare, all created by a series of formal sporting events.

Formal sports occupy a precarious space between play and reality

Let's step back momentarily from this experiment and reflect a bit on boys' play in general.

Much of boys' play involves mock battles. In some cases the battles lie purely in the realm of fantasy . The boys collaboratively create the battle scenes, decide who will play which parts, and, as they go along, decide who is wounded, or dies, or is resurrected. Some people, who don't understand boys' play, mistake such play for violence and try to stop it, especially when it is acted out in a vigorous, rough-and-tumble manner. But it isn't violence; it's play. We should think of those players not as warriors but as junior improvisational Shakespeares. They are using their imaginations to create and stage dramatic, emotion -inspiring stories. Play of this sort is non-competitive as well as nonviolent. No score is kept; nobody wins or loses; all are just acting out parts. There are also no fixed teams in play of this sort. If the play involves pretend armies, the players arrange the armies differently for each bout of play. Such play does not create enemies; rather, it cements friendships.

A step removed from such fantasy battles is the informal play of team games such as baseball, soccer, and basketball--games that are referred to as "sports" when played formally. These games, too, can be thought of as mock battles. There are two teams (armies), who invade one another's territory, defend their own territory from invaders, and strive to conquer one another, all ritualized by the rules of the game. By "informal" play of these games, I mean that the games are organized entirely by the players and have no obvious consequences outside of the game context. There are no trophies or prizes, no official records of victories or losses kept from one game to the next, no fans who praise winners or disparage losers. These games may be classed as "competitive," but they are really, at most, only pseudo-competitive. A score may be kept, and the players may cheer happily each time their team scores, but, in the end, nobody cares who won. The "losers" go home just as happy as the "winners." These games, too, cement friendships and do not create enemies. I wrote about the valuable lessons learned in play of this sort in my post of Nov. 11, 2009 .

If the boys in Sherif's experiments had played informal games of baseball, touch football, and tug of war, rather than formal ones, I doubt that hostilities would have resulted. With no prizes or acknowledgments of victories and losses from outside authorities, the players would have focused more on having fun and less on winning. With no adult referee, the players would have had to cooperate to establish the ground rules for each game and judge consensually when rules had or had not been broken. They would have had to argue out and negotiate their differences. Cheating and name calling, if they went too far, would destroy the fun and end the game. Players who weren't having fun would quit, so the only way to keep the game going would be to play in ways designed to ensure that everyone had fun. Boys everywhere know how to do that. In fact, it is reasonable to suppose that such informal games, if they occurred, would have brought the two groups of boys closer together because of the cooperation required, much like searching for the break in the water line.

Fantasy battles and informal sports are pure play, and pure play creates friendships, not enemies. Formal sports are not pure play, and therefore they have the capacity, under some conditions, to create enemies. Formal sports lie outside of the realm of pure play because they are controlled by officials who are not themselves players and because they have clear out-of-game consequences, in such forms as prizes or praise for victory. (See Nov. 19, 2008 , post on the definition of play.) In formal sports it is not as clear as it is in informal sports that the battle is merely a pretend battle.

Formal sports occupy a space somewhere between play and reality, and, depending on a wide array of factors, a formal game can shift more toward one than the other. When the balance shifts too far toward reality, a defeat is a real defeat, not a pretend one, and those defeated may begin to perceive the other team as real enemies. Sherif and his colleagues apparently found a formula for setting up formal sports in a manner that quickly moved from play to real battles.

And now, what do you think about this? … This blog is, in part, a forum for discussion. Your questions, thoughts, stories, and opinions are treated respectfully by me and other readers, regardless of the degree to which we agree or disagree. Psychology Today no longer accepts comments on this site, but you can comment by going to my Facebook profile, where you will see a link to this post. If you don't see this post near the top of my timeline, just put the title of the post into the search option (click on the three-dot icon at the top of the timeline and then on the search icon that appears in the menu) and it will come up. By following me on Facebook you can comment on all of my posts and see others' comments. The discussion is often very interesting.

----------- NOTES [1] Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., White, B. J., Hood, W. E., & Sherif, C. S. (1961). Intergroup conflict and cooperation: The Robbers Cave experiment . Norman: University of Oklahoma Book Exchange.

Peter Gray, Ph.D. , is a research professor at Boston College, author of Free to Learn and the textbook Psychology (now in 8th edition), and founding member of the nonprofit Let Grow.

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Robbers Cave Experiment

Robbers cave experiment definition.

The Robbers Cave experiment demonstrated that an attempt to simply bring hostile groups together is not enough to reduce intergroup prejudice. Rather, this experiment confirmed that groups must cooperate and have common goals to truly build peace. Thus, although contact is vital to reducing tensions between groups, interdependence is essential for establishing lasting intergroup harmony. This experiment is a classic in social psychology and is important because it has implications for reducing conflict between real social groups. In addition, this study has implications for a number of prominent social psychological theories, including realistic conflict theory and social identity theory.

Robbers Cave Experiment Background

The study took place in three separate stages that were approximately 1 week apart: (1) group formation, (2) intergroup competition, and (3) intergroup cooperation. The purpose of the first stage was to encourage the development of unique ingroup identities among the groups. This occurred as a result of the boys engaging in shared activities (e.g., swimming, hiking) with their own groups, which indeed led to the spontaneous emergence of norms, leaders, and identities. In fact, the groups even chose distinct names for themselves, with one referring to itself as the Rattlers and the other as the Eagles.

In the second stage, the groups were introduced and placed in direct competition with one another. Thus, the boys competed in a series of contests involving activities such as baseball and tug-of-war. The group that won overall was to be awarded a trophy and other prizes, and the losing group was to receive nothing. The result was a vicious rivalry between the groups, with both verbal and physical attacks being commonplace. For instance, the boys engaged in name-calling and taunting, as well as more physical acts of aggression such as stealing the winning group’s prizes and burning each other’s team flags. Clearly, the researchers’ goal of creating intergroup conflict was easily achieved. However, resolving this conflict turned out to be a more difficult task.

In the final stage of the experiment, researchers arranged specific situations designed to reduce the severe hostility between groups. First, the groups were provided with noncompetitive opportunities for increased contact, such as watching movies and sharing meals together. However, these getting-to-know-you opportunities 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 harmonious 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.

Robbers Cave Experiment 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 interdependent 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. The boys in this experiment clearly demonstrated that competition breeds intergroup hostility. More importantly, however, this study highlights the significance of the social context in the development of prejudice and discrimination. The boys selected to participate in this study were well-adjusted and came from stable, middle-class families. Thus, it is unlikely that individual characteristics such as socioeconomic status and family life were responsible for the observed effects because these factors were held constant. Rather, the context of intergroup relations (i.e., competition) led to the observed conflict and hostility. This suggests that prejudice is largely a product of social situations and that individual pathology is not necessary to produce outgroup hatred. Therefore, the results of this experiment speak to a number of social psychological theories that emphasize the importance of the social context in understanding group prejudice, such as social identity theory and self-categorization theory.

References:

LeVine, R. A., & Campbell, D. T. (1972). Ethnocentrism: Theories of conflict, ethnic attitudes and group behavior. New York: Wiley.
Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., White, B. J., Hood, W. R., & Sherif, C. W. (1988). The Robbers Cave experiment. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Reflections on the Robbers Cave Experiment: Finding Lessons on Political Conflict, Racism, Xenophobia, and Business Environments

October 2023
American Journal of Human Psychology 1(1):34-38

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The Robbers Cave Experiment

Oct 31, 2023

The Robbers Cave Experiment, conducted by psychologist Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues in 1954, is a classic study in social psychology that explored intergroup conflict and cooperation.

Aim : The Robbers Cave Experiment aimed to investigate the factors that contribute to intergroup conflict and the conditions under which cooperation between groups can be fostered.

Method : The study took place at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma and involved 22 boys aged 11 to 12 years old. The researchers divided the boys into two groups, the “Eagles” and the “Rattlers,” and placed them in separate living quarters within the park. The boys were unaware of the existence of the other group at first. The researchers then introduced competitive activities and challenges that fostered a sense of group identity and cohesion within each group.

Results : As the competition between the two groups intensified, so did intergroup hostility and conflict. The boys began to exhibit negative stereotypes and behaviors towards members of the opposing group, engaging in name-calling, vandalism, and physical altercations. However, when the researchers introduced cooperative activities that required both groups to work together to achieve common goals, intergroup hostility decreased, and friendships began to form across group boundaries.

Conclusion : The Robbers Cave Experiment demonstrated the powerful influence of group identity and competition in shaping intergroup relations. It highlighted the role of situational factors in fostering intergroup conflict and the potential for cooperation to reduce hostility and promote positive intergroup relations.

Legacy : The Robbers Cave Experiment remains a landmark study in social psychology, providing valuable insights into the dynamics of intergroup conflict and cooperation. It has influenced subsequent research on topics such as prejudice, discrimination, and conflict resolution. However, it has also sparked ethical debates about the treatment of research participants and the generalizability of findings from laboratory studies to real-world settings.

Criticisms : Critics have raised concerns about the ecological validity of the Robbers Cave Experiment, as it involved a highly controlled and artificial setting. Some researchers argue that the findings may not fully capture the complexities of real-world intergroup dynamics, and caution against drawing overly broad conclusions from laboratory studies.

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The Robbers Cave Experiment: Investigating Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation

Mappa concettuale.

The Robbers Cave Experiment, conducted by Muzafer Sherif in 1954, explored intergroup conflict and cooperation among 22 boys. It revealed how competition can foster hostility, while cooperation can lead to reconciliation. The study's stages, from in-group formation to conflict and resolution through interdependence, offer insights into social identity and prejudice reduction, influencing practices like the Jigsaw Classroom technique.

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Background and Purpose of the Experiment

The landmark study in social psychology.

The Robbers Cave Experiment, conducted in 1954, aimed to investigate the underpinnings of intergroup conflict and cooperation

The Participants and Selection Process

The experiment involved 22 boys, carefully selected for homogeneity in terms of socio-economic background, religion, and educational attainment

The Three Stages of the Experiment

The experiment was designed to unfold in three stages, each testing a specific hypothesis about group dynamics

In-Group Formation

Bonding activities.

The first stage of the experiment focused on in-group formation, using shared experiences to bond the group members

Formation of Group Identity

The boys formed strong group identities, naming themselves and establishing unique cultures and hierarchies

Natural Tendency of Groups to Form Social Identities

This stage demonstrated the natural tendency of groups to form distinct social identities

Intergroup Competition

Introduction of the groups to each other.

The second stage of the experiment introduced the groups to each other, setting the stage for competition

Increased In-Group Solidarity and Out-Group Antagonism

The competitive environment led to increased in-group solidarity and out-group antagonism, with the boys exhibiting overt hostility towards their rivals

Manifestation of Hostility

This hostility manifested in various forms, from name-calling to physical altercations, illustrating the ease with which conflict can arise from competition

Mitigating Conflict through Cooperation

Ineffectiveness of mere co-presence.

Initial attempts at mere co-presence were ineffective in reducing intergroup conflict

Effectiveness of Shared Superordinate Goals

Shared superordinate goals that required collaboration led to a significant reduction in hostility, highlighting the effectiveness of interdependence in overcoming prejudice

Application of Findings in Educational Reforms

The principles derived from this study have been applied in various settings, including educational reforms like the Jigsaw Classroom technique, which promotes cooperative learning among diverse groups of students

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Muzafer Sherif's study involved 22 boys, aged ______ to ______, with similar socio-economic and educational backgrounds, unaware of their participation in an experiment.

Stage 1 Focus in Sherif's Experiment

In-group formation via shared experiences to bond members.

Stage 2 Hypothesis in Sherif's Experiment

Intergroup competition would lead to conflict.

Stage 3 Expectation in Sherif's Experiment

Cooperative tasks introduced to mitigate conflict and restore harmony.

In the experiment's initial phase, boys were divided into two factions, engaging in activities that promoted ______ within each group.

in-group cohesion

The groups in the study created strong identities, calling themselves the ______ and the ______, and developed their own cultures and hierarchies.

Rattlers Eagles

Second stage experiment effect on group dynamics

Led to in-group solidarity increase and out-group antagonism

Hostility forms during competition

Ranged from name-calling to physical altercations

The last phase of the study demonstrated that ______ could lessen ______ by engaging groups in joint tasks.

cooperative tasks intergroup conflict

Impact of Robbers Cave Experiment on intergroup relations

Showed competition breeds hostility, cooperation bridges divides.

Jigsaw Classroom technique purpose

Aims to reduce prejudice, promotes cooperative learning in diverse student groups.

The ______ Cave Experiment is a seminal piece of research in social psychology, despite concerns about informed consent and participant harm.

The study had limitations like sample homogeneity, artificial setting, and absence of a ______ group, which advises against broad generalizations of the findings.

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What was the main objective of the robbers cave experiment, how many stages were in the robbers cave experiment and what did they aim to test, how did the boys develop a group identity during the robbers cave experiment, what was the result of introducing competition between the groups in the experiment, what method was effective in reducing the conflict between the groups, how have the findings from the robbers cave experiment been applied in real-world settings, what are some ethical and methodological criticisms of the robbers cave experiment, contenuti simili, esplora altre mappe su argomenti simili.

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Understanding the Robbers Cave Experiment: Group Dynamics Unveiled

Two teams of children in red and blue shirts face each other on a grassy field with improvised goals, ready for a sporting competition.

Stages and Hypotheses of the Robbers Cave Experiment

Formation of group identity and cohesion, the emergence of intergroup conflict, reducing conflict through interdependence, implications and applications of the robbers cave findings, ethical reflections and study limitations.

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The Robbers Cave Experiment

A little bit of healthy competition can be ok. School spirit before a game against a rival school can create unity and encourage higher performance from the athletes. However, could this once-healthy competition take a turn? In the Robbers Cave Experiment, researchers pushed the limits to see how competition can cause conflict between groups.

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What happened during the conflict reduction phase of the Robbers Cave study?

Which one is not a limitation of the Robbers Cave study?

Choose the strengths of the Robbers Cave experiment.

The Robbers cave experiment was a ______ .

One strength of the Robbers Cave experiment is that it was conducted in a coltrolled environment.

The sample in the Robbers cave experiment can be described as ______.

Was inter-group contact enough to reduce prejudice between groups after the inter-group conflict phase of the Robbers cave experiment?

The Jigsaw Classroom successfully reduces prejudice .

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What was the hypothesis of the Robbers Cave Experiment?

What intergroup conflict and cooperation were observed during the Robbers Cave Experiment?

What were the results of the Robbers Cave Experiment?

Are there ethical issues surrounding the Robbers Cave Experiment?

What were the limitations of the Robbers Cave Experiment?

The hypothesis of the Robbers Cave Experiment

The Robbers Cave experiment (1954) was a field experiment, meaning it was conducted outside of the laboratory and investigated participants’ behaviour in a naturalistic environment . A repeated measures design was employed to investigate group formation, intergroup conflict and conflict reduction.

Researchers carefully selected 22 11- to 12-year-old boys, who were all white, from two-parent, protestant families and had a similar socio-economic background. They were also all rated by their teachers as highly intelligent.

The sample was homogeneous as the researchers hoped that similarities between boys could help with group formation.

Researchers investigated three hypotheses in different phases of the study:

Engaging in shared activities will help to form a strong group identity.

Competition between groups will lead to hostility and conflict.

Cooperation will be necessary to reduce intergroup conflict.

The Robbers Cave Experiment, boys in camp uniform looking and pointing at map on ground, Vaia

Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation in the Robbers Cave Experiment

The boys didn’t know about each other before the experiment so that previous relationships wouldn’t affect the experiment. They were selected to go on a 3-week summer camp and were unaware that they were participating in research or being observed. Researchers wanted to avoid demand characteristics, which occur when participants behave in line with experimenters’ expectations. Researchers manufactured intergroup conflict and cooperation in the Robbers Cave Experiment in three different phases: in-group formation phase, inter-group conflict phase, and conflict reduction base.

In-group formation phase

Upon arrival at the camp, boys were allocated into two groups. The groups were matched in personality traits like IQ, sports skills and interests. Each group spent the first week of the camp engaging in group activities like swimming and hiking together. To encourage group bonding, some activities required cooperation toward a shared goal.

This experiment included activities such as coming up with a group name, designing a flag or participating in a scavenger hunt to win a reward.

The groups named themselves the Rattlers and the Eagles. By the end of the first phase, groups formed with their own norms, culture, and hierarchy.

Inter-group conflict phase

In the second week, groups learned about each other and competed in a series of contests, including tug-of-war and a baseball game, to win rewards. Researchers recorded conversations boys were having and observed their behaviour to investigate the levels of hostility between the Rattlers and the Eagles after competing. It was meant to induce a competitive atmosphere.

In-group and out-group terms were beginning to be used, with the boys talking favourably of themselves in their group but talking negatively about the other group.

Conflict reduction phase

First, the effects of positive contact between groups were investigated. Researchers arranged opportunities for positive contact like watching a movie together or sitting together at mealtimes. Initial contact did not go well and did not strongly affect cohesion. Next, the Rattlers and the Eagles participated in shared activities that required collaboration between groups to achieve a common goal.

The two groups had to work together to find a break in the water pipe, supplying water to the camp. The second task was to get the truck delivering a movie out of a ditch. Both groups were interested in watching the movie, so they had to join forces and collaborate to pull the truck out using a rope.

Results of the Robbers Cave Experiment

After the series of competitions, hostility between groups developed. The boys became verbally and physically aggressive toward the other group members. Moreover, when asked to describe both groups, boys tended to ascribe positive characteristics to their group and negative characteristics to the other group.

During mealtimes, boys would throw food at the other group and call each other names. There were also instances of stealing, raiding the cabins of the other group or burning their flags.

The opportunity for positive contact was not enough to reduce conflict. But interventions that required interdependence to achieve a common goal proved highly effective. After completing the collaborative tasks, instances of hostile behaviours decreased, and more friendships between members of the two groups developed.

The Robbers Cave Experiment, young boys playing baseball, Vaia

Strengths of the Robbers Cave Experiment

The naturalistic setting of the experiment improves its ecological validity. The deception was used to avoid demand characteristics – participants were not aware that they were being observed. An effort was undertaken to establish a standardised procedure before the experiment.

Also, the staff was given instructions not to influence the participants’ decisions or introduce activities that were not planned beforehand. Multiple observers recorded boys’ behaviour to improve the reliability of observations. Multiple methods of measuring conflict were used to improve the validity of the findings.

Real-World Applications of the Results of Robbers Cave Experiment

After the desegregation in the United States, a conflict between Black and White people remained. It was clear that intergroup contact alone was not enough to reduce the conflict, often it only strengthened prejudice and stereotypes. Sherif’s findings led to novel ways of designing interventions to reduce racial conflict in real-life settings.

Shared goals between groups create positive interdependence, which can be defined as a state where both groups need to cooperate to achieve the desired goal successfully. As the Robbers Cave experiment demonstrated, achieving shared goals can reduce conflict between two groups.

Based on the Robbers Cave study, Aronson et al. (1978) created an intervention to reduce racial conflict in newly desegregated Texas schools.

The Jigsaw Classroom intervention requires individuals to collaborate to learn new material successfully. Students work in groups consisting of both Black and White students.

Each student receives a portion of the material that the group has to master. Students learn their part of the material and present it to other group members. Therefore, the group is interdependent, and cooperation is required for the group to succeed.

In schools, students often focus on the competition by shifting focus to collaboration. The Jigsaw Classroom successfully reduces stereotypes and prejudice between groups in educational settings.

Ethical issues surrounding the Robbers Cave experiment

There were several ethical issues surrounding the Robbers cave experiment. For instance, since neither the boys nor their parents knew about the specifics of the study, they could not give informed consent to participate. Additionally, the boys were never offered the opportunity to withdraw from the study. How could they if they were not even aware that they were in one?

Finally, t he boys were not protected from physical or psychological harm. During the study, multiple dangerous situations occurred, like shooting fireworks or setting fire to group flags. The aggression and conflicts may have caused harm as well.

Limitations of the Robbers Cave Experiment

Rater bias – i ntergroup hostility was measured mostly as the number of hostile incidents recorded by the staff. However, there might have been differences between observers regarding what counts as a hostile incident. Moreover, the staff only spent 12 hours so they couldn’t record everything happening.

The sample was small and homogenous, making the results hard to generalise to the entire population. Additionally, an entirely male sample from an individualistic culture that values competition might have impacted the degree of hostility that developed between groups after competing.

The intergroup conflict phase lasted only for a week, and the groups had no previous history. Therefore, conflict provoked in the Robber Cave study can be considered a simplification of how conflicts between groups develop in real-life.

The study also had no control group. To know if the boys’ behaviour truly demonstrated hostility, a control group could be used to see how boys usually interact in the absence of formal competition.

The Robbers Cave Experiment - Key takeaways

Researchers manufactured intergroup conflict and cooperation in the Robbers Cave Experiment in three different phases: in-group formation phase, inter-group conflict phase, and conflict reduction base.

After the series of competitions, hostility between groups developed. The boys became verbally and physically aggressive toward the other group members.

There were several ethical issues surrounding the Robbers cave experiment. For since, since neither the boys nor their parents knew about the specifics of the study, they could not give informed consent to participate.

Findings of the Robbers Cave experiment led to the development of the Jigsaw Classroom intervention to reduce prejudice.

Flashcards in The Robbers Cave Experiment 8

After participating in shared activities like watching a movie together, the conflict between groups persisted.

Potential rater bias.

Attempts to standardise the procedure.

Field experiment

Hetero geneous

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Frequently Asked Questions about The Robbers Cave Experiment

What was the Robbers Cave experiment about?

The Robbers Cave experiment investigated how conflicts between groups develop and how to reduce them.

Competition caused conflict between groups. Tasks that required both groups to collaborate to succeed reduced the conflict.

What type of experiment was the Robbers Cave?

Robbers Cave was a field experiment.

Why was the Robbers Cave experiment unethical?

Boys and their parents couldn't give informed consent because they didn't know about the specifics of the study. The boys were also not protected from physical harm.

How did the Robbers Cave experiment impact psychology?

The Robbers Cave experiment was the first experimental investigation of intergroup conflict. Findings from the study informed first evidence-based approaches to reducing conflict and prejudice. The study also inspired further intergroup conflict literature.

Is the Robbers Cave experiment a field experiment?

Yes, the Robbers Cave was a field experiment because it was conducted outside of a laboratory, specifically, at a summer camp for boys.

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Chapter 7: Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination

Back to chapter, robbers cave, previous video 7.3: stereotype content model, next video 7.5: stereotype threat and self-fulfilling prophecies.

In 1954, what began as summer camp amidst Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma emerged as a famous field study on social identity and intergroup relations.

Building upon previous work, Muzafer Sherif and colleagues tested the realistic conflict theory —a notion that individuals who must contend for scarce resources—either perceived or real—begin to exhibit competitive tendencies and negative attitudes as a result.

Before arriving, researchers carefully selected 22 fifth-grade boys of similar sociocultural and personal backgrounds and randomly assigned them to one of two groups.

All subjects were unknown to each other, as well as unaware of the experiment’s purpose and that they would be conspicuously observed and recorded by the researchers who were disguised as “camp staff” members.

During the first in-group formation phase , the 11- to 12-year-olds arrived on separate buses—without knowing that the others existed, since they were housed at isolated sites. They were directed to bond within their group while participating in activities, like hiking and canoeing.

Throughout their first week together, the boys became connected and established group norms, singing songs and playing games, as well as their identities. They’re now the Eagles and Rattlers.

To set-up the next part, the Rattlers were allowed to wander near the ball field, within distance to hear the Eagles playing. At practice the very next day, the Rattlers outwardly declared the field “theirs”.

For the second stage, the intergroup friction phase , the staff officially announced the presence of another group. This revelation elicited heightened awareness of “us” versus “them”, and both teams charged ahead with enthusiastic rivalry.

In a series of events, the groups would compete in a tournament of activities, like baseball and tug-of-war. While most of the outcomes were determined by the victorious team, a few occasions, such as cabin inspections, were judged by the staff to keep the point totals tight and the teams motivated to win.

Over the next week, both sides participated in numerous incidents of name-calling and humiliation—even campers who weren’t as active in the physical participation.

As the days passed, the losers’ frustrations turned more physical: The Eagles burned the Rattler’s flag, and in turn, the members retaliated; sportsmanship was on the decline, as the smell of victory approached; and unfair tactics caught the confident Rattlers off balance.

The mood, now hostile, fostered ransacking of the cabins—beds were overturned and property was stolen, including comic books. And sure enough, the raids became a reciprocal occurrence as the tournament was coming to an end.

Who would prevail hinged on the last event, a treasure hunt. Unbeknownst to the campers, the winning team was determined by the researchers, who manipulated the routes.

In the days following victory and defeat, the researchers devoted time for everyone to cool off and enjoy in-group activities—including civilized swimming time at the beach.

At the end of the second phase, the groups were once again placed within physical proximity to each other, and their behavior was observed. Their responses confirmed tendencies to classify their own in-group favorably—indicating positive group relations—and the out-group unfavorably—highlighting the persistence of the negative intergroup attitudes.

For the final stage, the intergroup integration phase , researchers crafted numerous non-competitive situations where the two would have to work together to achieve common objectives— superordinate goals —in an effort to reconcile the groups’ attitudes and behaviors. For example, the camp truck was stuck and they all had to pull the vehicle to get it to start.

Soon enough, the division of “us” versus “them” disappeared, along with the intergroup hostility. The boys ended their stay with positivity—leaving camp on one bus.

In the end, using cooperation to accomplish shared goals may dissolve perceived enemies into friends and break down social barriers that could fuel conflict.

During the 1950s, the landmark Robbers Cave experiment demonstrated that when groups must compete with one another, intergroup conflict, hostility, and even violence may result. At the Oklahoman summer camp, two troops of boys—termed the Rattlers and the Eagles—took part in a week-long tournament. During this time, their negativity culminated in derogatory name-calling, fistfights, and even vandalism and destruction of property. However, this work also revealed that such tension could be lessened through the implementation of superordinate goals , or objectives that, in order to be reached, require groups to work together in a positive manner. For example, during the Robbers Cave study, along with teaming up to help start a truck, both the Rattlers and Eagles pooled their money to view a popular movie at the time, Treasure Island (Sherif, Harvey, White, et al ., 1988; see also Sherif, 1956). Although the Robbers Cave study only focused on two small groups, its insight into the formation and remediation of intergroup conflict is still applicable today.

Mechanisms of Action of Superordinate Goals

While the common goals introduced in the Robbers Cave experiment helped to unite the Rattlers and Eagles, the question arose as to how this was possible. More recent research has suggested that this outcome may result from changes in how groups categorize one another (Gaertner, Dovido, Banker, et al. , 2000). On the one hand, when two groups come together during a subordinate goal, this behavior results in one-on-one interactions between members. Instead of an “us” and “them” mentality, individuals get to learn about one another—like each other’s favorite games, friends, sports, and home life. This process decategorizes a member of a different group; they are seen as a distinct person, rather than part of a “them” enemy faction.

In addition, when groups unite under a common goal, people recategorize one another as having the same identity (Gaertner, Dovido, Banker, et al. , 2000; see also Kelly & Collett, 2008). For example, when the Rattlers and Eagles joined together to help start a truck needed to procure provisions, they may not have seen themselves as “us” and “them” cliques, but rather as members of the same camp working together to solve a problem affecting everyone. This recategorization was also observed at the end of the study when campers rode home together on a single bus singing the song “Oklahoma.” Here, everyone was united and shared a collective identity—both as members of the same camp, and (on a larger scale) as Oklahomans, with pride in their home state. Thus, through fostering decategorization and recategorization of group members, subordinate goals can help lessen conflict.

Applications of Lessons from Robbers Cave

Intergroup conflict occurs in different walks of life: schools (Kelly & Collett, 2008), workplaces (Mannix & Nagler, 2017), healthcare systems (Creasy & Kinard, 2013), and even between nations in the form of outright warfare (Spini, Elcheroth & Fasel, 2008). Some researchers are looking at how lessons learned during the Robbers Cave experiment—such as using superordinate goals to reduce hostility—may be employed to improve relationships between individuals in these different fields.

For example, some work has focused on how healthcare mergers—like when two hospitals combine into one—are affected by intergroup conflict (Creasy & Kinard, 2013). This process can be complicated if employees of the respective facilities adopt an “us vs. them” mentality, which can breed suspicion and dislike, resulting in parties failing to exchange patient or operational information. This reaction may be due, in part, to workers feeling that they compete for a limited number of jobs in the newly-merged entity. To combat this thinking, solutions such as reassuring employees that their jobs are secure and emphasizing superordinate goals—like providing stellar, accessible care for all patients—may help to reduce conflict.

Other work has focused on means to lessen conflict in desegregated schools, where negative interactions may occur between children of different racial or ethnic groups (Kelly & Collett, 2008). Here, superordinate goals—like those related to extracurricular activities—are again emphasized as a way to improve student relations. For example, camaraderie and respect can be fostered amongst the members of a football team who experience the superordinate goal of winning games. Possibly, these positive interactions can also be reinforced by highlighting each individual’s unique contribution to the team, and the fact that all players share a unique identity—they are all members of (and represent) the same school. Thus, by applying principles of the Robbers Cave experiment, intergroup hostilities experienced in today’s society can be lessened, and friendships may be fostered between individuals of different backgrounds.

reliablyuncomfortable

Betcha can't read just one, in the robbers caves: how a famous social science experiment explains our divided states of america, and what we can do about it..

Robbers Cave State Park

Not long ago an Argentinian hacktivist posed a simple question to his 53.6k Twitter followers, a question probably posed in similar vein by Socrates in the agora more than two thousand years ago:

A life of social science research methodologies applied to college students, beer drinkers, Sea World visitors, potato chip lovers, hipster clothing wearers, soft drink buyers, computer owners and credit card carriers has prepared me more than most to answer this question. After all, I have made it my professional life’s practice to understand not just how people respond to stimulus, but why they do, and how to apply that learning to most profitable effect.

A big part of designing market research is eliminating the potential for biases to corrupt the findings —a two hundred thousand dollar double blind taste test can be ruined by accidentally introducing an order effect that can’t be statistically controlled for. (I only wish I wasn’t speaking from experience.) Learning to identify and control for inherent biases is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a well-designed research study that will yield valid, reliable results.

It turns out this works for life, too: knowing decision-making biases in all their forms (including, especially, attentional bias , denial and selective perception ) enables you to control for them, and not ruin your very expensive study (or life) by failing to be aware of easily avoided/corrected for errors in thinking.

We humans are simply not the rational creatures we think we are; we’re social, first and foremost. Humans evolved to be tribal; to be part of a group is not just necessary from a social learning perspective, but for survival. A lone hunter could not hope to run down a kudu, a feat a group can easily manage .

So how is it that something so important to our flourishing as a species — being part of a group, or tribe — is simultaneously one of the primary weapons for tearing the social fabric apart?

Understanding how to defeat the natural tendency to ‘tribe up’ when the tendency is bringing about dangerous division has become the urgent question of the day.

The truth might set us free, but it won’t necessarily have any impact on cherished beliefs — even those that are demonstrably false. So what do you do when in the face of steadfast beliefs that are nonetheless demonstrably wrong? What is the best response when tribal signaling is trumping truth?

The answer lies in our brain, that mystery of computational power that operates as decisively when its operator is conscious as unconscious.

The first thing is to remember, at the core of tribalism is not truth, but beliefs. And the one thing you cannot do is reason anyone out of their beliefs. After all, beliefs are not arrived at with reason, and so cannot be dismantled with same.

We reason not to get to the truth but to stay safe — to stay part of the in group. We use reason in order to get along with other people, to be part of a tribe, which in turn is crucial not just to our sociable natures but to survival itself.

With survival at stake it is easy to see why the context of the tribe, and the safety it represents, matters more than logic. Because tribes represent safety in the most fundamental sense (survival), agreeing with the tribe is a safe default position for group members, even when it doesn’t make sense to do so.

For example, consider one study which asked people whether, if they had a fatal disease, would they prefer a life-saving diagnosis from a computer that was 1,000 miles away, or the exact same diagnosis from a computer in their town. A large majority preferred the same information if the source…a machine…was local, though such a position is inherently nonsensical.

Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds

One thing experts universally agree on — the least effective means of challenging a cherished belief a person has is to bombard him/her with information that challenges that belief.

In fact the opposite is true: the more you can prove something is false, the more the true believer is likely to dig in and double down on defending their beliefs. This is due to common reasoning fallacies that all humans are subject to — it’s how our brains are built.

Imagine a mouse that thinks the way we do. Such a mouse (and those that follow it), “bent on confirming its belief that there are no cats around,” would soon be dinner.

As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding, but rather, intensity of belief. And beliefs are powerfully shaped so they agree with beliefs of the groups with which we most strongly identify.

Researcher Dan Kahan studies cultural cognition, or how cultural identification values shape perceptions of public risk and related policy enactment.

Kahan’s research has found that the more challenged our views are, the more dogmatic, defensive and closed minded we become, engaging in an intellectual form of ‘circle-the-wagons, we’re under attack’ tribal unity and bringing to bear a full arsenal of “weaponized irrationality” when confronted with evidence that contradicts our beliefs, including belief perseverance, confirmation bias, and the backfire effect, among others.

B elief perseverance is the tendency to cling to one’s initial belief even after receiving disconfirming information. We enable belief perseverance by engaging in all kinds of flawed reasoning, chief among them confirmation bias —a type of data distortion in which we create/recall evidence that confirms our belief, and ignore/don’t recall disconfirming cases.

Confirmation bias has a physiological component — it literally feels good. Research conducted at Oxford (“Denying the Grave: Why We Ignore Facts That Will Save Us”) shows that people experience genuine pleasure — a rush of dopamine — when processing information that supports their beliefs.

What we say we believe says something important about how we see ourselves, making disconfirmation of such beliefs a wrenching process — something that our minds stubbornly resist.

“It feels good to ‘stick to our guns’ even if we are wrong.”

Just as confirmation bias shields our beliefs when we actively seek information, we have other mental tricks to protect our beliefs when reality tries to dismantle them. The backfire effect defends our beliefs when we are presented with factual evidence that disconfirms our beliefs.

The Oatmeal explains the Backfire Effect

That’s right — corrections actually increase the strength of our misconceptions, if those corrections contradict personal beliefs. Not all of us, of course — just those of us with amygdalas.*

Fire, Aim…Ready!

According to Matthew Feinberg, an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, the process of belief formation is exactly opposite from what one would expect: when confronted with a problem people do not reason their way through alternatives to a logical conclusion. Instead, they “come to the conclusion first, and then the reasons they kind of pull out just to support their beliefs.”

As it happens, the reasons do not have to be actually well-reasoned; we’ll think they are, no matter what. The illusion of explanatory depth is the untested and incorrect conviction that one has a deeper understanding of the world than is actually the case — essentially confusing familiarity with knowledge because, tautologically speaking, we don’t know what we don’t know.

Research shows the tendency appears as early as second grade, and that it’s been around pretty much as as long as mankind has been sharing thoughts with one another.

If you think you’re more rational than the average person, indulge in a quick thought experiment: turn on a recorder and explain how a toilet flushes. Now imagine someone having to build a toilet based on this explanation. Did you remember to include all 14 parts? Did you include a description of siphoning at work, maybe throw in Bernoulli’s equation for clarification?

Most of would realize very quickly that we cannot properly explain how a toilet flushes —five minutes of fumbling would debunk our illusion of explanatory depth.

It’s a conundrum of growth, that one of the unintended consequences of progress is expanded ignorance. Throughout human history, as people invented new tools (the septic system; the light bulb; the combustion engine; the computer) for new ways of living, they by default created whole new realms of ignorance. It’s a necessary evil of progress, though: imagine if every member of society had to master the printing press in order to read a book.

Adapting to new technologies will always on some level require society to embrace incomplete understanding, in order to thrive. After all, learning how to hunt together as a group was probably a key development in humankind’s evolutionary history.

But the dark side of relying on one another’s expertise is our tendency to fall prey to the pervasive belief that we as individuals know way more than we actually do. The illusion of explanatory depth is not harmful when it comes to adopting to new technologies — we can use smart phones and drive cars without knowing the specifics of the mechanics that make these things possible. But it’s an entirely different matter to adopt a position on subjects — such as climate change or immigration or Brexiting — without knowing what you are talking about.

We should realize that the baseline condition is not equality; it is bias. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild , “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right”

Noticing What Is Noticed

Our capacity for critical thinking is easily derailed by what we notice, and how we feel, at any given moment. We humans are so susceptible to reasoning errors, it takes little more than the power of suggestion to sway us like a reed in the wind.

The suggestion doesn’t even have to be relevant — it just has to be made: that’s what MIT professor Dan Ariely demonstrated in his research “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions”.

In the study, research subjects bid on an item. But before they placed their bids, they were asked to jot down the last 2 digits of their social security numbers. Students whose Social Security number ended with the lowest figures — 00 to 19 — were the lowest bidders, offering on average $67. Students with the highest bids had the highest last two digit value — their bids were an average of $198.

Similarly, critical thinking is severely curtailed in the face of strong negative emotions: when we are angry or fearful (illegal immigrants are terrorists!) the amygdala activates and overrides rational thought.

The Fault In Our Beliefs

Many of us make the Platonic error of reasoning: that is, we think we’re considering the facts and not letting emotion ‘get in the way’ of actively arriving at the rational conclusions that form the basis of our beliefs.

But in reality, facts have little bearing on what most people believe…and, far from being the polar opposition of rationality, our emotions are essential to our rationality. In fact, we couldn’t be rational beings without emotions.

If Descarte had known about somatic marker hypothesis, he may have reframed his famous aphorism “Ego cogito ergo sum” — “I feel, therefore I think.”

cogito ergo sum

In the excellent book Descarte’s Error , neurologist António Damásio suggests rationality and emotionality are not only not opposites, they inter-dependently coexist. René Descartes ’ “error” was the dualist separation of mind and body, rationality and emotion. Damásio proposes rationality is not separate from but actually requires emotional input. Or, as How We Decide author Jonah Lehrer puts it,

Every feeling is really a summary of data, a visceral response to all the information that can’t be accessed directly.

Experts and geniuses get that way through practice, and stay that way by paying attention to their feelings, i.e. letting their intuition inform their decisions. Clearly, when there is a deep well of experience composed of deliberate practice behind them, feelings are an accurate shortcut.

Consider Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived. According to The Physics of Baseball, a typical major league pitch takes about 0.35 seconds to travel from the hand of the pitcher to home plate — the same amount of time between one heartbeat and the next. It takes the average batter .25 seconds to activate his muscles and initiate a swing. The visual information of the ball entering the strike zone takes a couple of milliseconds to travel from the retina to the visual cortex.

05 seconds in slomo

All of this leaves the batter with fewer than .05 seconds to perceive the pitch and decide if he should swing.Sounds like an impossible feat, but not all .05 seconds are equal. This is where feelings come in. For Ted Williams, winner of six American League batting titles, holder of a a .344 lifetime batting average, and the last MLB player to hit .400, that .05 seconds was informed by making a science out of hitting.

He was known to practice his swing for hours everyday, often using any household object as a bat. After games, he could be found taking extra batting practice. He studied pitchers’ statistics, memorizing their pitching repertories, and poring over the daily box scores for clues about each pitcher to, as he termed it “update his mental databank.”

Which is a pretty accurate description of why Ted Williams was a better hitter than anyone else has ever been; during his .05 second decision window, Williams had far more information — data points — to access than the average hitter; but rather than going through his vast database tick by tick, reasoning his way through the best way to hit a particular pitch, his emotions guided him instinctively, triggering the decision to swing with more consistent bat on ball contact than any hitter then or since.

Realistic conflict theory (RCT) explains how intergroup hostility can arise as a result of conflicting goals and competition over limited resources, and it also offers an explanation for the feelings of prejudice and discrimination toward the outgroup that accompany the intergroup hostility.

Feelings of resentment can arise in the situation that the groups see the competition over resources as having a zero-sums, or “winner take all” fate, The length and severity of the conflict is based upon the perceived value and shortage of the given resource.

According to RCT, positive relations can only be restored if superordinate goals — i.e. goals that require the cooperation of two or more people or groups to achieve, which usually results in rewards to the groups — are in place.

Eagles and Rattlers in the Robbers Cave

The most famous social science experiment demonstrating realistic conflict theory had a name — The Robbers Cave Experiment — worthy of a Hardy Boys mystery, and containing all of our sad little human reasoning errors in a perfect microcosm that starts with two dozen well-behaved Boy Scouts meeting each other for the first time and devolving into a Lord of the Flies hatefest in just 2 weeks time. The study was conducted when President Trump was 8 years old, and more than sixty years later its relevance to the United States of amygdalas is more relevant than ever.

The actual Robbers Caves, OK — (not quite Lord of the Flies)

In 1954, Researcher Muzafer Sherif of the University of Oklahoma carried out a 3 week study at a 200-acre summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park , Oklahoma .

The study consisted of 22 twelve year old boys divided into two groups balanced across physical, mental and social attributes. Each boy was picked up by bus and transported to a Boy Scouts of America camp in the Robbers Cave State Park, where a three stage experiment was conducted over a period of three weeks.

During the first stage, the groups were kept separate from each other in different parts of the camp. For the first few days each group engaged in activities that helped the group members bond. After six days, each group had named itself: The Rattlers, and the Eagles.

As each group became distantly aware of the other group, their internal bonding took on an external focus, for example, becoming defensive about which camp facilities might be being ‘’abused’ by the other group. The groups independently requested the camp staff (i.e. the researchers) to set up an intra-group competition.

The prospect of competing against the other group seemed to rally each group to work hard at excelling at any activity that might become competitive. In other words, the mere presence of an ‘other’ acted to reinforce group identity and cohesion.

for #winers only

During stage two of the experiment, the two groups were brought together for the first time. With the intention of introducing friction, a series of competitions were announced with a winner take all prize structure: the winning team received a trophy and each boy on the winning team received a medal and a multi-bladed pocket knife, while the losing team received nothing.

As the groups prepared for the competition the ‘otherfication’ began in earnest: the Rattlers mounted their flag on a communal baseball field and made threats about what they’d do if an Eagle so much as touched it. In the mess hall the groups engaged in name calling and singing derogatory songs about each other, with some requesting the camp staff to arrange separate meal times so as not to have to eat with the other group.

Cabin raids and a show of disrespect for each others’ flag followed, with each group burning the other’s flag. When the Eagles won the contest, the Rattlers raided their cabins and removed any medals or pocket-knives they could lay their hands on. Name calling escalated in quantity and intensity with several boys nearly coming to blows. Noses were held when the ‘enemy’ was near and both groups objected even to eating in the same mess hall at the same time.

In Stage three (“the Integration Phase”) the researchers sought to dissipate the friction over the course of the third and final week of the experiment. However a bean-counting contest, fireworks evening and a film did not lead to a reconciliation between the Eagles and the Rattlers — feelings of animosity remained strong, with several encounters ending in food fights. The researchers found that the contrived competitions created such real tensions it would take far more than contrived recreation opportunities to achieve any reconciliation.

The researchers next introduced activities with superordinate goals, the attainment of which was beyond the resources and efforts of one group alone — i.e. requiring the two groups to work together toward a solution. A change of venue helped to inhibit recall of grievances associated with action that transpired at Robbers Cave.

The first superordinate goal to be introduced pertained to drinking water — the researchers arranged for the camp to experience a loss of water supply, requiring the campers to discover and address the source of the problem, even as they experienced the consequences of the shortage — thirst, inability to flush toilets, limited cooking ability affecting meals, etc. The second superordinate goal was selecting and covering the cost of entertainment — in this case, a movie. Two more included hauling a fallen tree from a road and freeing a truck carrying food for both groups that was stuck in a muddy rut.

The joint sharing of goals and achievement lessened intergroup tensions. After fixing the water supply problem, agreeing to a per-camper cost to cover most of the movie and taking care of the tree and truck issues, the previous animosity between the Rattlers and the Eagles dissipated, along with their group identities —the campers once again ate together in the mess hall without complaint. Intragroup friendships blossomed and at breakfast and lunch the last day the boys sat together, rattlers among eagles and eagles among rattlers.

no winners in this fight

When put to a vote a majority elected to travel home from the camping trip on the same bus, and when it stopped for refreshments, the former “Rattler” leader suggested that the Rattler prize for winning one one of the camp contests be used to buy all the boys (Eagles too) milk shakes, which the campers cheered.

What then must we do?

When it comes to tribalism, if the truth won’t set us free…then who or what will? As it turns out, when it comes to the prison of beliefs, you have to really want to be free — truth is not the opening of the prison door, but a key only the prisoner himself can turn to unlock it.

The key to changing your belief system is changing your thoughts . The key to reducing political polarization is not just to expose people to information that conflicts with the beliefs they want to hang onto, but also increases their receptivity to that information. Now that you know all the biases you’re up against, you can choose stratagems that optimize the chance for receptivity to your message.

Choose the right messenger. People are much more likely to be convinced of a fact when it “originates from ideologically sympathetic sources,” so choosing messengers that look and sound like the audience is ideal. People will only imbue narratives with the power of belief when they’re coming from someone they trust.
Use humor. Research demonstrates that humor enhances a speaker’s credibility, audience rapport, and aids in message retention. Laughter — especially when it is unexpected — lowers resistance; shared laughter creates a sense of community/ tribal belonging, however briefly.
Define t he ‘goodness context’. People value a service more when it is described in isolation or presented as part of the status quo, than when it is presented as part of a larger good, i.e. people are more likely to vote budget dollars to upgrade fire safety equipment than to improve disaster preparedness. Frame new taxes as a ‘tax bonus’ and voters will vote yes; call it a ‘tax penalty’ and voters will be angry, even though the concepts are functionally equivalent.
Question, don’t challenge . If you ask the average person to explain why they hold a given opinion “They will come to realize the limitations of their own understanding,” said Frank C. Keil , a Yale University psychologist who studies intuitive beliefs and explanatory understanding. This won’t necessarily lead to a change in point of view, but “if you ask someone non-aggressively to walk you through their point of view, they’ll likely see the holes more.” One of the most effective de-biasing technique is known as counter-explanation, i.e. asking the person to imagine or explain how the opposite belief might be true. This won’t change hearts and minds on the spot, but can introduce the all-important change of thought that precedes a change in beliefs.
Be accepting of the person, if not their beliefs. Make them feel good about themselves and they’ll be more receptive to your message. “When people have their self-worth validated in some way, they tend to be more receptive to information that challenges their beliefs ,” says Peter Ditto , a psychology professor at UC-Irvine who studies emotion and its connection to political and religious beliefs. This is partly because our mood determines a lot about how receptive we are to new information or ideas: If we’re happy and confident and at ease, if we feel our dignity is being respected, we’re more likely to be open-minded.
Identify/pursue superordinate goals — i.e. solve a problem that requires united, cooperative action and a meaningful shared reward(s) that may otherwise be unattainable.In the Robbers Caves experiment, after successfully creating groups that disliked each other, our researchers found themselves no more able to control their monster than Dr. Frankenstein. They tried and failed to ease tensions between the two camping groups, which now hated one another with the natural intensity and enmity of real rattlers and eagles. Appealing to their scouting commonality was useless; where before there were 24 campers, there was now a good ‘us’ and an intolerably bad ‘them’. Arranging for a shared pleasant experience only served to provide an arena for escalated fighting. Introducing a third, neutral group to become a ‘common enemy’ resulted in a recruitment competition — an arms race between the original two groups seeking to win hearts and minds. Establishing common goals — the same thing that so successfully created the groups to begin with — was the only thing that proved effective in uniting the two groups.

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COMMENTS

The Stanford Prison Experiment was massively influential. We just ...
Recently, science journalist Gina Perry found that the infamous "Robbers Cave" experiment in the 1950s — in which young boys at summer camp were essentially manipulated into joining warring ...
Robbers Cave Experiment
The Robbers Cave Experiment, conducted by Muzafer Sherif in the 1950s, studied intergroup conflict and cooperation among 22 boys in Oklahoma. Initially separated into two groups, they developed group identities. Introducing competitive tasks led to hostility between groups. Later, cooperative tasks reduced this conflict, highlighting the role of shared goals in resolving group tensions.
10 Psychological Experiments That Could Never Happen Today
7. Robbers Cave Experiment. Muzafer Sherif conducted the Robbers Cave Experiment in the summer of 1954, testing group dynamics in the face of conflict. A group of preteen boys were brought to a ...
Exploring the dark side of a widely-celebrated psychological experiment
The study, known as the Robbers Cave Experiment, was the brainchild of Turkish-American social psychologist Muzafer Sherif. The study was framed as a three-week boys' summer camp, with one hosted ...
What Was the Robbers Cave Experiment in Psychology?
Elizabeth Hopper. Updated on August 26, 2024. The Robbers Cave experiment was a famous psychology study that looked at how conflict develops between groups. The researchers divided boys at a summer camp into two groups, and they studied how conflict developed between them. They also investigated what did and didn't work to reduce group conflict.
The Robbers Cave Experiment: Realistic Conflict Theory
As a field experiment, the Robbers Cave study attempted to create the sort of intergroup conflict that impacts people from all walks of life the world over. While the study was a success and had a good outcome, critics argue that the study suffers from a number of possible problems. Artificially-created situation: First, while Sherif and his ...
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The Stanford Prison Experiment is far from the only famous psychological experiment to have been debunked in recent years, resulting in what Resnick calls a "replication crisis" in psychology. ... recently discovered that the famous "Robbers Cave" experiment—a 1950s study in which researchers essentially manipulated boys at a summer camp into ...
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I begin with a research story, a true one. In the early 1950s, the social psychologist Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues conducted a now-classic experiment, on intergroup conflict and resolution ...
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The Robbers Cave Experiment was meticulously designed to study the emergence and resolution of intergroup conflict among boys aged 11 to 12. Conducted at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma, the experiment involved 22 boys who were unaware that they were part of a study. The boys were divided into two groups, each unaware of the other's ...
Robbers Cave Experiment
The Robbers Cave experiment, once known for its fascinating insight into group conflict theory, is now more infamous than famous. Regardless of its reputation, it remains one of the most well-known social psychology experiments of the 20th century. It attempted to reveal fascinating insights into group conflict and how easily people turn ...
A New Look at the Classic Robbers Cave Experiment
In the early 1950s, the social psychologist Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues conducted a now-classic experiment, on intergroup conflict and resolution of conflict, with 11- and 12-year-old boys ...
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The results would make history as one of social psychology's classic studies, and one of the most controversial: the Robbers Cave experiment. Conducted at the height of the Cold War, the ...
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Robbers Cave Experiment Definition. The Robbers Cave experiment demonstrated that an attempt to simply bring hostile groups together is not enough to reduce intergroup prejudice. Rather, this experiment confirmed that groups must cooperate and have common goals to truly build peace. Thus, although contact is vital to reducing tensions between ...
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The Robbers Cave Experiment in the mid-1950s by Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues advanced the realistic conflict theory, whose main premise is that conflict is inevitable whenever two (or more ...
Realistic conflict theory
The 1954 Robbers Cave experiment (or Robbers Cave study) by Muzafer Sherif and Carolyn Wood Sherif represents one of the most widely known demonstrations of RCT. [4] The Sherifs' study was conducted over three weeks in a 200-acre summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma, focusing on intergroup behavior. [3] In this study, researchers posed as camp personnel, observing 22 eleven- and ...
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The Robbers Cave experiment run in Oklahoma in 1953 shed some significant light on how identity can be embraced to provide our species with a false sense of purpose, and how it can be leveraged to ...
The Robbers Cave Experiment
The Robbers Cave Experiment, conducted by psychologist Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues in 1954, is a classic study in social psychology that explored intergroup conflict and cooperation. Aim : The Robbers Cave Experiment aimed to investigate the factors that contribute to intergroup conflict and the conditions under which cooperation between ...
The Robbers Cave Experiment: Investigating Intergroup Conflict and
The Robbers Cave Experiment, a landmark study in social psychology conducted by Muzafer Sherif and colleagues in 1954, sought to investigate the underpinnings of intergroup conflict and cooperation. This field experiment involved 22 boys, all 11 to 12 years old, who were carefully selected to ensure homogeneity in terms of socio-economic ...
The Robbers Cave Experiment: Hypothesis & Results, Limitations
The Robbers Cave experiment (1954) was a field experiment, meaning it was conducted outside of the laboratory and investigated participants' behaviour in a naturalistic environment. A repeated measures design was employed to investigate group formation, intergroup conflict and conflict reduction. Researchers carefully selected 22 11- to 12 ...
Robbers Cave Experiment: Social Identity & Intergroup Relations
Robbers Cave. During the 1950s, the landmark Robbers Cave experiment demonstrated that when groups must compete with one another, intergroup conflict, hostility, and even violence may result. At the Oklahoman summer camp, two troops of boys—termed the Rattlers and the Eagles—took part in a week-long tournament.
Forgotten Classic: The Robbers Cave Experiment
Muzafer Sherif's classic work, best known as the "Robbers Cave experi-. ment" has become a forgotten monograph within a forgotten specialty. In 1954 Sherif and his colleagues at the University of Oklahoma selected a group of 20 boys, divided them in two groups (the Eagles and the Rattlers), bussed them to a state park, and watched for 3 weeks ...
In the Robbers Caves: How a famous social science experiment explains
The most famous social science experiment demonstrating realistic conflict theory had a name — The Robbers Cave Experiment — worthy of a Hardy Boys mystery, and containing all of our sad little human reasoning errors in a perfect microcosm that starts with two dozen well-behaved Boy Scouts meeting each other for the first time and devolving ...

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10 Psychological Experiments That Could Never Happen Today

2. Asch Conformity Experiments

3. The Bystander Effect

4. The Milgram Experiment

5. Harlow’s Monkey Experiments

6. Learned Helplessness

7. Robbers Cave Experiment

8. The Monster Study

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What Was the Robbers Cave Experiment in Psychology?

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