The Robbers Cave Experiment: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation. [Orig. Pub. as Intergroup Conflict and Group Relations]

By Muzafer Sherif

Book Overview

The Robbers Cave Experiment is a classic of behavioral science. Originally issued in 1954 and updated in 1961 and 1987, this pioneering study of "small group" conflict and cooperation has long been out-of-print. It is now available, in cloth and paper, with a new introduction by Donald Campbell, and a new postscript by O.J. Harvey. In this famous experiment, one of the earliest in inter-group relationships, two dozen twelve-year-old boys in summer camp were formed into two groups, the Rattlers and the Eagles, and induced first to become militantly ethnocentric, then intensely cooperative. Friction and stereotyping were stimulated by a tug-of-war, by frustrations perceived to be caused by the "out" group, and by separation from the others. Harmony was stimulated by close contact between previously hostile groups and by the introduction of goals that neither group could meet alone. The experiment demonstrated that conflict and enmity between groups can be transformed into cooperation and vice versa and that circumstances, goals, and external manipulation can alter behavior. Some have seen the findings of the experiment as having implications for reduction of hostility among racial and ethnic groups and among nations, while recognizing the difficulty of control of larger groups. "This is the best and most complete of Sherif's great experimental studies in intergroup conflict. None of the experimental research in this area that has followed it has approached it in magnitude, time of involvement of the participants, or general completeness in invoking identities in intergroup conflict." -Donald Campbell " The Robbers Cave Experiment] has, in my opinion, achieved the status of a classical investigation in experimental social psychology. . . . It] represents a valuable contribution to our knowledge in the very complicated field of intergroup relations." -Otto Klineberg "Magnificently conceived and brilliantly carried forward from beginning to end. . . . I do not believe that anyone can escape from the impact of the demonstration." -Gardner Murphy "Unusual for its effective combination of experimental method in a real life situation with the successful test of important hypotheses." -Ralph H. Turner

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0819561940
• ISBN13: 9780819561947
• Release Date: February 1988
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up

Customer Reviews

A classic experiment in child's play

I was introduced to the Robber's Cave Experiment in the late '60's by one of Muzafer Sherif's less distinguished students. He was finishing his doctoral dissertation and teaching an auditorium-sized class in undergraduate social psychology. My initial response to the Experiment was dismissive: it was hard to see why anyone would be particularly interested in a couple of groups of kids playing rough-and-tumble games on a grassy field on the Yale campus. The instructor, however, had the good sense to direct us to Sherif's own written account of his work. It proved to be illuminating. What did we learn with virtual certainty from the Robber's Cave Experiment, findings that have a multitude of applications that go far beyond child's play? First, if members of a group are prompted to compete with each other, the group will become fraught with discord and cease to function effectively as a unit. Second, if members of a group are prompted to compete with an opposing social unit, the group will become internally cooperative, and function quite effectively as a cohesive social entity. These simple principles, moreover, are thoroughly grounded in the methodological strength of a genuine experimental design, and they have a multitude of obvious and unforeseen applications. The Experiment illuminates notions such as soldiers in battle fighting for each other rather than for an abstract patriotic objective. I think it also renders problematic currently popular notions such as merit pay for teachers: reward teachers as a unified group, perhaps competing against measures of past aggregate performance, not as one-on-one or even school-to-school competitors for ostensibly scarce resources. More generally, let's disabuse ourselves of the notion that this is a dog-eat-dog world, and our children need to be taught its cut-throat ways. Yes, it is a dog-eat-dog world, but the formation of cooperative social groups provides a much better way to afford one's self protection. Members of violent gangs in big-city ghettos and hard-time prisons see this immediately. It's entirely possible in a laissez-faire capitalist society such as the U.S. that group cohesiveness, efficacy, and sense of belonging will be turned against the interests of the many. Early twentieth-century capitalists knew this well and kept the working class fractionated by playing one ethnic group off against another. Preventing the distortion of institutions and naturally occurring social formations has always been a problem for working people in capitalist societies. In any case, the Robber's Cave Experiment is not child's play. It's got too many actual and prospective applications to very serious situations involving adults doing the work of adults to be relegated to that diminished status.