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Studies and Experiments

Robbers Cave Experiment

Social Psychology

A 1954 field experiment by Muzafer and Carolyn Wood Sherif in which 22 eleven- and twelve-year-old boys at a summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma, were divided into two groups; introducing competition for prizes produced hostility between the groups, which was reduced only by giving the groups shared, superordinate goals requiring cooperation. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Key Finding
Hostile and aggressive attitudes toward an outgroup arose when two groups competed for resources only one group could win, and could be reduced only by introducing superordinate goals that required cooperation between the groups. 2
Key Finding
Intergroup hostility, once created by competition over scarce prizes, eased only once the two groups were given superordinate goals: shared aims that required cooperative action across both groups and that could not be reached by either group competing alone. 2
Study Year
1954 2
Method
Study Design
Controlled Experiment (Lab or Field) 1
Participants
Human Children 2
Connections

Associated With

Group Dynamics, Branches of Psychology
Sherif's Autokinetic Effect Experiments, Studies and Experiments

Same researcher; the autokinetic-effect studies established Sherif's interest in group-norm formation that Robbers Cave later extended to intergroup conflict.

Conducted By

Muzafer Sherif, Psychologists
Source Wikipedia: Robbers Cave Experiment

In Branch

Social Psychology, Branches of Psychology

Open Questions

Were the Robbers Cave experimenters themselves an uncontrolled third group?, Open Questions
Source Wikipedia: Robbers Cave Experiment
Sources
1. Robbers Cave experiment (Wikipedia)
View the Source
2. Wikipedia: Robbers Cave Experiment
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Robbers Cave study section
    friction between groups can be reduced and positive intergroup relations can be maintained, only in the presence of superordinate goals
  • Integration Stage and Concept section
    friction between groups can be reduced...only in the presence of superordinate goals that promote united, cooperative action
  • Wikipedia summary: Robbers Cave Experiment
    A 1954 field experiment by Muzafer and Carolyn Wood Sherif in which 22 eleven- and twelve-year-old boys at a summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma, were divided into two groups; introducing competition for prizes produced hostility between the groups, which was reduced only by giving the groups shared, superordinate goals requiring cooperation.
  • Open Questions: Were the Robbers Cave experimenters themselves an uncontrolled third group?
View the Source
Open Questions (1 open question)
Were the Robbers Cave experimenters themselves an uncontrolled third group?

Some boys in the wider study series ganged up on the experimenters themselves, showing an awareness of being manipulated, and the social psychologist Michael Billig has argued the experimenters constituted a third group, and arguably the most powerful one, deliberately engineering the friction and later the reconciliation rather than passively observing it. If so, how much of the realistic-conflict-theory result reflects the boys' own group dynamics versus the experimenters' own stage-managing is unresolved by the study's own design.

What would resolve this A close reading of the original unpublished field notes and staff journals against a blind coding of which specific incidents were spontaneous versus staff-engineered, which no published replication of Robbers Cave-style summer-camp design has attempted at this scale.
Social psychology and research ethicsWikipedia: Robbers Cave Experiment
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Key Finding

Sherif's realistic conflict theory holds that intergroup hostility requires genuine competition over scarce resources, as the Robbers Cave boys showed once games with prizes were introduced. Henri Tajfel's later minimal group paradigm experiments challenged this premise directly: he found that dividing people into groups on a trivial, arbitrary basis alone, with no history, no contact, no real competition and nothing at stake, was already sufficient to produce in-group favoritism. If mere categorization produces the bias Sherif attributed to resource competition, then real conflict of interest is not a necessary condition for intergroup discrimination, only a sufficient one.

A dissenting reading, from Henri TajfelWikipedia: Social Identity Theory, Wikimedia Foundation
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