Social Cognition by Pennington Donald C

Author:Pennington, Donald C.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
Published: 2002-04-19T04:00:00+00:00

Sherif’s ‘Robber’s Cave’ experiment

Realistic group conflict was explored in one of the most famous field experiments ever conducted in social psychology, by Sherif (1966), called the ‘Robber’s Cave’ study. Sherif and his researchers devised a special summer camp for 11–12-year-old boys which took place over a three-week period. During the first week the boys were divided into two groups and assigned living quarters that were a few hundred yards apart. The boys named their own groups—Rattlers and Eagles—and developed strong friendships with other boys within their group. The boys engaged in behaviour which enhanced the identity and value of the group they had been assigned to, for example, playing team games and making flags and t-shirts with symbols representing the group. During this first stage no competitive activities took place between the Rattlers and the Eagles.

Following this, in the second week, Sherif and his colleagues staged a number of activities that brought the two groups into competition. The winning group would receive prizes and a trophy. During the week of competition, prejudice and hostility developed between the two groups, starting with name-calling but soon developing into more hostile acts such as the Eagles’ burning of the Rattlers’ flag. This resulted in counteractions by the Rattlers in which they raided the living quarters of the Eagles, generally wreaked havoc and stole personal possessions. At the end of the second week Sherif (1966) summarised the relationship between the two groups:

If an outsider had entered the situation at this point with no information about preceding events, he could only have concluded on the basis of their behaviour that these boys were wicked, disturbed, and vicious bunches of youngsters.

(p. 85)

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