In this video I discuss Muzafer Sherif’s well-known field experiment on the reduction of group conflict conducted at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. In this study, two groups of boys, the Eagles and the Rattlers, were put into competition and conflict in order to create group hostility, then researchers attempted to reduce the tension between the groups. The results weakened support for contact theory and suggested that superordinate goals were effective for reducing hostilities and improving group relations.
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Video Transcript
Hi, I’m Michael Corayer and this is Psych Exam Review. In the previous video we look at stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination that can occur between groups and in this video we’re going to consider how we might be able to improve group relations. Now historical examples of group conflict are complicated because they’ve often lasted for years, for decades, centuries, even millennia and this means that even experts aren’t fully aware of all of the factors that have been involved in the creation and maintenance of the conflict. It also means that these long timescales make it difficult for us to assess how successful we’ve been in reducing the conflict. So we might hope for a simplified version of group conflict; a conflict where we know the causes of the initial conflict and where it’s short enough that we might be able to tell if we’ve successfully been able to reduce the conflict.
This brings us to a field experiment conducted by Muzafer Sherif and colleagues in 1954 and this is often referred to as the Robbers Cave study because it was conducted at Oklahoma’s Robbers Cave State Park. This study involved 22 boys who were put into two groups; the Eagles and the Rattlers. This was during a two and a half week summer camp and initially the boys bonded with their groups. So they spent time hiking and swimming with the Eagles or with the Rattlers and this was to encourage group cohesion and a sense of group identity. And then these two groups were put into competition with each other and this was based on the idea of realistic conflict theory.
This is the idea that prejudice and discrimination result from groups competing for scarce resources. So the Eagles and the Rattlers were put into competition with one another; they competed in tug-of-war, in games of baseball and football, and other activities, and the idea was that this would increase the conflict between the two groups and this was successful initially. The Eagles and the Rattlers started calling each other names and then they attempted to steal each other’s flags and burn them. This eventually led to raiding each other’s cabins at the camp, trying to steal things from the other boys, and even a fistfight that broke out between Eagles and Rattlers. So the researchers have successfully created prejudice and discrimination between these two groups. Now the question was, how could they reduce this prejudice? How could they get the groups to get along?
Now one theory at the time was that when groups were in conflict they simply needed to get to know each other better; they needed to spend more time together, have greater contact and that this would naturally reduce the prejudice and discrimination between the groups. The idea was they would build bonds across group lines and they would end stereotypes because they would start to see members of the other group as individuals. But this contact theory wasn’t enough because when the Eagles and Rattlers were put together, they tried quite hard to maintain strict segregation. They would still only socialize amongst the Eagles and amongst the Rattlers. There wasn’t much reaching across of the group lines and when they attempted to have group meals this often ended in food fights, with the Eagles throwing food at the Rattlers and vice versa. So contact didn’t seem to be enough; it wasn’t successful in reducing the prejudice.
So what was successful was the creation of what are called superordinate goals; these are goals where the boys have to work together, they have to cooperate in order to successfully reach the goal. So the boys were given tasks at the camp where they had to do things like repair the water supply for the camp; they had to carry some piping around and had to go fix certain parts of the water supply that were said to be broken. And they had to work together or they had to work together to pull a truck that had been broken down and needed to be moved. And so now the Eagles and the Rattlers had to rely on one another; they had to work together in order to successfully complete the goal and this meant that they had to get along at least during this task.
And what the researchers found was that this actually did work to lessen hostilities between the groups. The boys even started to form new friendships with members of the out-group; the Eagles started becoming friends with boys who were Rattlers and Rattlers became friends with boys who were Eagles. they were successfully able to put aside their differences and work together and by the end of the camp the boys were singing songs, together roasting marshmallows together on the final night, and they shared a bus back to Oklahoma City. On the last day, the Rattlers even used a five dollar prize that they had won to buy malted milks for everyone, even the Eagles.
And so this is sort of like the happy ending of the alien invasion movie, where suddenly all the nations of the world are united behind a superordinate goal of defeating these alien invaders and as a result they’re able to put aside their differences and reduce the hostility between their groups. Ok, that’s the basic idea of the Robbers Cave study by Muzafer Sherif. I hope you found this helpful, if so, please like the video and subscribe to the channel for more. Thanks for watching!
