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.
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.
Fig 1 - The participants thought they were just attending summer camp, Unsplash.com
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.
Fig 2 - The boys played a competitive game of baseball, Unsplash.com
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, the 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 – intergroup 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 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.
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.
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