Transcript Sherif et al. (1961) The Robbers’ Cave Study

Sherif et al. (1961)
The Robbers’ Cave Study
By Maddy and Michelle
The Hypotheses Tested Were…
1. When individuals having no established
relationships are brought together to interact in
group activities with common goals, they produce
a group structure with hierarchical statuses and
roles within it.
2. If two in-groups thus formed are brought into
functional relationship under conditions of
competition and group frustration, attitudes and
appropriate hostile actions in relation to the outgroup and its members will arise and will be
standardized and shared in varying degrees by
group members.
What Happened…
• The field experiment involved two groups of
twelve-year-old boys at Robber’s Cave State Park,
Oklahoma, America
• The 22 boys in the study were all from white
middle-class backgrounds and all shared a
Protestant, two-parent background
• None of the boys knew each other
• The boys were randomly assigned to one of two
groups, however did not know about the other
group.
What Happened…
• The boys developed an attachment to their
groups throughout the first week of the camp,
quickly establishing their own cultures and
group norms, by doing various activities
together like hiking, swimming, etc.
• The boys chose names for their groups, The
Eagles and The Rattlers, and stencilled them
onto shirts and flags
The Competition Stage…
• A series of competitive activities (e.g. baseball,
tug-of-war etc.) were arranged with a trophy as a
reward
• This phase was intended to bring the two groups
into competition with each other in conditions
that would create frustration between them
• Rattlers made threatening remarks about what
they would do if anybody from The Eagles
bothered the flag they had put on the pitch
marking it as theirs
The Competition Stage…
• Situations were also devised whereby one group
gained at the expense of the other e.g. eating the
other groups picnic
• Started as verbal name calling etc.
• The groups became so aggressive with each
other, (e.g. burning the others flags and stealing)
that the researchers had to physically separate
them
• During the subsequent two-day cooling off
period, the boys listed features of the two groups
– good for themselves, bad for the others
Evaluation…
• Were the aggressive displays a result of
social factors or relative deprivation?
• Caused by an innate hostility towards
other groups for survival reasons?
• Nature-nurture
• All boys + from certain backgrounds –
cannot be generalised