This is a Classic Study so everyone learns it and the Examiner will expect you to know it in detail. While the Exam could ask general questions about the procedure or evaluation, it could also ask specific questions, like, How did Sherif select the boys? or, What examples are there of intergroup conflict in the study? or, What made this study high (or low!) in ecological validity? You could also be asked to COMPARE this with another study from a different Approach (for example, Bandura's study of imitated aggression).

SHERIF ET AL. (1954)
THE CLASSIC ROBBERS CAVE STUDY INTO GROUPS

This study was carried out by Muzafer Sherif in the 1950s. It is an intergroup study, looking at what causes groups to change their behaviours when they come into contact with each other. The study explores Sherif’s theory of Realistic Conflict, looking at what happens when groups are forced to compete or cooperate. Crucial to this theory is the idea that we divide people we meet into “ingroup” members with whom we share goals and values and “outgroup” members with whom we see ourselves in competition.

This study is significant for students in other ways:
  • It shows how scientific research proceeds, because Sherif keeps changing the situation the boys are in and then studies how their behaviour alters in response to the change
  • It illustrates features of the Social Approach, since it explores how situations dictate people’s behaviour – it illustrates the old proverb “tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are”
  • It illustrates the power of the experimental method, manipulating an IV and drawing conclusions about cause and effect from differences in the DV
  • It shows the importance of the field experiment, since it tests a group of boys in a realistic environment (a summer camp)

ROBBERS CAVE SUMMER CAMP

American summer holidays are very long and it is common for parents to send their children away to summer camp for several weeks. One of these camps was run by the Boy Scouts at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma.

Sherif took the opportunity to study a group of 22 11-year-old boys who spent 3 weeks at the camp in the summer of 1954. The boys stayed in log cabins alongside Moccasin Creek, where they could swim, and among woods they could explore. The boys gave themselves team names: the Rattlers and the Eagles.
Sherif conducted the study in three phases and each phase could be considered a condition of the IV, making the study a Repeated Measures Design because all the boys took part in every condition (they were stuck in the camp and couldn’t go home).
  • Sherif asked parents not to visit their sons, for the reason that it might “make them homesick”. Really, he didn’t want any extraneous variables interfering. The boys had no idea they were being studied.
  • Sherif chose the boys carefully. He picked boys who were all from white, Protestant families in Oklahoma because he didn’t want any of them to be “outsiders”. He screened out anyone with trouble at home. He picked boys who had been rated (by their teachers) as high in IQ. He split them into groups that were similar in sporting ability.

SHERIF'S STUDY
APRC

Aim

To find out what factors make two groups develop hostile relationships and then to see how this hostility can be reduced. Specifically, to see if two groups of boys can be manipulated into conflict through competition and then conflict resolution by working together.

IV

The IV is the stage of the experiment: (1) ingroup formation, (2) friction phase and (3) integration phase

This is a Repeated Measures design.

DV

Intergroup behaviour was measured by observing the boys behaviour and friendship patterns and tape recording their conversations and recording the phrases they used; also the boys filled out questionnaires on their attitudes to their own group and the other group.

Sample

24 participants (11-year-old boys) who were selected by opportunity sampling. They were split into two evenly-matched groups of boys . The boys called themselves the “Rattlers” and the “Eagles”.

Two boys later left (from the Eagles) due to homesickness, reducing the sample to 22 by the end of Phase 1.

Procedure

The boys arrived on separate buses and settled into their cabins on two sites. They were unaware of the other group, thinking they were alone at the park. Each group junior camp counselors (college students earning money during the summer) who lived with the boys and supervised their activities and senior camp counselors who were participant observers who stayed with the boys for 12 hours a day. Sherif was very clear that he did not want his observers to influence the boys in any way:
Nobody is to be a leader to the boys ... or interact with subjects in any way that they might contaminate the group dynamics that they are there to observe - Muzafer Sherif
Ingroup Formation lasted a week. Each group had tasks to accomplish (eg a treasure hunt with a $10 prize). During this time the boys gave their groups names and discovered the existence of the other group; they immediately requested a baseball game against the other group.

The friction phase involved a tournament between the two groups. This involved sports like baseball, tug-of-war and scavenger hunt but also experimental tests, like a bean-counting competition. A trophy was promised for the winners along with prizes like knives and medals.

In the integration phase, Sherif tried to bring the two groups together. He tried “mere contact” by allowing the groups to have dinners and watch films together in the recreation hall. When this failed, he took a different approach, blocking the water pipe to the camp which forced the boys to work together to find the broken portion of pipe. Other tasks involved choosing films to watch together, cooperating to pull a (supposedly) broken-down truck and pitching tents with missing parts.

Results

Sherif found that the boys required little encouragement to be competitive. As soon as they found out about another group in the park, they resorted to “us-and-them” language and wanted a baseball match – so the boys themselves initiated the start of the friction phase.
In the friction phase, the two groups met for baseball and name-calling started immediately.
  • The Eagles burned the Rattlers’ flag and the Rattlers retaliated by doing the same.
  • After their second flag was destroyed, the Rattlers did a night raid on the Eagle’s cabins, stealing comics and overturning beds
  •  The Eagles launched their own raid, but brought bats with them for maximum destruction
  • When the Eagles won the tournament, the Rattlers stole their prizes (medals and knives)
 
The two sides met for a fight, but the camp counsellors intervened and this phase ended.
In the integration phase, the shared films and meals deteriorated into name-called and food-fights. The shared task fixing the water pipe produced cooperation, but another food fight followed. However, each shared task led to reduced hostility. By the end, the Rattlers shared $5 they had won to buy soft drinks for everyone.

Conclusions

Sherif regards the study as proving his hypotheses about intergroup behaviour – especially Realistic Conflict Theory.
  • The groups formed quickly, with hierarchies (“pecking orders) and leaders, without any encouragement from the adults.
  • When the groups meet in competitive situations, ingroup solidarity increases as does outgroup hostility.
  • “Mere presence” by itself doesn’t reduce outgroup hostility.
  • Friction is reduced when the two groups are forced to cooperate, negotiate and share. Sherif calls this working towards “superordinate goals”

An important conclusion from the study is that, although intergroup conflict is inevitable when competition is present, it can be reduced.

HOW MANY STUDIES?

The classic Robbers Cave study was actually the third replication of the test. Sherif had carried out two earlier studies, in 1949 and 1953.
  • In the first (1949) study, Sherif tried to restore harmony by giving the boys an “common enemy” to unite against. They did this by beating a softball team from outside the camp. However, Sherif noticed there were still hostilities between the Red Devils and the Bull Dogs (the names the boys in the first study chose).
  • The second (1953) study was called off, “owing to various difficulties and unfavorable conditions, including errors of judgment in the direction of the experiment,” according to Sherif.
  • Frances Cherry (1995) discovered that this was because the boys mutinied against the adults – it seems because they realised they were being manipulated. The boys discovered a notebook left by one of the observers that contained details about their behaviour.

Michael Billig (1976) argued that Sherif’s studies really looked at three groups, not two, because the adult researchers were the third group that had most power and manipulated the other two. Billig didn’t know about the mutiny in the 1953 experiment, but his theory is backed up by it.

If Sherif got different results each time he did the study, that counts against the reliability of his research. If he misinterpreted what he was seeing (as Billig contends) then that counts against the validity of his conclusions.