Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment

Sherif, M., Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, C. W. (1961). Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment: The Robbers Cave Experiment.

Type

Book

Intellectual base

Review or monograph

Year

1961

Link

https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Sherif/

Cited from

psychology, sociology_anthropology

Cited by

4 citations across 4 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Ethnocentrism
  • Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment

    This sourceLandmark field experiment: realistic conflict (competitive tournament) reliably produced ethnocentrism and in-group cooperation, while superordinate goals reduced intergroup hostility (favorable out-group ratings rose from ~15% to ~86%).

• In-Group / Out-Group
  • Sherif's (1961) Robbers Cave field study showed that even arbitrarily assigned groups of boys, given a name and a few days, generated in-group cohesion and out-group hostility that escalated without any imported prior animosity.
• Social Identity Theory
  • A concrete case: when two engineering teams' responsibilities overlap (threat to distinctiveness: "are we still unique? necessary?"), both teams tend not to cooperate to resolve the overlap but to tighten their boundaries, emphasize their irreplaceable expertise, and subtly deprecate the other team's competence — a structural echo of Sherif's (1961) Robbers Cave findings, in which superimposed competition between equivalently-positioned groups produced rapid boundary-hardening and cross-group derogation.

Mechanisms

• Common-Goal Project
  • Its strength is that it grounds the bridge in undeniable shared achievement: a superordinate goal that demands cooperation is one of the most reliable ways to convert rival groups into collaborators, because the work itself makes the other side necessary rather than optional.

    This sourceCreates functional interdependence around common goals that neither group can attain alone.

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