Robbers Case

Prejudice is a negative, often unwarranted attitude directed towards a different social group, or the members of said group. It’s solely based on generalisation formed by assumptions, untruth or hypotheses rather than facts. A prejudiced person may also assume that someone has characteristics and traits linked to a particular group, simply because they’re a member.

In 1961, Sherif conducted the famous Robber’s Cave Experiment to explore the nature of inner-group conflict. At a summer camp, twenty-two white middle-class protestant boys who hadn’t met previously were split randomly into groups of eleven. Over a week, group members were told to bond during team activities. They were then informed of an upcoming sports tournament in which the two teams would compete against each other. Rapidly, an ‘us and them’ feeling developed.

Behaviour deteriorated, fights broke out and the losing group stole prizes from the winners.

When interviewed, the boys showed a preference for members of their own team and called boys from the ‘out-group’ names, even though they had all been from the same social group originally.

This showed that prejudice can develop quickly and the consequences are anti-social.

There were many extensions of this experiment. Sherif tried introducing equal-status contact situations, including asking the boys to eat and see movies together, but it didn’t reduce the friction. Co-operative projects from combining teams to pull on a rope together when a truck was stuck to more mundane tasks such as pitching tents contributed to breaking down group divisions, and by the end of the experiment, 65% of friendship choices were made from the opposite group.

The results strengthen Allport’s 1954 theory that pursuit of common goals helps break down prejudice.

The boys shared