Strange Country Ep. 279: Robbers Cave Experiment

Strange Country

The mid-20th century was the heyday of figuring out why humans were the worst through the use of social psychological experiments. Strange Country cohosts Beth and Kelly talk about one such experiment, Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers Cave Experiment where Sherif gathered a group of 12 year old boys to see if he could pit the boys against one another. Sherif’s experiment is included in Psych 101 books about group dynamics, but did this hostility occur organically or was it more manufactured by the adults?

Theme music: Big White Lie by A Cast of Thousands.

Cite your sources:

Higgins, Nick, and Maria Konnikova. “Revisiting Robbers Cave: The easy spontaneity of intergroup conflict.” Scientific American Blog Network, 5 September 2012, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/revisiting-the-robbers-cave-the-easy-spontaneity-of-intergroup-conflict/. Accessed 15 January 2024. Mcleod, Saul. “Robbers Cave Experiment | Realistic Conflict Theory.” Simply Psychology, 27 September 2023, https://www.simplypsychology.org/robbers-cave.html. Accessed 27 February 2024. Perry, Gina. The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif's Robbers Cave Experiment. Scribe Publications, 2019. Perry, Gina. “Robbers Cave Experiment.” Practical Psychology, 26 September 2022, https://practicalpie.com/robbers-cave-experiment/. Accessed 27 February 2024. Shariatmadari, David, and Gina Perry. “A real-life Lord of the Flies: the troubling legacy of the Robbers Cave experiment.” The Guardian, 16 April 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/16/a-real-life-lord-of-the-flies-the-troubling-legacy-of-the-robbers-cave-experiment. Accessed 27 February 2024.