Its an unpretty part of being human and many do-gooders have tried to knock our parochialism out of us by attacking the cultural norms that indoctrinate us as bigots. But is it culture that inclines us to be wary of "them" - or does tribalism just come naturally to us?
In 1954, in the days when psychological researchers didn't balk at turning human guinea pigs into abusive torturers, Muzafer Sherif led 22 boys and a band of experimenters to Robbers Cave camp site to see just how easily and quickly we bonded into tribes.
The 22 eleven-year-old boys were plucked from Oklahoma City's middle schools, each extensively researched and selected from among 3,000 kids to make sure they were homogenously "from established Protestant families of middle-class socioeconomic standing, who are normal (no "problem" cases), who have not experienced any unusual degrees of frustration in their homes or other situations, who are not school or social failures (no isolates), and who have a similar educational level."
Separated into two bands of eleven, each group was bussed up to Robbers Cave, installed in cabins and, for 5 days, swam, canoed and camped out while completely ignorant that there was another group of eleven kids on the other side of Robbers Cave.
After giving the bands time to bond and form hierarchies, the experimenters planned 5 days of interactions and competitions to see if they could bring out "in-group" and "out-group" identities and prejudices between the groups.
Their plans, it turned out, were largely superfluous.
Even before the groups were formally told of each others' existence, one group - the "Rattlers" - found some paper cups left in their "hideout," and began resentfully suspecting that there were "outsiders." When they eventually heard the other group from afar playing on the baseball diamond, the Rattlers immediately cried they'd "run them off" and "challenge them." The "Eagles," as the other band called themselves, were slower to build up animosity when they told about the other group, but when they finally heard the Rattlers playing ball one day, at least one Eagle referred to them as "those nigger campers." Charming kids.
The first day of inter-group competition brought many more expletives hurled at the other team. But it wasn't just the good-fun kind of cheering and razzing you sometimes get at team sports. After the first game, many boys complained of having to eat in the same mess hall as the other group. By the end of the first day, when the losing Eagle team ran across the Rattlers' flag, they decided to burn it while singing "Taps." One of the Eagle's leaders said "You can tell those guys I did it if they say anything. I'll fight 'em!"
After the flag burning, all hell broke loose. Or, as the experimenters put it: "This flag-burning episode started a chain of events which made it unnecessary for the experimenters to introduce special situations of mutual frustration for the two groups." With little prompting, the boys set out on a series of cabin raids, thefts and a brawl (the one time the experimenters thought to step in), finally ending - in true camper form - with a food fight at the cafeteria.
Now, it very well could be that the Robbers Cave boys quickly formed battle lines because that's how they were taught by society. In the 50s, boys were taught to fight and girls to make nice. Maybe the boys were just playing out the roles they thought there were supposed to. But the experimenters were not so much interested in the boys actions as in how much they viewed the "other" group members. Bigotry, after all, isn't so much a choice - when we're racist we actually believe the other race is inferior in some way. The Robbers Cave researchers wanted to see how much the boys effectively became bigoted about the other group.
To do so, they asked the boys to rate the characteristics of each group. You can see from the charts below, that two things happened. Each group tended to see the others as having more negative characteristics than positive. Even more radically, the boys saw their own group in a tremendously favorable light. It's not just that the "others" are bad eggs; "we" are exceptionally virtuous.
Table 3
Stereotype Ratings for the Out-Group on Six Characteristics
(Combined) by Members of Rattler and Eagle Groups
End Stage 2
Category | Rattlers' Ratings of Eagles | Eagles' Ratings of Rattlers | ||
N | % | N | % | |
1.* | 14 | 21.2 | 19 | 36.5 |
2. | 21 | 31.8 | 21 | 40.4 |
3. | 8 | 12.1 | 4 | 7.7 |
4. | 13 | 19.9 | 5 | 9.6 |
5.** | 10 | 15.0 | 3 | 5.8 |
* Most unfavorable category.
** Most favorable category.
Table 4
Stereotype Ratings for the In-Group on Six Characteristics
(Combined) by Members of Rattler and Eagle Groups
End Stage 2
Category | Rattlers Ratings of Rattlers | Eagles' Ratings of Eagles | ||
N | % | N | % | |
1.* | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2. | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3.8 |
3. | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1.9 |
4. | 9 | 13.7 | 8 | 14.7 |
5.** | 57 | 86.3 | 43 | 79.6 |
* Most unfavorable category.
** Most favorable category.
Those impressions may be similar to how Americans would rate themselves vs. other nations (although we'd hope not quite as extreme). Again, what's surprising with the Robbers Cave experiment is how quickly the boys judgments of each other were set. In under a week, they were clear that the other group was defective and that their group was upstanding.
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