The Robbers Cave experiment
In 1932 after completing a Masters degree at Harvard University, Turkish social scientist, Muzafer Sherif, went to Berlin to attend lectures delivered by prominent psychologist Wolfgang Kohler. While there he witnessed the rise of the Nazi Party and got his first taste of fascism up close. This was highlighted further when he returned to his native Turkey in the late 1930s and was subsequently detained for four weeks due to his public criticism of fascism.
These experiences, like many social scientists of the era, sparked a desire in Muzafer Sherif to understand the nature of conflict, particularly conflict between groups.
One of Sherif’s more famous experiments to investigate the nature of conflict was the Robbers’ Cave experiment conducted in 1954. Sherif took two groups of 12 year old boys to a camp in Oklahoma, United States. Over a three week period the groups were put through three stages of the experiment (Sherif et. al., 1961).
Stage one encouraged the groups to bond with their own group, with no interaction with the other group. During this stage the two groups came up with names for themselves, one group settled on the name the Eagles, the other group called themselves the Rattlers.
The second stage of the experiment had the groups compete against each other in a series of challenges. These challenges included games such as baseball and a tug-o-war and then more subjective competitions such as the tidiest cabin award. This second stage of introducing competition aimed to create friction between the two groups, which it succeeded in doing.
During this stage the groups started singing derogatory songs at each other and resorted to vicious name calling, the Rattlers calling the Eagles 'pigeons' as an example. The name calling wasn’t the only thing the Eagles and Rattlers resorted to. They burned the opposition team's flag and conducted 'raids' on each other's cabins, messing up their bedding and stealing clothes and comic books. One meal concluded with the hurling of leftovers at each other, or a ‘garbage fight’ as the boys called it.
These extreme views of each other were there despite the fact all the subjects were as homogeneous as you can get. They were all white, protestant, middle class males from two parent families. They couldn’t have been any more alike, but one group was the Eagles and the other the Rattlers, so in their minds they were very different.
The final stage had the groups confront a series of challenges which could not be completed without the groups pooling their resources and efforts. The aim of this stage was to reduce the friction between the Eagles and the Rattlers. We’ll cover how this went in a later episode.
Group bias and perception of performance
During stage two of the experiment, the friction phase, the researchers set up a competition where the winning team would win $5 (that was a lot in 1954). The experiment went thus:
Each team was allocated a grassed area with hundreds of beans thrown out across the grass.
Each boy had one minute to collect as many beans as possible and place them in a sack.
The researchers collected the sacks of beans and then using an old fashioned overhead style projector displayed each boy's collection on a screen.
As each boy’s collection of beans was displayed, the boy had to stand up so everyone knew who had collected them and which team they were from.
Each boy then had to estimate how many beans each other boy had collected.
The Eagles, on average, estimated they collected seven more beans than the Rattlers and the Rattlers, on average, estimated they collected four more beans than the Eagles. Which doesn’t add up, they couldn’t both have collected the most, one of them had to be wrong. It turns out they were both wrong. The researchers presented the same number of beans every time, 35 to be exact, but in different configurations so they didn’t look the same. Each group held such a negative view of their competitors that they judged them to have performed worse than they did and inflated their own performance.
Was it realistic that friction formed between the Eagles and Rattlers so quickly and do we really judge other groups harshly on their performance? When it comes to creating a feeling of ‘us and them’ between two groups it’s quite easy. A study by Pascal Molenberghs, Veronika Halasz and colleagues at the University of Queensland quickly established an us and them mentality between two groups which also caused a misjudgement in performance.
In the study, the two groups were asked to judge the speed of a simple hand movement of their own group compared to the opposing group. The subjects were randomly assigned to a group, either red group or blue group. The researchers manipulated the video so the hand movements shown were identical in speed. Each group judged the hand actions of the other group as slower than their own group despite the movements being identical (Molenberghs et. al., 2013). Just being allocated to a group called either red or blue was all that was needed for participants to judge the other group to be less competent than their own.
Two teams coming together under a restructure need to be managed well to ensure intergroup rivalry and conflict doesn't develop. Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Biology, Neurobiology and Neurosurgery at Stanford University, describes our group attachment as “our propensity for generating Us/Thems from arbitrary differences. What we then do is link arbitrary markers to meaningful differences in values and beliefs'' (Sapolsky, 2017). In other words we take an insignificant difference like a department name, location or perhaps a flag and turn it into something significant.
There are clues as to why this happens by looking at the differences in brain activity when we assess the performance of an ingroup versus an outgroup. The logically named inferior parietal lobule, an area associated with facial recognition of in-group members and the perception of actions, has been shown to be more active when judging in-group members completing a task. The researchers concluded that “this bias develops rapidly and involuntarily as a consequence of group affiliation” (Molenberghs et. al. 2013). In other words there’s a network in our brain that gets active and causes us to unconsciously judge our team more favourably.
Just like the Eagles and the Rattlers, the reality was both groups were presented as performing identically but each group believed they performed better than the other. Our judgement of competence is affected when we compete with other groups. Does the same thing happen in organisations? When one group is called finance and another communications do we downgrade the other department’s competence and performance? Organisations have to be vigilant when work groups are competing for resources, status, rewards, recognition or projects. Staff claiming that a particular department “don’t know what they’re doing” or “they’re incompetent” may be a symptom of bias as a result of group rivalry.
Competition between groups
Competition, particularly the type that creates a win-lose situation, is a sure fire way to create negative feelings between groups. Even the perception of competing for resources causes negative emotions towards the other group. (Fiske et al. 2002). The competition doesn’t have to be really happening, one of the groups just has to think they are competing with another.
Whenever we see a group that has goals that conflict against ours, we associate negative attributes to the other group. As well as questioning their competence we see them as lacking warmth, sincerity and tolerance (ironically) (Fiske, Cuddy et al, 2002). The perceived lack of sincerity can be demonstrated by comments like “They say they are here to support us but they don’t really mean it”. We forever question the intentions of other groups and the individuals within, when they become a ‘them’.
One advantage of a competitive situation is that when a group is under threat and competing for resources they become more cohesive (De Dreu, 2022) and individuals will contribute more to the group. Think of communities rallying together under adversity such as a fire or flood or work teams that become closer under an organisational restructure or merger. This natural desire to band together is an ancient survival mechanism that has contributed to the survival and flourishing of our species.
But what about healthy competition, surely there’s a place for that? Competition is almost impossible to eliminate entirely but by its definition, someone has to receive less than others in a competitive work environment. Where it’s confusing is that we see improvements in performance under some competitive conditions. A recent paper in the European Journal of Management (Dos Santos et. al., 2023) reviews some of the research and points out that
“although performance can be an immediate gain in competitive environments, in the long run, losses are likely to arise as far as the social dynamics and individual psychological contract are concerned”.
Summary
Group rivalry and hence bias can develop very quickly, even when groups haven’t met each other.
This intergroup bias can lead to us inflating our own performance and downgrading that of the other group.
Groups that are competing against one another, or perceive they are competing, develop unfounded negative views of the other groups.
If you think your workplace might be overly competitive here are some of the negative signs of a competitive environment (Dos Santos et. al, 2023):
Staff unwilling to provide advice
Poor information exchange between groups
Increased negative behaviours
A feeling of ostracism for some staff
Constant arguments over how things should be done.
What can be done to reduce the negative effects of competition in the workplace? Here are some suggestions:
Remember some people are more competitive by nature and can thrive under competitive environments (Wang et. al. 2018) but will still feel the stress at some point.
Craft jobs to suit the competitive nature of certain teams or individuals and enable others to work free of the constraints and stresses of competition.
Make sure compensation and rewards systems are considered fair. Most employees accept that those who are better at their job get paid more. Find ways that it isn’t at the expense of information sharing, coaching and training of other staff.
Ensure staff have a vested interest in the success of others (Grant and Shandell, 2022).
Have strategies and processes to manage conflict. People having different ideas on how things should work can lead to improved organisational performance but these disagreements can escalate and lead to ongoing interpersonal conflicts
Clarify work responsibilities, preferably collaboratively, this avoids frustrating double ups (and competition) of work and relieves stress by giving staff certainty about expectations.
When the boss’s weekly email goes out make sure the same group isn’t always getting the accolades
What about the Eagles and the Rattlers? How did they solve their differences and overcome the competitive attitude? The researchers tried bringing the groups physically together but that didn’t work. This is an interesting observation, given a common approach to resolving conflict between groups is to “bring people together”. It wasn’t until Sherif and his team set up some crisis situations that the two groups started to become one which we’ll outline in a later episode.
Coming up in future episodes:
What brings groups together and collaborating? When bringing everyone together physically doesn’t work, what do you do?
How do groups influence individual behaviour and hence workplace culture? They’ve done the training, you’ve given the feedback but nothing has changed. What is going on?
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Note
The Robbers Cave experiment is not a rigorous lab based experiment and there are claims that the researchers unduly interfered with the interactions between the groups (Perry, 2019). Sherif was a knowledgeable researcher on the topic of conflict and prejudice by the time he started the Robbers Cave experiment, which may be why it provides a good illustration of how groups function in the workplace and broader society.
References
De Dreu CKW, Gross J, Reddmann L. 2022 Environmental stress increases out-group aggression and intergroup conflict in humans. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 377: 20210147.
dos Santos, M.d.C.C., Coelho, F. & Gomes, J.F.S. (2023) Competitive psychological climate, conflict and psychological contract breach. European Management Review, 20(3), 561–575. https://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12556
Fiske, S. T., & Ruscher, J. B. (1993). Negative interdependence and prejudice: Whence the affect? In D. M. Mackie & D. L. Hamilton (Eds.), Affect, cognition, and stereotyping:
Interactive processes in group perception (pp. 239–268). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P., & Xu, J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype content: Competence and warmth respectively follow from perceived status and competition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(6), 878–902. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.6.878
Grant, A. M., & Shandell, M. S. (2022). Social motivation at work: The organizational psychology of effort for, against, and with others. Annual Review of Psychology, 73, 301–326. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-060321-033406
Molenberghs P, Halász V, Mattingley JB, Vanman EJ, Cunnington R. Seeing is believing: neural mechanisms of action-perception are biased by team membership. Hum Brain Mapp. 2013 Sep;34(9):2055-68. doi: 10.1002/hbm.22044. Epub 2012 Jan 30. PMID: 22290781; PMCID: PMC6870530.
Perry, Gina. (2018). The lost boys : inside Muzafer Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment / Gina Perry. Brunswick, Victoria : Scribe Publications.
Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: the biology of humans at our best and worst. New York, New York, Penguin Press.
Sherif, M.; Harvey, O.; White, J. B.; Hood, W. R. & Sherif, C. W. (1961), Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation. The Robbers Cave Experiment [1954] , University of Oklahoma Book Exchange , Norman
Wang H, Wang L, Liu C. Employee Competitive Attitude and Competitive Behavior Promote Job-Crafting and Performance: A Two-Component Dynamic Model. Front Psychol. 2018 Nov 21;9:2223. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02223. PMID: 30524335; PMCID: PMC6258773.