Works
- Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment, 1961
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
Realistic group conflict. Two groups of boys, formed separately and then set to compete for prizes only one group could win, developed hostility and negative stereotypes of each other. Competition over scarce rewards was enough to produce intergroup conflict.
Superordinate goals. Simply bringing the groups into contact did not reduce hostility and sometimes made it worse. What reduced it was a series of superordinate goals, problems that mattered to both groups and that neither could solve alone, such as restoring the camp's water supply. Caveat: Gina Perry's The Lost Boys (2018) documents an aborted 1953 precursor at Middle Grove, in which the boys turned on the researchers instead of each other, and argues that heavy staff intervention shaped the Robbers Cave results.
What it explains
Sherif explains how competition for a scarce prize turns colleagues into rivals, and how a shared external challenge can bring them back together. Both effects can be arranged deliberately by whoever designs the prizes and names the challenge.