The Robbers Cave Experiment: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation. [Orig. pub. as Intergroup Conflict and Group Relations]

If you read this book, I also recommend you read "The Lost Boys: inside Muzafer Sherif’s Robbers Cave experiment" by Gina Perry. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BL7DZ3M/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_Lfe9DbZMWSJ37 I found the story behind the story fascinating.

I was introduced to the Robber's Cave Experiment in the late '60's by one of Muzafer Sherif's less distinguished students. He was finishing his doctoral dissertation and teaching an auditorium-sized class in undergraduate social psychology.My initial response to the Experiment was dismissive: it was hard to see why anyone would be particularly interested in a couple of groups of kids playing rough-and-tumble games on a grassy field on the Yale campus. The instructor, however, had the good sense to direct us to Sherif's own written account of his work. It proved to be illuminating.What did we learn with virtual certainty from the Robber's Cave Experiment, findings that have a multitude of applications that go far beyond child's play? First, if members of a group are prompted to compete with each other, the group will become fraught with discord and cease to function effectively as a unit. Second, if members of a group are prompted to compete with an opposing social unit, the group will become internally cooperative, and function quite effectively as a cohesive social entity.These simple principles, moreover, are thoroughly grounded in the methodological strength of a genuine experimental design, and they have a multitude of obvious and unforeseen applications. The Experiment illuminates notions such as soldiers in battle fighting for each other rather than for an abstract patriotic objective. I think it also renders problematic currently popular notions such as merit pay for teachers: reward teachers as a unified group, perhaps competing against measures of past aggregate performance, not as one-on-one or even school-to-school competitors for ostensibly scarce resources.More generally, let's disabuse ourselves of the notion that this is a dog-eat-dog world, and our children need to be taught its cut-throat ways. Yes, it is a dog-eat-dog world, but the formation of cooperative social groups provides a much better way to afford one's self protection. Members of violent gangs in big-city ghettos and hard-time prisons see this immediately.It's entirely possible in a laissez-faire capitalist society such as the U.S. that group cohesiveness, efficacy, and sense of belonging will be turned against the interests of the many. Early twentieth-century capitalists knew this well and kept the working class fractionated by playing one ethnic group off against another. Preventing the distortion of institutions and naturally occurring social formations has always been a problem for working people in capitalist societies.In any case, the Robber's Cave Experiment is not child's play. It's got too many actual and prospective applications to very serious situations involving adults doing the work of adults to be relegated to that diminished status.

Since receiving the book in the mail I have picked it up and put it down several times. Normally when a book is provocative and engaging I'll binge read and finish it in a matter of a day or two. The Robbers Cave Experiment has required more though and analysis than most books. There are so many concepts that don't immediately match my institutions. And the consequences of the study's findings are profound. So I'll continue to find quiet spaces where I can sit with the book and read while scratching down questions on my notebook to ponder further.Are others who are more familiar with the subject aware of more recent studies and analysis on the subject of ingroup and outgroup formations?