The Art of Manliness - #568： The Untold Story Behind the Famous Robbers Cave Experiment

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast in the summer

00:00:11.840 of 1954 two groups of eight to 11 year old boys were taken to a summer camp in Oklahoma

00:00:16.640 and pitted against each other in competitions for prizes what started out as typical games

00:00:20.680 of baseball and tug of war turned into violent night raids and fistfights proving that humans

00:00:24.920 and groups form tribal identities that create conflict this is the basic outline of a research

00:00:28.980 study many are still familiar with today the robber's cave experiment it's only part of the

00:00:33.040 story my guest dug in the archival notes of this famous and controversial social experiment to find

00:00:37.260 unknown and unreported details behind what really happened and why her name is gina perry and her

00:00:41.540 book is the lost boys inside musifer sharif's robber's cave experiment we begin our conversation

00:00:46.320 by discussing what the robber's cave experiment purported to show and the influence the experiment

00:00:50.460 has had on social psychology since we then discuss the similarities between head researcher musifer

00:00:54.960 sharif's ideas about the behavior of boys and groups and those of william golding author of

00:00:59.320 lord of the flies and how both men's ideas were influenced by their personal experiences in war

00:01:03.700 we also dig into the general connection between children's summer camps and psychological studies

00:01:07.440 in the 19th century then turning to the robber's cave experiment itself gina shares how the experiment

00:01:11.880 wasn't sharif's first attempt at this kind of field study and how it had been preceded by another

00:01:15.840 experiment in which the boys turned on the researchers she described how sharif and his assistants

00:01:20.500 attempted to get different results at robber's cave by goading the boys into greater conflict

00:01:24.960 got the boys to reconcile after whipping them up into a competitive frenzy at the end of our

00:01:29.000 conversation gina talks about finding the boys who were in the experiment and what these now grown

00:01:33.120 men thought of the experience and we discussed whether or not there's anything to be learned from

00:01:36.480 robber's cave on the nature of group conflict after the show's over check out our show notes at

00:01:40.420 all right gina perry welcome to the show thank you for having me so you wrote a history of the

00:02:00.180 robber's cave experiment an influential landmark social psychology experiment it's called the lost

00:02:06.100 boys inside muzafair sharif's robber's cave experiment um for those who aren't familiar with

00:02:11.840 the robber's cave experiment can you give us sort of a thumbnail sketch of what it was and what it

00:02:16.960 purported to show sure the the exploration of the experiment is about a three-week experiment at

00:02:25.280 robber's cave state park in oklahoma obviously and it what sharif was trying to show was that if you bring

00:02:32.960 two groups together and put them together and in a competitive situation that there will inevitably

00:02:41.480 be conflict between them there'll be belittling of one group by the other there'll be negative

00:02:46.700 stereotyping and this will lead inevitably in his view to some kind of violent altercation

00:02:55.180 and it particularly what he was trying to show was that you can make this competition happen by putting

00:03:02.060 groups in a situation where they're competing for limited resources and so what he did was he set

00:03:09.440 these two groups up the conflict unfolded during the time of the study and then at the end of the camp

00:03:15.740 he brought the groups together and kind of forced them to cooperate and by forcing them to cooperate

00:03:22.660 he brought about harmony so what he was trying to show really was that if you can get people

00:03:29.280 thinking about problems that are bigger than themselves where they're forced to work with

00:03:35.140 people they would normally regard negatively or even as their enemies you can establish peace and

00:03:41.740 harmony so it was really an experiment that was of its time it was very much taking place in the

00:03:48.320 context of the cold war and so that that's the kind of thing that you would read about in textbooks

00:03:54.260 and what's the influence that the experiment had on social psychology is something that still gets

00:03:59.280 cited today well yes and no i mean it's a strange thing but it depends where you studied psychology and

00:04:07.520 what particular texts and experiments your teachers favoured and this wasn't something that occurred to me

00:04:14.080 until i was well into writing this book that often you're taught curriculum at a university for example

00:04:22.320 psychology curriculum that's been developed and has the influence of your teachers on it and so i studied

00:04:30.640 psychology here in melbourne australia and robert's cave was never included in in my studies my daughter

00:04:38.520 however it was in all her social psychology textbooks so it's it's not like something like milgram's

00:04:46.760 obedience experiment which is in every textbook it's very much about whether or not the textbooks you

00:04:53.460 use include that particular study but it is famous within the field so the robber's cave experiment you

00:05:01.180 talk about in the book has its has some predecessors there is other experiment not even experiments but

00:05:05.880 experiences where people saw that boys in groups acted in a certain way particularly when there was

00:05:13.080 conflict there and you talk about william golding who was the author of lord of the flies and he

00:05:20.020 actually had an experience with a group of boys that inspired the the book tell us about that and and why

00:05:25.800 did writers like golding and social psychologists like sharif think that boys you know young children

00:05:31.660 could tell us about human nature through on a broad general level well golding was a school teacher

00:05:37.940 in england and he was a writer at that time so at the same time that he was teaching he was also

00:05:44.520 writing fiction and so he took two groups of he took a large group of his students to this remote part of

00:05:55.460 england not far from the school where he taught on salisbury plain there's this place called figsbury

00:06:02.460 ring which is like a flat topped hill in the middle of salisbury plain and he took the boys up there and

00:06:08.960 he divided them into two groups and he told them to one group to defend the remains of an old fort up

00:06:17.060 there and the other group to attack and he i think the purpose of this was for him to observe and see

00:06:25.540 what happened so that he could write about this in his own fiction but he said that once he gave the

00:06:33.120 instruction he couldn't believe the amount of violence that erupted between the boys and how

00:06:38.160 seriously they took this kind of make-believe exercise and for golding i think that really illustrated his

00:06:48.340 view that human nature is ultimately flawed and in in lord of the flies you know he uses a quote not in

00:06:56.640 lord of the flies but it was it was a quote from his fiction that i think really summarized his worldview

00:07:02.460 which is that man produces evil like a bee produces honey so on that mound when the two groups of boys were

00:07:10.620 fighting i think golding really saw a demonstration of that belief so golding and sharif were investigating

00:07:20.820 these ideas around the same time golding obviously was through through writing novels and through art

00:07:27.540 sharif through science if you like and they were interested in in the idea of children as representative of

00:07:36.000 human nature because i think they thought that children uncorrupted in the sense of you know they're

00:07:43.020 not as socialized as the rest of us they haven't learned the rules and the norms and they somehow reflect

00:07:48.600 human nature in its rawest form so for them there was a sort of they were able to and willing to

00:07:57.480 draw a comparison between the behavior of young boys and people at large both of them

00:08:05.580 both of them were inspired if that's the right word but both of them were very deeply influenced by

00:08:11.960 their experiences their personal experiences of war and golding had actually fought during

00:08:19.520 world war ii and been horrified by the experience and sharif had experienced war i discovered in looking

00:08:29.480 into his background that he really had experienced war almost from the moment he was born

00:08:35.480 until the time that he left his homeland which was turkey as a young man so both of them had

00:08:42.420 experienced and seen firsthand incredible cruelty and violence and i think that was a major

00:08:51.300 preoccupation for both of them how does this come about well and i think a difference between them that

00:08:56.660 you would you pointed out earlier well golding said that humans by nature are evil sharif would say no

00:09:03.260 humans are actually good it's just if you put them in a certain situation that will cause them to do

00:09:07.980 terrible things yes and what was interesting to me was that even though this was downplayed in his own

00:09:16.180 publications sharif was very definitely a marxist or you know he really believed in the power of

00:09:25.860 cooperation over competition and so he really believed that if you set the right conditions

00:09:33.980 for a society people will flourish and people will live in harmony so he very much saw it as about the

00:09:41.360 social conditions under which we live before we get more more background to the robber's cave experiment

00:09:46.140 i didn't know this about summer camps in general but summer camp from like the almost the beginning when

00:09:52.060 the idea of summer camp came into being in america like psychologists were there trying to figure out

00:09:58.660 how can we design summer camp to to help young people become you know well adjusted that's right i've

00:10:06.820 found that whole history fascinating and you know the summer camp movement really began in the late 19th

00:10:15.600 century and it was in response to a particular school teacher again an educator a man who felt that

00:10:24.940 young men were spending too much indolent time over the summer holidays under the influence of their

00:10:35.500 mothers so there was kind of an implication i guess that young men were at risk of becoming effeminate

00:10:42.380 and useless because they were idle over the summer just doing nothing nothing constructive in in this

00:10:49.940 school teacher's eyes so he set up the first summer camp and the notion was that he would get young

00:10:56.980 boys out into nature doing activities learning chores it was very much i think mirroring the idea that

00:11:07.600 this is how the people lived in the days of the frontier and it was a character building exercise

00:11:14.000 and that theme of building spiritual strength and moral character has really always influenced i think

00:11:23.640 it's a theme that runs through summer camps from the very beginning right up to programs like brat camp now

00:11:31.360 where you have young people taken away to the wilds and kind of tested to find their real moral strength

00:11:39.400 it seems to be something that still persists it's a sort of a romantic ideal of what happens when you put

00:11:46.560 people take them away from the urban environment and give them things to do that are hearty and good for

00:11:54.700 them so psychologists got involved around the 1930s and 40s because summer camps became

00:12:02.740 really like a natural laboratory you could study what activities were most effective in helping for

00:12:11.900 example boys who were shy or not able to join in how you could get children to develop the social skills

00:12:21.700 they needed that they could then take back from summer camp to live a better life so in the wake of

00:12:29.880 world war ii the agenda for summer camp became how do we use summer camp to build the values of

00:12:39.620 democracy how do we use summer camp to build skills about team teamwork and leadership and those kinds

00:12:50.720 of things that make for a successful democratic nation and so that was the way in which sharif first got

00:13:01.420 involved was that someone that he knew invited him along to watch how psychologists were studying boys at a

00:13:09.580 summer camp but sharif decided that he didn't want to be an observer at someone else's camp what he do would

00:13:18.040 be run one completely of his own and that way he would have complete control of that environment

00:13:25.220 so that's what he starts doing so that's some good background some backdrop of what leading up to the

00:13:32.160 robber's cave experiment the robber's cave experiment the one that got reported on happened in 1954 but in

00:13:38.960 the book there's like the history of that you you you kind of dig into the archives in the field notes and

00:13:44.000 find that sharif actually tried this experiment before earlier in like the late 40s and it didn't

00:13:50.280 go as he planned and like no one ever really no one really knows about it he didn't write about it

00:13:54.320 so let's talk about that first experiment where was it at how did it happen and what was the result of it

00:14:01.780 well he actually conducted three experiments and the robber's cave was the last one but the robber's

00:14:08.460 cave in a way was never planned it was a last minute a last minute decision so he conducted a first

00:14:15.660 experiment in 1949 in upstate new york and it was a very basic experiment he was really just

00:14:22.460 working out ideas and this first experiment was like a rough draft it was just two groups of boys and

00:14:29.700 he brought them together in competition to see what would happen and the what happened was that the two

00:14:35.820 groups did develop very negative attitudes towards one another and so that experiment ended really at

00:14:42.360 that point so he was kind of working things through the next experiment was the supposed to be the final

00:14:49.080 one this was the big one and yet as you say there was no published reference to it hardly at all in

00:14:56.880 sharif's writing but lots of material about it in the archives so this was conducted in 1953 again in

00:15:05.020 upstate new york and he in this experiment he recruited a group of boys 24 boys and he took them to a

00:15:13.960 summer camp just outside saratoga springs and he divided the two groups after the second day and on the first

00:15:23.820 day he watched the boys and he and a group a team of his researchers watched the groups of boys

00:15:32.160 boys and to see who was making friends and to see who was buddying up because these children didn't

00:15:40.500 know one another before they were taken to the camp so when he divided the boys up into two groups he

00:15:47.260 made sure that he separated the friends and this was important at this camp not as important as he

00:15:53.340 realized but this was a critical point so he divided the the one group into two competing groups he kept

00:16:00.940 them very separate they were at different sides of the campsite in separate tents and the men kept

00:16:07.100 them apart then he brought them together in a series of competitions like tug of war baseball and then they

00:16:15.820 had things like cabin inspections all sorts of games and competitions and he kept a scorecard in the mess

00:16:25.660 hall so that the two groups could see which of the two teams was winning then when he announced there

00:16:35.360 was a wonderful prize for this winning team and it was a series of very elaborate knives one for each boy

00:16:44.260 in the winning team and a trophy when he announced the winners of the team that was when he expected the

00:16:51.160 conflict to really come to a head because the losing team would be so outraged that they'd lost

00:16:58.000 that there would be violence and his theory would play out in the wild but what actually happened in

00:17:05.900 that 1953 study and you know I said it was a critical point that he separated groups of friends was that

00:17:12.900 the two groups did develop animosity towards one another during games but for example whenever they finished

00:17:23.680 a game of baseball they would give three cheers for the losing team or they would make sure that after a game

00:17:33.320 they all went around and shook hands after the game was over and he found this kind of sportsmanship

00:17:40.540 very he found it disturbing because it was undermining his theory but also that he found it

00:17:48.340 very difficult to get the groups to come to any kind of direct conflict and so he and his team started

00:17:55.300 doing things to the possessions of one group hoping that that group would blame the other it was a sort of

00:18:02.060 scapegoating exercise so for example he would go into a tent and mess up all their things and then hope that the other

00:18:11.740 that group would come back to their tent and be enraged and blame the others and a fight would erupt

00:18:16.720 anyway over a series of days this the the eruption never happened it would always fizzle out and

00:18:24.320 it was partly because those boys had made strong friends just in the first day and they were feeling

00:18:31.680 resentful that they'd been separated it also meant that they wondered why they'd been separated so they

00:18:38.320 were off they were very observant of the men they were always looking to the men to understand what was

00:18:44.000 happening so they were really looking for clues finally the two groups were on the night that the

00:18:52.480 winners of the tournament were announced one of sharif's team actually demolished one of the group's

00:19:00.700 tents pulled out all their belongings smashed things trampled dirt through the tent and this was meant to

00:19:09.360 be the big moment and the other thing you have to remember is that sharif only had a limited amount of

00:19:16.120 time at this camp he booked it for a certain amount of time he had a certain amount of money

00:19:20.860 so it was like the clock was ticking and they really had to get things happening they had to fan the flames of

00:19:26.740 this fight

00:19:27.920 anyway the boys came rushing to the site of this demolished tent but instead of blaming one another

00:19:35.880 they started talking and

00:19:38.760 one group swore that they had nothing to do with the tent being demolished and the other group believed them

00:19:45.020 so they turned on the men and it was a kind of a mutiny and they refused to fight and they

00:19:53.220 they were steadfast in their cooperation with one another of course sharif was absolutely frustrated and

00:20:01.960 enraged and cancelled the experiment well it sounds like his theory was kind of proven right right

00:20:08.860 there was a conflict it was just the boys versus the counsellors who were actually the researchers

00:20:13.760 that's right um this is what's so ironic for me in all of these three studies that sharif conducted was

00:20:21.440 that he seemed unable to recognize that his own group of researchers even though they pretended to be

00:20:27.620 camp staff they were adults and he it was as if he was blind to their own influence as a powerful group

00:20:36.280 in that camp and yes his own his own theory was proven in fact what was ironic

00:20:43.900 in that 1953 study was that the conflict erupted between the men running the camp and they ended up

00:20:52.720 you know having a head-on confrontation on the night of the drama so when although the boys didn't

00:21:01.020 fight the men certainly did well something we need to talk about is the setup of the experiment like how

00:21:07.340 did sharif convince parents to send their boys to a camp where he would be trying to instigate conflict

00:21:15.260 between boys like what what did he what did he tell them to sell them on this

00:21:20.160 well when i looked at the versions of the letters that he wrote between the first study in 1949

00:21:29.200 and then the final one in 1954 i noticed that he got better at being vague and better at saying the

00:21:39.160 sorts of things that would appeal to parents at that place in that time and it's worth pointing out that

00:21:46.140 he in all three cases he picked boys whose families would not normally be able to afford to send their

00:21:54.280 children to camp so he targeted parents on a lower income and made the camp free

00:22:03.300 and in particular by the time the robber's cave study came around the letter that he wrote to the

00:22:10.720 parents talked about really and remember it was on notepaper that was headed Yale University and

00:22:18.360 in in in the instance of 1953 and then in 1954 it was the University of Oklahoma and so there was

00:22:29.920 obviously an authority there about the association with the university that he was working for

00:22:37.580 that worked in his favour but he also played up the idea that this camp was about learning skills for

00:22:46.200 leadership which in a way i guess is not incorrect but he certainly didn't mention that it was an

00:22:53.300 experiment he talked about it being a study but he didn't talk about conflict or victimisation

00:23:01.600 or the separation of boys into basically tribes what's also interesting was that by the time

00:23:11.420 he was recruiting in oklahoma his graduate student oj harvey did the recruitment in oklahoma city and oj

00:23:20.780 said that sharif played a much more minor role at that point because he had a very heavy turkish accent

00:23:28.300 and oj harvey felt that would arouse people's suspicions mainly because there was i guess a lot of

00:23:37.200 suspicion of foreigners and at that time and that it would be better if someone from oklahoma did the

00:23:46.380 contact with the parents so oj harvey unusually they didn't do this in the other studies but oj harvey

00:23:53.680 actually went to the boys homes in oklahoma city and met the parents so i think that personal approach

00:24:01.900 made a big difference too so basically the parents did not know it was an experiment they were not

00:24:08.300 aware that there would be an encouragement of conflict or violence and they were pleased that

00:24:13.780 their boys had been selected and had this what they saw as a terrific opportunity what parent would turn

00:24:19.800 that down so there was deception like this wouldn't happen today like you wouldn't like psych ethics

00:24:25.020 would not allow you to do that what he did correct no there are ethics review boards now in place that

00:24:31.160 mean that people when they're planning experiments have to get approval from the university so no ethics

00:24:40.400 review boards would not condone it today but i'm always a bit wary of that argument because i always

00:24:47.060 think well what about the men themselves surely we don't need external review boards to tell us

00:24:56.140 what feels right and what feels wrong and i think i think they were well aware of the ethical issues

00:25:03.540 with their studies but they chose to ignore them in favor of doing this research well you mentioned

00:25:10.040 that in the second experiment they had sort of a guy on staff researcher was there supposed to be the

00:25:14.580 experimental psych or the conscience right be like hey this is sort of stepping the lines

00:25:19.080 but in the third experiment the final experiment the robber's cave experiment that guy was not there

00:25:25.500 so let's talk about that final experiment so this was sharif was just desperate he had a his funding

00:25:31.060 was from the rockefeller foundation they were sort of hammering him like hey what happened all that

00:25:34.980 money we gave you on these experiments about group conflict and so he put together the robber's cave

00:25:40.520 experiment like on a lark it was just completely improvised what did he do different with this

00:25:46.300 experiment compared to the previous experiment that he that failed that he considered a failure and he

00:25:51.320 didn't talk about ever again well i think what's so interesting is that after that second experiment

00:25:57.480 failed he met with his two favorite graduate students oj harvey and jack white both of whom were native

00:26:05.480 american students and they met around the campfire after the experiment had been cancelled and they

00:26:13.720 agreed that they would give it one last go but only on the condition that sharif was not in charge

00:26:20.860 because he was too temperamental he had way too much invested and he was emotionally quite volatile

00:26:28.360 so what was interesting was that robber's cave was actually managed and run by oj harvey who is from

00:26:36.780 oklahoma himself oj was a very good organizer the robber's cave experiment they ran on the smell of an

00:26:47.820 oily rag they had so little money left they had to really cut corners in the 1953 study i think they had

00:26:56.360 around 12 staff at robber's cave they had four they actually they did improvise in the sense that it

00:27:04.900 was an unplanned experiment but in other ways oj and the rest of them really did as much as they could to

00:27:12.560 make robber's cave a success in their eyes as they could so for example instead of allowing the boys to

00:27:21.760 mix together at the beginning of the experiment and then separating them they brought the boys to

00:27:27.740 the campsite at robber's cave on two separate days in two separate buses and kept them absolutely

00:27:34.920 far apart so that neither group was aware that the other group was there and each group felt like they

00:27:42.340 owned the park there was no one else there at the time so they were climbing the rocks they were

00:27:49.720 exploring they were swimming in the creek they were doing all sorts of things in a small group of 12

00:27:56.580 believing that they kind of owned the place so they developed a much stronger group identity before

00:28:04.100 they were brought into contact with the second group the other thing the men really made sure of

00:28:11.200 this time around at robber's cave was that they headed off any attempts by the groups to hold out a hand

00:28:19.480 or cooperate with the other group this was a problem as i said in the middle study

00:28:25.120 and so for example i found in the notes that one of the groups at robber's cave very early on in the camp

00:28:34.720 it was one boy's birthday and the caretaker and his wife ida blocksham was the woman who did the

00:28:44.080 cooking with her sister at the robber's cave state park and they'd made a birthday cake for this boy

00:28:51.480 and the boy asked the men that this by this stage they knew there was a second group in the park and

00:28:57.340 the boy whose birthday it was asked the men if they could invite the other group in for the birthday

00:29:02.620 celebration and the men blocked that attempt saying no the other group were busy but the other group

00:29:09.800 could hear this party happening so you can imagine there's a group of boys who are sitting out in the

00:29:16.160 dark hearing the sounds of this lovely birthday party going on in the miss hall and they haven't been

00:29:22.700 invited there was a natural sense of resentment because you know in a normal circumstances you

00:29:29.740 would expect one group to include the other so the men were much better at robber's cave at

00:29:36.740 ensuring that the sorts of behaviors that had they felt derailed the middle experiment didn't occur at

00:29:46.080 robber's cave so in this experiment they kept the two groups of boys separate at first before bringing

00:29:51.020 them together for the competitions and this time the groups developed a more distinct group identity

00:29:55.460 each team made their own shirts they had their own flag and it seems like the antagonism and the

00:30:00.600 competition between them was more intense too tell us what happened with that you've been to robber's

00:30:05.420 cave and your listeners who've been to robber's cave in summer know that it's an extremely hot place

00:30:11.260 yes so this competition unfolded in very hot weather and it was a very intense few days because there

00:30:19.000 were so many activities where they were competing with the boys they kept the two groups neck and

00:30:23.800 neck and then on the night that the winners of the tournament were announced one group who were

00:30:31.720 the losers decided that they would conduct a night raid and they it was after midnight the the two groups

00:30:40.680 were called the rattlers and the eagles and the rattlers group decided that they were going to conduct a

00:30:46.720 night raid on the eagles now this is something that comes up a lot in summer camp you know people

00:30:52.620 conduct raids on one another but this was a bit more serious in the sense that it was well and truly the

00:31:00.600 middle of the night the eagles were asleep the rattlers descended on their cabin they climbed through the

00:31:07.440 windows they were yelling and screaming they were dressed with camouflage dressed in camouflage

00:31:13.920 and they terrorized the eagles group they messed up their cabin in a serious way and really left the

00:31:23.280 eagles group terrified and crying interestingly one of the reasons that the eagles were so terrified was

00:31:32.800 there was this incredibly bright light that went off just as the screaming began and that was because one of

00:31:39.320 the men was with the rattlers crew and he was taking photos of the raid and so again it was that was an

00:31:45.920 indication to me of how the men somehow believed that they were invisible or i don't know what they

00:31:52.740 thought but here they were accompanying the boys on a raid and that was the other striking thing to me

00:31:58.880 about robbers cave was that their involvement in the conflict between the two groups actually gave the boys

00:32:10.200 very strong messages about what they wanted the children to do

00:32:13.860 so on a normal summer camp where you would expect a camp counsellor to say no listen

00:32:19.880 a night raid is not on or a camp counsellor might say all right look you can do a night raid but we're going to give

00:32:26.780 the other group a warning or whatever this guy accompanied them took photos and basically stood by

00:32:34.960 and watched as they vandalized one group and terrorized them so the conflict really came to a head the next day

00:32:45.180 and one group confronted the other and the boys that just erupted into a huge fist fight

00:32:52.700 and the men had to pull them apart so in sharif's terms at robbers cave his theory had been proven

00:33:01.040 and he described that experiment very much as if he'd watched natural behavior unfolding

00:33:09.240 but you know when i looked at the archival material and when i interviewed some of the boys

00:33:16.700 and when i talked to oj harvey i got a very different picture of that experiment and oj harvey himself said

00:33:24.840 that musifa sharif had a very distinct script in mind and that it was his job to make sure that they

00:33:33.300 delivered on that yeah so i mean in the report that the final report you get this idea that the boys

00:33:38.400 just naturally like spontaneously started conflicting with each other and broke out in violence but as you

00:33:44.980 know if you look at the research notes you can say well no they're kind of nudged in that direction

00:33:48.800 by the researchers themselves and i think even even in the third experiment there were sort of

00:33:53.820 while they try while the researchers tried to prevent the boys from sort of cooperating and extending

00:33:58.600 you know good sportsmanship they try to the beginning there'd be like you mentioned the birthday party

00:34:02.820 and but they'd always squash that and be like well that's not going to happen we want we want

00:34:09.020 there's a result we got to get and you got to give it to us well that's right and you know

00:34:13.060 what was interesting was the boys would suggest things so in the notes i found for example that

00:34:19.060 the eagles after the night raid they went to their counselor or that you know their counselor obviously

00:34:24.820 came to their cabin because he could probably guess that they were going to be wanting to talk to him

00:34:29.880 about it because they were all so upset they said to him the other team should be penalized

00:34:36.900 and disqualified from the competition for their behavior so they were they were actively suggesting

00:34:43.900 ways to make sure that there were consequences for bad behavior and for those boys they were ignored

00:34:52.100 the men obviously did not take that on board so okay we had this the the second phase of the

00:34:57.940 experiment there's this conflict and then the third phase the third part of his sharif's theory was

00:35:02.780 that if you give these conflicting groups a common cause you can actually bring them together again

00:35:07.860 and unify them how did he do that and this is interesting he never got this far with the other

00:35:13.180 experiments so he didn't he was in uncharted territory totally uncharted and you know when i spoke to oj harvey

00:35:20.280 about this he said look we were just making it up as we were going along by that he meant they were

00:35:25.420 working it out just not day by day really as you say so what they did was they announced one morning

00:35:33.220 after breakfast that the water supply seemed to not be working and there was a problem and they needed

00:35:41.620 volunteers to help them work out what was happening and i think all of the boys actually volunteered but

00:35:48.940 anyway there was a water tank up on the hill above the mess hall that had a line that ran down to

00:35:57.860 the hall itself and the boys had to climb this rocky hill behind the mess hall again a reminder it's very

00:36:07.460 hot in robbers cave they've got very little water in their canteens because the water supply supposedly has

00:36:15.180 failed so they're hot and they're thirsty and the they're having to move rocks off the line to

00:36:23.020 actually test it to see if there's a leak or what it is that is the problem so they're slowly making

00:36:29.180 their way up this hill and they're working in two separate groups but eventually they get to the top of

00:36:35.780 the hill and they find that there's been a rock fall and that the line has been buried and presumably

00:36:42.340 damaged by this fall of rocks of course the rocks were put there by the men the night before so the

00:36:49.720 boys again in their separate teams are removing the rocks one by one and they realize eventually that

00:36:56.640 if they work as a single group they'll get the job done more quickly they'll get out of the heat and

00:37:02.740 they'll be able to get fresh cool water so gradually they start working together as a single group

00:37:10.280 and this was the beginning of the blurring of the boundaries between the two groups

00:37:17.500 the beginning of the breaking down of the identification of one group you know the rattlers

00:37:25.780 feeling so strongly that they were rattlers and the eagles feeling so strongly that they were eagles

00:37:31.480 and they became eventually this was over a number of days this was the first of a number of activities

00:37:38.820 that the men instigated for example the next day they pretended that the truck had broken down and

00:37:44.880 they need the boys to push again all activities that were meant to involve what Sharif called a

00:37:53.260 superordinate goal that is a problem that two groups have that is too big for them to solve as individual

00:38:02.360 groups so they have to come together for a solution so the robbers cave had if you like a happy ending

00:38:11.140 the two groups dissolved they reformed as one big happy group and Sharif's theory again was demonstrated

00:38:21.780 i read that slightly differently though because i think the boys were actually very relieved

00:38:27.400 to be allowed to be cooperative children again working together and having fun instead of having to

00:38:38.180 take part in this competition where they must have been aware of this undercurrent

00:38:42.820 of anxiety and tension particularly amongst the men so the experiment in Sharif's mind was a success

00:38:51.400 they wrote the book the report how was it received uh immediately when it was published so once the

00:38:58.700 robbers cave experiment was over Sharif wrote the book very quickly it was a report of the experiment and

00:39:04.680 he sent it out to psychologists around the country it was very well received in the sense that i think a lot

00:39:12.760 of people felt like it was an absolutely groundbreaking experiment when you think that it was a field

00:39:18.420 experiment conducted over a period of three weeks and the fact that it seemed to work out Sharif's

00:39:25.880 theory so powerfully it did have a big impact so you part of your research of the book you wanted to

00:39:33.500 find out what happened to the boys in this experiment how did you find the boys that took part in the

00:39:38.400 experiment by now they're in their i guess their late 60s maybe 70s and what did did they even know

00:39:44.180 they were part of experiment and what did they feel like when they found out that it was that summer camp

00:39:48.400 was an experiment well i found them one by one there were some for example oj harvey remembered the

00:39:55.940 names of a couple and then once i met another one who remembered the names of another couple i was able

00:40:02.240 to track down some that way but obviously i didn't have i i wasn't able to contact all of them but the

00:40:09.500 ones i did contact i was surprised when i did contact them because i thought i'd be interviewing them

00:40:15.540 about their memories of the experiment that they would tell me what had happened but when i first

00:40:21.740 contacted them it became very clear that they'd never been told it was an experiment so in fact they

00:40:28.300 had more questions for me than than i had questions for them in a way they wanted to know all about it they

00:40:35.560 wanted to know how their parents had agreed they wanted to know who was behind it they they they really

00:40:42.460 wanted to know what they were being tested for and and they kind of wanted to know whether or not they'd

00:40:47.660 passed that test so that really shaped my research because i felt that i was actually uncovering a story

00:40:57.560 for them as well as for myself and my readers because i was putting together a narrative that was

00:41:06.880 richer and deeper than the one that sharif produced if you read sharif's book about the robber's cave

00:41:14.780 experiment it's definitely written for people in psychology and it's as an account of the experiment

00:41:23.120 it's a scientific report it's not it doesn't answer the sorts of questions that those now adult boys have

00:41:31.200 when you asked them like what they remembered about the camp experience was were their memories

00:41:36.540 positive were they did they was it negative was it like both like what do they think about the camp

00:41:42.220 i think it's fair to say i i did interview boys who did the 1953 experiment as well as those who

00:41:50.140 were involved at robber's cave and i think most of them would say that it there were times when it was

00:41:56.640 an unpleasant experience you know for most of them as i said earlier it was their first experience of

00:42:03.180 summer camp so they didn't really have that much to compare it to although the ones who had older

00:42:09.120 brothers or sisters who'd been on camp did you know they'd heard about camp and what was expected so

00:42:15.700 but most of them had ambivalent feelings i'd say some of them i spoke to had very happy memories of

00:42:24.300 robber's cave but they were happy happy memories about parts of the camp so one person i interviewed

00:42:32.320 talked quite vividly about the the joint activities that they did at the end of course that's not the

00:42:39.400 way he thought about it necessarily but after the the problem with the water tank the boys went on a

00:42:46.180 trip to heavena and it was in the stage when they were all one big group now for one one person

00:42:52.840 described that truck journey sitting in the back of the truck with the dust flying up in their faces

00:42:59.580 all of them sitting together as quite a happy memory then on the other hand there was also vivid

00:43:06.160 memories in the rattlers group of a boy who was a real bully and a couple of the men still remembered

00:43:13.340 him very well so i was very struck by the amount that most of them remembered particularly the robber's

00:43:21.940 cave people that i spoke to their memories were very vivid and that really added to the story from my

00:43:29.100 point of view but as i say there was a sense of disquiet too i mean you can imagine if you get a

00:43:36.740 letter from someone you know out of the blue and not only out of the blue from the other side of the

00:43:42.240 world and that person's telling you that you were in an experiment when you were a child and that they

00:43:47.860 want to interview you about it i mean you would feel a lot of mixed emotions i imagine you'd you'd feel

00:43:55.400 excited curious but also perhaps a bit nervous about what had been involved and so that was part of my

00:44:03.760 job really i felt in the end that it became a story that i wrote for the participants in the experiment

00:44:11.960 because and this was something that came up for me with my milgram book as well where i interviewed

00:44:17.320 subjects people who took part in milgram's experiment is that so often in psychological research

00:44:24.680 people are referred to as subjects as if they're faceless nameless individuals but these are people who

00:44:33.500 volunteered their time or in the case of the boys didn't volunteer their time

00:44:38.480 but were participants in in an experiment that gains fame or notoriety they have no control over

00:44:45.920 what's written about them or how they're depicted and in both milgram's case and in sharif's the

00:44:52.540 subjects were depicted in very unfair ways i felt very misleading all right so to sum things up

00:44:59.420 sharif believed that when groups are competing over resources they strengthen their separate group

00:45:04.080 identity and become antagonistic against other groups but they can be reconciled if they work

00:45:09.860 together to address a bigger common problem and while that might be true the robber's cave study

00:45:15.860 didn't do a good job of proving it because it seems like the way you described it is that sharif just

00:45:21.880 orchestrated the study to confirm his theory and what really happened in the experiments is the boys

00:45:27.020 naturally wanted to cooperate all along and it was the researchers who goaded them into having more

00:45:32.680 conflict so can we ultimately learn anything from the robber's cave experiment and did it give us any

00:45:38.740 insight about why groups fight with each other and if not have we gained more insight about how that

00:45:44.460 happened since the study well it's interesting i struggled with this a bit myself what can you

00:45:49.720 conclude from it and as you say you can conclude that adults can manipulate children to do things that

00:45:56.760 they wouldn't normally do but on another level i think the i think what's important really important

00:46:04.440 about the robber's cave experiment and especially when you compare it with social psychological research

00:46:09.500 subsequently is that sharif was really attempting to grapple with big problems there was something

00:46:19.040 about that big vision that i think is really worth holding on to we do want to understand and we should try and

00:46:28.620 understand how it is that people develop animosity and hostility towards other groups in their community

00:46:37.920 whether it's on the basis of skin color or religion or gender and and looking at ways to break that down

00:46:47.960 is really important so i don't want to throw that away i think that's really important i think that

00:46:55.120 i'm not so sure that that research has advanced necessarily though because we still have the same

00:47:03.500 issues today and but i still think it's worth really really worthwhile investigating and in a way

00:47:12.740 despite my reservations about the participants in the research i think that sharif's commitment to

00:47:20.940 investigating that issue is really worth celebrating well gina this has been a great conversation where

00:47:26.640 can people go to learn more about the book in your work i've got a website it's www.ginaperry.com

00:47:33.680 and there is a hyphen between the gina and the perry or a dash well fantastic gina perry thanks for

00:47:39.940 your time it's been a pleasure thank you my guest today was gina perry she's the author of the book

00:47:44.600 the lost boys inside muzifer sharif's robbers cave experiments available amazon.com and bookstores

00:47:49.540 everywhere you can find out more information about gina's work at our website gina-perry.com that's

00:47:54.580 gina with a g also check out our show notes at aom.is slash robbers cave we find links to resources

00:47:59.740 we're going to delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast

00:48:10.760 check out our website at art of manless.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands

00:48:14.920 of articles we've written over the years and if you'd like to enjoy ad free episodes of the aom

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00:48:57.540 you

The Art of Manliness - December 11, 2019

#568： The Untold Story Behind the Famous Robbers Cave Experiment

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