Robber's Cave Experiment Essay

807 Words4 Pages

Robber’s Cave Experiment
Abstract
Dr. Muzafer Sherif gathered a group of Twenty-two 12 year old Caucasian males and randomly separated them into two groups. Neither group knew about the other. This experiement featured three phases to have the groups bond with each other, introduce the other group and create conflict, and the dissipate the conflict by methods of teamwork and creating a common enemy. These methods were to prove or disprove Dr. Sherifs hypothesis that intergroup attitudes and behavior are determined primarily by the nature of functional relations between groups in question.
Analysis
In the summer of 1954, 22 boys were involved within a case study. Each was randomly chosen to be a part of one of two groups. Muzafer Sherifs purpose is conducting this experiment was to test out his hypothesis that intergroup attitudes and behavior are determined …show more content…

In some of the competitions that were performed there were prizes such as medals and trophies for the winning team, both teams had one goal and that was to win. The way they responded to these situations was the independent variable. The purpose of this experiment was to observe the effects of resources have on intergroup conflicts. In relation to the real world this is supposed to be a representation of how people compete for necessary things such as jobs. Although this is not the exact situation as it would happen in the real world it is an example of sampling.
Over the course of the experiment the camp counselors discreetly reported the actions of the boys to Dr. Sherif. Since there was quantitative data being recorded, all data was qualitative. The results of the experiment simply proved Dr. Sherifs hypothesis that intergroup attitudes and behavior are determined primarily by the nature of functional relations between groups in question. The data was analyzed appropriately and answered all questions Dr. Sheriff needed answers