Robbers Cave Experiment: Unmasking the Roots of Tribal Conflicts

ISRAEL RESPONSE SO FAR IS REBELLION FROM PALESTINE FOR THE NEXT 100 YEARS

I was appalled the first time I saw this. I am just as appalled in watching it now. Who experiments with kìds in this way? What parent/guardian would agree to it?

Two of the conclusions seem to be built into the setup of the experiment.
"Conflict arises over limited ressources" is invalid. The staff introduced limited ressources and conflict arose, but without control groups that have no limited ressource introduced, you don't know if conflict would have arisen anyways, and without checking for other factors you can't claim it's the only reason, main reason, or even a reason at all.
"Common goals reduce conflict" is invalid, since the cooperation was forced on the kids. Can you tell whether they would have worked togeather if they hadn't been instructed to? Maybe "Achieving common goals reduces conflict" is a more valid conclusion.

Conflicts are less to rise when there are laws that people accept and conform to it.
As the video mentioned that is exactly the economic problem, limited resources and high demands and unlimited desires. But conflicts are not present in a violent manner due to laws that the society accept and feeling of social justice.
Resolutions are not insignificant, if in the experiment they get one from every team and away from the eyes of teams, the opponents will express that they have no problem with each others. It is just how masses behave but individually people behave more rationally.

"The love of money is the source of ALL evil" 1 Timothy 6:10.

"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill . You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives , that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." James 4:1-3

Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do NOT do what is right, sin is crouching at your door ; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” Genesis 4: 6 - 7

There you go. Psychology in a nutshell.

with out knowledge or permission of the boys and their parents, seems unethical from the get go!

Definitely. Adult humans are by nature duplicitous. And the massive impacts of lust and envy were not included. Pre-teens are easy to manipulate. It is when the hormones kicked in and shape attitudes that things become complicated. Adult humans are harder to manipulate.

No adult are easier to influence because of perceived superiority, " it can't happen to me" bias

The core of this experiment is the assumption of those running it that the boys are under-people, to be turned into experimental animals. For fun, not research as the result was already decided.

With the counselors deciding where the conflict will come from, and the manipulation of the two groups to become their soldiers, we see the powerful demonstrating their superiority, by denying the lower orders a place in the decision-making or resource-control phases. Did the powerful recruit any 'leaders' for them to use? Did any of the boys smart enough to fully grasp the experiment get recruited?

No surprise this happened in the Eisenhower USA. They learned well from interviewing all those darn Nazis, didn't they?

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In the military, this is the exact situation that happens. Skin, religion, and other differences are irrelevant. What is important is the struggle and who are helping.

I think this makes sense. Think of how united America was after 9/11 when there was a recent tragedy and a common enemy. Friction can arise due to different values, cultures, etc. but a common goal or enemy can unite people.

They learned four things from the study. The fact that one of them wasn't that it's a bad idea to perform psychological experiments on children without telling their parents strongly suggests that their conclusions are not to be trusted. I would be very interested to know if any of these kids suffered any negative effects as a result of their participation.

Boys will be boys

It's not just competition over resources. I've worked with people who are hostile for no reason, and will jump on any opportunity to promote themselves by making you look bad. I think this behavior happens for attention, rank, reputation, appearance, or even a preferred parking spot. People will fight over pretty much anything.

Once again the conclusions the psychologists arrived at is limited by their own limited experience and biases. Had they tried the same experiment with a group of say American kids and a group of Arabic kids, or any two groups of kids with totally incompatible cultures and they would never have worked together for a common goal. Even more likely the conflict would have escalated even more

I wonder if the parents found out and how did they react. Did this type of "experiments" get the researchers in trouble? Were there any legal actions follow suit?

Interesting.
Think political protestors and counter protestors.
Add small group of Feds, I mean instigators.
Limited resource being political power, of course.

Sounds like the politics of today. United we stand, divided we fall.

Conflicts can also arise from the fact that people have different goals - stated and unstated., which they may or may not be aware of. Also, people are naturally wired to behave in a certain way. The environment also plays a huge role in the choices that they make in the situation that they are in. A great way of getting people to work together is by helping them increase their awareness. This is best done through facilitated discussions.

In this experiment, the discussions didn't really work because the boys were primed to a level where their emotions were highly triggered towards fight responses. In this high emotional state, the brain has limited ability (sufficient blood) to reason cognitively since their blood has been mostly diverted towards arms and legs.

Based on my reading about real tribes where resources are often scarce, people have learnt to share instead of fight. They live in communities, that by definition, support each other.

The entire point of a "double-blind" experiment is to remove experimenter bias. This exercise isn't even an "experiment", let alone an "unbiased" experiment.

Asshole professors at university do the same thing right now: they claim that the "bell-curve" is natural, so then they adjust students' grades to match that curve. If it was "natural", it would not need to be forced. The dumbest part about this professor-idiocy is that they beam afterwards like they just accomplished something. "See? See? The 'natural-curve' showed up after I forced it to!" Just like these camp-counselor "researchers": "See? See? Conflict arises naturally after we force it to arise!"

This experiment wasn't sociological, it was medical and physiological -- how did the researchers get their heads so far up their own asses??

I feel like the experiment was flawed from the start, since they introduced a third party instigating the problem, had the counselors not set the games or start gossip about the other group, it's likely this wouldn't have happened, also the only reason the kids decided to work together was because they where told so, if adults where in the same position, they're more likely to try and find the solution to the problem themselves, before asking others for help, so the idea of having a common goal being the only solution is not quite certain, and the experiment itself may work better as an example of what happens when 2 groups are manipulated into hating each other, rather than naturally developing animosity.

Why do people still treat seriously this anti-science? The "researchers" were straight up swindlers. They should've lost their titles.

I’m on the side that the theory is flawed and is not applicable to MATURE individuals. You can be a child, or you can be an adult of retirement age. If you’re immature, you will sow your own conflicts.
Groups of mature individuals should be easily able to deal with each other through discussion and reason. And use violence as a last resort. A last resort in this picture would be a glass of water between 2 utterly dehydrated people. Each will die without the full glass of water, you can’t share it, so understanding each others reasons for war, you honorably duke it out.

I understand how idealistic my words sound. We don’t live anywhere near that level of mature society. But I will try to resolve more conflicts in my life than I cause, that is my goal.

I think scarcity is an issue but I can see a clear example in my country and on my island where things break down a bit. I'm Irish and I don't think you can really say anyone on the island of Ireland has issues of scarcity these days, at least when it comes to material wealth or the basics of life. However, social status is a huge driving factor. I'm not Unionist (pro UK politically) but have tried to understand their abject rejection of Irish self rule. I noticed that predominantly Unionist areas in large urban areas of Northern Ireland are poor (lack resources) or homogenous (one community towns and villages). This creates echo chambers where definition of the community identity is largely done by vilifying the other. "We are loyal British subjects, not republican terrorist taghues (derogatory term for pro Irish)" seems to be a core belief. How we as an island will get past this, who knows, but honestly I'd like to see if any of these boys held grudges after the experiment, just as grudges are held for 100s of years on the two sides in Northern Ireland. For me, that history plays much more of a factor than lack of resources

The researchers for sure learn how to pollute experiments....
Do this with tribes, you won't pass 2nd stage... if they get to 3rd stage they'll drink each other blood
..

Thanks!

I believe in the Parent, Adult, Child (PAC) theory... So what applies to children, must work for adults as well.

The problem is, manipulative people exists... They play as a flint that starts the flames of conflicts, and this is why it never ends!

The right. The left. Who rules the world.the great reset in an egg shell.both sides have been used

This explains perfectly why the powers-that-be keep people fighting amongst themselves. Just think how much we would get done if we cooperated and got along.

Those researchers sound like the government, turning the people against each other while making out like bandits.

How much do we excuse priming as a variable in this staple-study?

What about the widespread adoption of anecdotal evidence?
Do we think anything about that?

This sounds wildly unethical. Surely this experiment would be illegal today.

This description is so limited in its scope that its misleading. This whole experiment has been extensively discussed, re analysed and is now almost totally discredited. It basically shows that children can be manipulated by adults.

This is actually way of working of some malafied politicians who try to limit the resources and start blame games to brainwash people..

The leader became a 'Satanic' influence on those children. Can we arrest the researchers for child abuse?

I think that the post WW 2 developments supports this theory. The common goal was to rebuild society, but the war trauma and the fear of "communism" created an imaginary angst that still today influences the world.

The análisis is incomplete and therefore flawed regarding what works in conflict resolution .
A common goal helps to encourage proper debate to build consensus about how to achieve the goal

Conflict as a result of low resources makes no sense, if we're talking about humans. Unless there's a lack of intelligence combined with that.

Intelligent humans have obviously been responsible for many advancements in our civilization. And why we're not on the same status as the rest of the Animal Kingdom.

This is how nusantara (or indonesia nowadays) formed, we won't be united without common enemy: a Dutch company

Ok I see the validity to a certain point. That certain point, these are children, not emotionally mature adults capable of peaceful negotiations. Though, to be fair, many adults are not emotionally mature or trained in negotiating, but negotiators and diplomats are a thing.

Notice that it was the camp staff (i.e., the government) that limited the resources and caused the friction between the groups. Left to themselves, the boys would likely have gotten along just fine. We see the same thing in the US and Western Europe. Our governments are determined to balkanize the population, so they divide the people into groups and set them against each other by creating governmental policies that favor one group over another.

Competition for limited resources makes sense for a generally rational ethical population, but not for tribalistic anti-white racism from various "developing" countries. Also if your culture is corrupt you won't compete in a healthy way that leads to meritocratic rising to the top. Instead, individuals from corrupt cultures will lie, cheat, steal, defraud, slander, undermine, and otherwise act unfairly in order to get ahead. Everything is seen as a zero-sum game to them because they do not actually create wealth by innovating or working productively in their jobs (although they are good at appearing to). They instead pillage the wealth created by Americans for example and shrink the overall size of the pie while overinflating the job market. We need to build a wall against people from corrupt cultures pillaging American wealth, especially in STEM. Let's use a real-world example. There is an Indian-run cancer research lab at a university in the U.S. it gives positions within the lab to mostly Indians, it has over 600 publications (appearance of productivity), and has receved millions of dollars in research grants over decades. It has yielded no effective treatments or cures. It actively discriminated against a white American innovator for trying to develop cancer therapies. He has since invented drugs and figured out how to cure late-stage pancreatic cancer in full detail. He was thrown out of the school without a Ph.D. (as a student in good standing) and persecuted to the point of basically destroying his career and preventing him from helping people beat cancer. This kind of crap happens in smaller ways every day by corrupt racist tribalists. Investment firms are failing now because of this crap, especially the ones that reward anti-white discrimination.

Far too simple it's always more complex than most people think.

Here's what I get:
Lack of resources does leads to conflict and hate but only on the surface. We hate and deny outsiders competing on our resources in general regardless of traits (race, religion, sex, etc.)
The hate we have for each other on specific traits is a product of the manipulation of a third-party person or organization. Just like the camp researchers manipulating the kids to compete and show hate. So the next time u want to hate on someone, think many many times, keep thinking until the end of your life if there's something, someone or any kind of media told you to hate them.

Sometimes it is scarcity, but most of the time it is greed that causes conflicts. Every resource is finite to a certain extent, but greed knows no bounds.

So what kind perverse human designs experiments to use other humans as lab rats just so they can put their name on a Pseudo-scientific document? If this kind of prejudice is what Psychology and Sociology are for, then we don't need this king of crap in our society.

It is an intriguing experiment, but as many said, it is too simplistic a way to draw conclusions on very critical themes. World Peace Game suggests quite the opposite. Kids are broken up into countries and roles with conflicts among each other. But kids always reach peace agreements through discussions, and I heard that adults do not always reach a conclusion. This suggests that kids are more empathetic for co-existence than adults.