With conflict between the groups successfully instigated, the experiment now moved into its final phase. This ratcheted up the antagonism between the two groups, especially once all the team scores were added up and the Rattlers won the overall trophy for the competitive activities. To do this they pitted the groups against each other in a series of competitions.
The experimenters wanted to increase the conflict substantially. For the first time the two groups were allowed to find out about each other and soon the signs of intergroup conflict emerged in the form of verbal abuse.Ī little name-calling wasn’t enough, though. The two groups now established, the experiment moved into its second phase. Both groups chose a name which they had stencilled on their shirts and flags: one group was the Eagles and the other the Rattlers. They spent this time bonding with each other while swimming and hiking. When the boys arrived, they were housed in separate cabins and, for the first week, did not know about the existence of the other group. It’s these two groups that formed the basis of Sherif’s study of how prejudice and conflict build up between two groups of people ( Sherif et al., 1961). Before the trip the boys were randomly divided into two groups. In this experiment twenty-two 11 year-old boys were taken to a summer camp in Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma, little knowing they were the subjects of an experiment.
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