This week's speaker (Jack) is giving a talk about The Robber's Cave Experiment, presenting material from LessWrong. In this study "Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment" by Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, and Sherif (1954/1961), the experimental subjects were 22 boys between 5th and 6th grade, selected from 22 different schools in Oklahoma City, of stable middle-class Protestant families, doing well in school, median IQ 112. They were as well-adjusted and as similar to each other as the researchers could manage. The experiment, conducted in the bewildered aftermath of World War II, was meant to investigate the causes—and possible remedies—of intergroup conflict.
