Robber Cave study

• What is meant by the term prejudice?

  Using your preconceived notions (stereotypes) and ideas to preemptively judge a group of people, usually negatively.
• What are the 3 aspects of prejudice?

  1.) Affective (how we feel, emotions about someone / a group of people)

  2.) Cognitive (what we think about someone / a group of people)

  3.) Behavioural (what we do to someone / a group of people)
• What is the 4th aspect of prejudice?

  - Discrimination = it is the behavioural outcome of holding a prejudicial attitude towards someone / a group.

  - Prejudice can exist without discrimination as we may be prevented from putting our thoughts into action by cultural expectations or laws.
• How would you describe the situation when two groups are 'in conflict' with each other?

  When two groups are in conflict with one another, they are opposed because they disagree with one another over views, places etc. It is a clash of opinions that has not yet been resolved. Usually, there is a confrontation either physical or verbal as a response.
• What is competition?


  This is key to the name of the explanation - there is a goal that both groups wish to succeed at, but only one of them can 'realistically' achieve this - so there is competition between them.
• What is negative interdependence?

  As part of their competition, one group will seek to obstruct the other in their goal and actively participate in ways to ensure that the 'other group' fails.
• What is zero-sum?


  Zero-sum situations are where there is a finite and physical resource that is at the core of the competition between the groups (also known as 'limited resources').
• What are prizes?


  'Prizes' is the term used to describe more intangible goals such as prestige and political power.
• What did Ember and Ember ('92) find?

  - Found support for this explanation via an analysis of conflict when related to the scarcity (or abundance) of natural resources.

  - They found that intergroup hostility increased when pressures of population vs. resources led to competition between tribal communities.

  - During periods of famine or natural disasters warfare often broke out.

  - Conversely, when population density was lower and access to fertile land was not restricted, there was little tension between communities.
• Discuss the findings of Ember and Ember.

  - Anthropological (not a psychology study) and has found a statistical link between behaviour and availability of resources.

  - This is not the same strength of evidence as a controlled scientific experiment.

  - It does however cover real events (not artificially created scenarios).

  - It also did not investigate the affective (feelings) or cognitive (thoughts and stereotypes) aspects of prejudice that may have still existed between groups even when not in active conflict.

  - Not a full picture of prejudice.
• What is resource stress?

  - The resources examined by Ember and Ember are actual physical resources, not the more intangible 'prizes'.

  - Another aspect of conflict theory is that one group may perceive that their access to resources is under threat when in fact it is not.

  - This is known as resource stress. It is a particularly difficult issue to resolve in today's society as to them, it is a realistic conflict situation.
• How can prejudice be reduced?

  - One of the strengths of the 'realistic conflict theory' is that it gives a clear way to reduce prejudice and discrimination in the real world.

  -This is by means of creating superordinate goals - sometimes referred to as positive interdependence.

  - A superordinate goal is something that you want to achieve (a 'goal'), is a goal that you have in common with the members of another group, but importantly, it is a goal that you can both only achieve if you work together to reach it.
• What is supporting evidence for this theory?

  - Kai Sassenberg and colleagues (2007) investigated whether or not a sense of competition in general predisposes people towards more hostile attitudes to unrelated outgroups.

  - Primed East German participants to have either a competitive or cooperative mindsets by getting them to complete a general knowledge test in pairs.

  - Competition condition = told the person who scored top would get extra money.

  - Cooperation condition = told they would only get extra money if both people scored 20/20.

  - Found that participants in the competitive condition later showed more prejudicial attitudes towards an unrelated group (West Germans) than those in the cooperative condition - pre-existing prejudice.

  - Temporal validity - holds true over time.
• What is the contraidctory evidence?

  - Andrew Tyerman and Christopher Spencer (1983) asserted that it is not a natural condition for strangers to meet and compete against one another, but more likely that in real life the group members will be familiar with one another and have a history of social interaction.

  - Using a Scout troop whose separate patrols normally interacted a couple of times a year, they partially replicated the Sherif et al. summer camp study.

  - Using four patrols that met at a two-week long camp, the patrol leaders assessed the behaviour of the Scouts using a range of different measures: cooperation, atmosphere in camp, solidarity. They found that hostility did not emerge between the groups and competition did not inevitably lead to hostility. As the Scout patrols were familiar with one another, their findings represent a more realistic outcome and therefore, the researchers argue, has greater generalisability than the Robber's Cave.
• What are other theories?

  - Externally imposed competition between groups is not necessary to create prejudice.

  - Tajfel's (1970) minimal group experiment showed that prejudice, or at least discrimination, can arise from the simple act of perceiving someone as 'not like me', in this case on the basis of a very trivial task of estimating the number of dots.

  - Study shows that boys will treat others differently on the basis of information about group membership alone, suggesting that prejudice may be less about competition and more about our own knowledge of who we are and our self-worth - can be assessed through comparison with others.
• What is the usefulness of this theory?

  - The theory has been successfully applied to reduce prejudice and discrimination in society.

  - RCT proposes that intergroup relations can be enhanced through the introduction of superordinate goals, which require in and outgroup members to work cooperatively to achieve a goal that would be unobtainable without joint effort.

  - This is a major strength of the theory as prejudice and discrimination are arguably two of the most important problems facing the modern world.

  - Elliot Aronson and Diane Bridgeman (1979) used Sherif et al.'s ideas about superordinate goals to develop the jigsaw classroom, an intervention for tackling racial prejudice in American schools.

  - Students had to work together and take responsibility for different parts of a group project. The end result was increased liking and empathy for outgroup members and improved academic performance for black minority students.
• Are the terms / phrases used in the theory ('realistic conflict') unambiguous?

  - Superordinate = unambiguous (common goals).

  - Conflict = ambiguous (how far would you say a disagreement goes before it is considered conflict).

  - In-group + out-group = unambiguous (perceive people as either with you or not).
• Did research to examine the theory have clear testable hypotheses?

  3 clear things he wanted to look at which he could test.
• Were the data collection techniques objective?

  In theory, a lot of the data collection techniques were objective e.g. covert observation, others in practice were not as such. For example, the questionnaires fail to be objective as you can't physically see what the boys were thinking/feeling about the others based on one or two sentences.
• Does the evidence base for this theory come from valid tests?

  - Sherif et al. used a high level of control and careful planning at each stage. Additionally, the study had high ecological validity and took place within a natural environment for the boys. - Unlike laboratory situations, where group behaviour is heavily manipulated, the behaviour observed between the boys was relatively naturally occurring.

  - However, later reports suggested that researchers influenced and coerced the boys into aggressive/antagonistic behaviour, undermining the validity of the conclusions Sherif drew from the study.

  - Temporal validity - the explanation/results hold over time.