ROBBERS CAVE
Something similar shows up in social preferences, what economists call preferences that concern other human beings. In 1954, Muzafer Sherif and Carolyn Wood Sherif carried out an experiment in which twenty-two eleven- and twelve-year-old boys were invited to a summer camp in Robbers Cave, Oklahoma.53 The boys were randomly divided into two groups.
Each group spent some time living in a different location of Robbers Cave, so that the groups were initially unaware of each other’s existence. Then at some point the two groups were introduced to each other and made to compete, for example, at tug-of-war. This created animosity between the groups, leading to name-calling and attempts to vandalize the other group’s possessions. In the final days, the researchers artificially induced a water shortage, making it useful for the two groups to work together. After some initial hesitation, they did so and mostly forgot their animus.Some version of this experiment has been repeated many times, and the basic insight has proven very robust. Interestingly, the fact that arbitrary labels heavily influence our loyalties is true even without the bonding experience the initial isolation provided. Just giving a different name to a randomly chosen group of participants got in-group members to favor their own over the others. This was as true of adults as of eleven-year-olds.
Both parts of the Robbers Cave experiment are important: the fact that it is easy to divide as well as the fact that it is possible to reunite. That it is easy to divide is a strong reason to be extremely frightened by the xenophobes and the cynical manipulators of xenophobia who rule so many countries today. The damage they do is not permanent, but unless it is carefully undone it can leave a terrible scar on a nation. In Rwanda, the Belgian colonialists created the myth of the superior Tutsis and the inferior Hutus out of a more or less homogenous population as a way of securing allies in the process of governing. In the immediate post-colonial period, the Tutsis embraced their purported superiority, much to the resentment of the Hutus, and this became a crucial contributory factor to the horrific genocide of 1994.54
At the same time, the fact that preferences are not necessarily internally consistent makes attaching ad hominem labels—such as “racist,” other “ists,” or for that matter “deplorables”—to other human beings suspect, because many people are both racist and not, and their expressions of prejudice are often expressions of pain or frustration. Those who voted for Obama and then Trump may be confused about what each candidate stood for, but to dismiss them as racists after they voted for Trump is both unfair and unhelpful.
More on the topic ROBBERS CAVE:
- Banerjee Abhijit V., Duflo Esther. Good Economics for Hard Times. PublicAffairs,2019. — 403 p., 2019
- 62 Restrictions and Prohibitions on Pagans, Jews, and Heretics in Africa