Just to be clear, this was an elderly Palestinian man cowering under a bed who came out with his hands up and was murdered by an Israeli soldier who brags about it after.
Just to be clear, this was an elderly Palestinian man cowering under a bed who came out with his hands up and was murdered by an Israeli soldier who brags about it after.
Robbers Cave has been debunked. Short version:
Muzafer Sherif’s first experiment (“Middle Grove”) failed when the two groups worked together to figure out that they were being manipulated. The second experiment (“Robbers Cave”) was only apparently successful because the “camp counselors” were explicitly aiding and abetting the feud between the two groups.
Of course, Sherif didn’t mention these details when he publicized his results.
I don’t see where it’s debunked in that article, but I’d absolutely like to check out any other sources you have. I only found a Vox article that said he failed to disclose the first experiment and linked to that same page you did. To me, it seems more “scientifically unsound” due to ethical issues rather than “debunked”.
Even that author thinks he’s just like every researcher. I dunno. I’m not seeing the debunked angle. Ethical issues, sure.
Regardless, I still think it’s quite relevant even if they were manipulating the boys somehow; do you not feel we’re potentially being manipulated by other parties to feud with one another?
Fundamentally, it’s the same issue that affected the Stanford Prison Experiment & the Milgram experiment. You can’t claim that the subjects naturally developed certain behaviors, if they were being prompted or saw through the prompts.
Since Sherif proved himself to be untrustworthy after the first experiment failed to provide the results he was looking for, we can’t really trust that any of the conditions of the conflict between the campers arose from the campers themselves.