My team is the best one!

Muzafer woke up that Monday morning quite early. It was silent and dark outside that modest Oklahoma City hotel bedroom in that warm July of 1954. Carol, his love and his main companion in this adventure, was still in deep dreams whilst he was mentally reviewing his past years in Turkey and the US. Today was a big day. The culmination of many failures and some success. He hoped the experiment that was about to start in Robbers Cave State Park (OK) would catapult him into an eminence in the world of social psychology. He did not know yet, but he was setting the foundation of the Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT).

It had not been an easy ride for him, Dr. Sherif. His first two experiences in the US at Harvard and Columbia had been quite successful earning him a PhD, a great reputation and a safe haven in Ankara University back home. Since then, his life had become utterly complicated. First the political situation in Europe made him flee to the US and then, in the US, the scrutiny of the FBI regarding his ideology had become an incredible burden for his personal life and his research.

But nothing could derail him from this test. He was obsessed by how others, and particularly groups, influence human behaviour. His experience, back in the 30s in Turkey with catastrophic interethnic violence fuelled his academic goal. He wanted to show the world a way to prevent it.

For Robbers Cave, he had carefully selected 22 eleven-year-old kids with similar backgrounds who did not know each other previously. He had convinced their parents to bring them to a summer camp in Robbers Cave. His team of researchers had divided the kids into two random groups, the Eagles and the Rattlers.

In the first phase, one week, the two groups would live isolated one from the other so that they individuals would bond. They would hike, swim and have a great time together. In the second phase, another week, they would meet the other team and compete against each other. In a final phase, one day, they would work together towards a common goal.

Immerse in those thoughts he got dressed, took breakfast and jumped, together with Carol, on the car that would bring him to his lifetime experience…

The experiment, a highly famous and controversial one, resulted into two teams that initially developed different social norms, structure and leadership. When the teams met each other, group conflict and friction quickly began. Prejudice started verbally but turned into violent acts (ex. burning the other’s flag) which led to the counsellors having to even separate the teams physically. Researchers, after a cool-off period, asked each individual to list characteristics of the two groups. The bias towards one’s group was extreme. Then, in the final stage, when both teams were to work together on a common goal (the source of water for the camp was shut down), all frictions dropped immediately, teams realized it was better to work together and collaboration blossomed.

RCT was developed consequently. It explains how intergroup hostility can arise as a result of conflicting goals and competition over limited resources, and it also offers an explanation for the feelings of prejudice and discrimination toward the outgroup that accompany the intergroup hostility (Wikipedia).

As leaders, we sometimes believe our team is ahead of the others, we see ours as more collaborative, better performing and more engaged. As a result, we believe that our organization should render more attention, recognition and incentives towards our team. As Dr. Muzafer Sherif demonstrated over 65 years ago, we may be heavily biased.

-        Do you recognize this bias? In which situations?

-        What do you do to foster better understanding and collaboration with other teams?

I got to read about this intriguing experiment through a great book that I highly recommend: Good Economics for Hard Times – Esther Duflo/Abhijit Banerjee