Classic Experiments Revisited: Robbers Cave, the Autokinetic Effect, and Milgram

UPI Study › Courses › Advanced Social Psychology › Free lessons › Lesson 9.9 Free with a free account

Classic Experiments Revisited: Robbers Cave, the Autokinetic Effect, and Milgram

Advanced Social Psychology · Chapter 9: Group Dynamics, Conformity, and ObedienceSection 9.9 · lesson 62 of 8510 min · free with a free account

← The Weight of the Crowd: Social Pressure and Everyday ConformityNext lesson: Fear, Punishment, and the Law: Deterrence Theory and Legal Obedience →

Earn 3 college credits for Advanced Social PsychologyRecommended for credit by NCCRS · Psychology 310 · self-paced · one payment, lifetime access
Enroll in Advanced Social Psychology · $250 →Download the syllabus (PDF)

In this lesson

Three studies that built the field, and what half a century of scrutiny did to them.

  • Reconstruct Robbers Cave and its 4-phase logic
  • Locate the autokinetic effect within informational influence
  • Reconstruct Milgram's baseline study and its variants
  • Compare agentic state with engaged followership

Free study notes

Get this lesson's notes by email

The key points and 4 practice questions with answers, in your inbox. One email, free.

One email. Unsubscribe in one click.

Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,284 words). Read along, or search it.

Group Dynamics, Conformity, and Obedience

Classic Experiments Revisited

Three studies did more than almost any others to build this field. Sherif's autokinetic experiments, his Robbers Cave field study, and Milgram's obedience work. Every one of them has been revisited critically since. So this section has two jobs, and the second is the harder one. First, reconstruct what each study actually did. Precisely, with the real numbers and the real procedures. Second, say what survived the scrutiny, and what did not. Those are different questions, and conflating them is the usual error. A study can have a durable finding and a discredited interpretation. All three of these do.

Three Programs

What Each One Established

Start with what each program established. Sherif's autokinetic studies, from nineteen thirty-six. They gave the canonical demonstration of informational influence, and of norm formation. His Robbers Cave field experiment came later, published in nineteen sixty-one. It showed how readily inter-group hostility forms. And, more usefully, how it can be undone. Milgram's obedience studies ran in nineteen sixty-three and nineteen seventy-four. They documented something nobody had predicted. That ordinary people would give apparently dangerous shocks, on an experimenter's instruction. All three remain central to the discipline.

Sherif, 1936

Norms Out of Nothing

Sherif's setup is beautifully simple. Participants sat in a dark room. And were shown a single stationary point of light. The eyes cannot fix on a single luminous point without a frame of reference. So the light appears to drift. Participants were asked how far the light moved. Now consider why that stimulus was chosen so carefully. The movement is an illusion, so there is no correct answer. Every estimate is irreducibly subjective. Which strips out every competing source of evidence. And leaves other people as the only information available.

The Norm Persists

Still There a Year Later

The results came in two parts, and the second is the famous one. Individual estimates differed widely, as you would expect. In groups, they converged within a few trials. On a shared estimate that functioned as a group norm. Then Rohrer, Baron, Hoffman, and Swander followed up in nineteen fifty-four. They brought participants back to the dark room a year later. And found the norm still operative. Estimates tracked the original group, rather than reverting to baseline. That makes it the cleanest demonstration in the literature. Under ambiguity, others' judgments supply information. Information that is internalized, and persists in their absence.

Robbers Cave

A Summer Camp That Was Not One

Robbers Cave is among the most ambitious field experiments ever run. Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, and Sherif published it in nineteen sixty-one. Twenty-two boys took part, aged eleven to twelve. All screened for psychological adjustment. They attended what they believed was an ordinary summer camp. At Robbers Cave State Park, in Oklahoma. And they knew nothing of the experiment. Pause on that last sentence before we go on. The participants were children, and they were not informed. Ethical standards have changed a great deal since. The design would not be approved today.

Four Phases

Building a Conflict, Then Dissolving It

The study proceeded in four phases, and the sequence is the argument. In phase one the boys were randomly split into two groups, living separately and bonding. The groups named themselves the Rattlers and the Eagles. In phase two the experimenters introduced zero-sum competition. A tournament, with prizes for the winning group. Inter-group hostility developed swiftly. Derogatory stereotypes, raids on each other's cabins, physical confrontation. Phase three tested the obvious remedy, contact: joint meals and films. It failed. Food fights erupted in the dining hall. Phase four introduced superordinate goals: a broken water line, and a stuck supply truck. Hostility declined dramatically, and friendships formed across group lines. On the bus home, the boys voted to ride together.

What It Founded

Realistic Conflict Theory

The study founded realistic conflict theory. And both halves of the theory come out of the phase structure. Where does hostility come from? From real competition for scarce resources. Phase two manufactured the scarcity, and hostility followed swiftly. What does not fix it? Contact alone. It is the most forgotten finding: joint meals produced food fights, not reconciliation. What fixes it is cooperative interdependence: tasks needing both groups to succeed. The principle has a well-known educational application. Aronson, Blaney, Stephan, Sikes, and Snapp developed the jigsaw classroom. In nineteen seventy-eight, using interdependent tasks across mixed groups.

Milgram, 1963

The Baseline Procedure

Now Milgram, and the procedural details matter here. He recruited adult men from the New Haven area. Through a newspaper advertisement, ostensibly for a study of learning. Each met another participant, in fact a confederate, and drew rigged lots. The real participant was always assigned the role of teacher. His task was to give increasingly severe shocks for errors on a paired-associates task. The shock generator's labels ran from fifteen volts, marked slight shock. Up to four hundred and fifty volts, marked triple X. Which lay beyond a danger, severe shock warning. The learner sat in an adjacent room and never received any shocks. His protests, his demands to be released, and eventually his silence, were scripted. When the teacher hesitated, an experimenter in a gray lab coat used a scripted prod. Four of them, escalating to: you have no other choice, you must go on.

The Findings

65 Percent, and a Threshold

Sixty-five percent of participants delivered the maximum, four hundred and fifty volts. But where people stopped is more informative. The trajectory of disobedience was not gradual. Most of those who stopped did so before three hundred volts. And those who continued past three hundred almost invariably went to the maximum. If refusal were accumulating discomfort, you would expect a steady drop-off. A threshold suggests something else. Past a certain point, the decision has effectively already been made. One more number is worth carrying. Milgram asked forty colleagues to predict the result in advance. They estimated a base rate of around one percent. The gap between one percent and sixty-five percent is itself a finding.

More Than 20 Variants

What Moved the Rate

Milgram ran more than twenty variants, and those are the real evidence. Because they show which features were carrying the effect. Obedience fell when the experimenter left the room, instructing by telephone. It fell when two experimenters disagreed with each other. It fell when the participant had to place the learner's hand on the shock plate. And it fell when the study moved from Yale to a downtown Bridgeport office. Obedience rose in two conditions. When a confederate-teacher modeled compliance first. And when the participant administered only a secondary task. Reading the words, rather than pressing the shock button. Read those two lists as one claim. Everything that lowered obedience weakened the authority, or strengthened the victim. Everything that raised it distanced the participant from the act.

Two Explanations

Agentic State, or Engaged Followership

Two explanations compete for those results. Milgram offered the agentic state account. Under perceived legitimate authority, individuals shift. From autonomous moral agency, to seeing themselves as instruments of another's will. Contemporary scholars propose engaged followership instead. Reicher, Haslam, and Smith set it out in twenty twelve. On their account, participants did not stop being moral agents. They came to identify with the experimenter's scientific project. And saw their obedience as contributing to a worthwhile goal. Notice how differently the two describe the same participant. Agentic state is an abandonment of agency. The person stops deciding. Engaged followership is an exercise of agency, toward a misjudged end. The disagreeing-experimenters variant is hard for pure abandonment.

Consolidate

Three Classics and Their Current Status

So where do the three classics stand today? The autokinetic work is largely supported. Its mechanism is well-replicated, and the claim is unchanged. Robbers Cave is more complicated. Perry's archival work, in twenty eighteen, revealed undisclosed experimenter steering. The principle holds; the narrative is complicated. Milgram's baseline was sixty-five percent obedience. Burger's partial replication, in two thousand nine, found seventy percent reaching one hundred and fifty volts. So the proper conclusion is not that these studies were wrong. Their headline findings survive scrutiny. Norm formation, hostility from competition, high obedience to authority. What has evolved is the theoretical interpretation, not the data.

About Advanced Social Psychology at UPI Study

Advanced Social Psychology (Psychology 310) is a self-paced online course of 85 video lessons in 12 chapters, from attitudes, persuasion and the self to prejudice, attraction and relationships, conformity and obedience, helping, aggression and social life online. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.

Every lesson transcript is free on pages like this one, and the videos are free with a free UPI Study account. Enrolling adds a practice quiz after each lesson, the graded work and final exam that earn the credit, lifetime access, and an official transcript on completion. UPI Study has helped over 130,000 students with college credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Enroll now → Course details Download the syllabus All Psychology and social science courses Every course with PRO →

Compare: Social Psychology vs Sociology

Why take it here

Why students take Advanced Social Psychology with UPI Study

How other people shape what we think and doAdvanced Social Psychology explains how people think about, influence and relate to one another: attitudes and persuasion, the self, prejudice and intergroup conflict, attraction and close relationships, conformity and obedience, helping and aggression. It is a common upper-level course in psychology and sociology degrees.
Credit at a fraction of the priceThe same 3 credits can cost $750 or more at a US college. Here it is one payment, self-paced, with lifetime access.
Finish your degree soonerTransfer credits reduce the courses you still owe, so you can graduate earlier or lighten a heavy semester.
Strengthen an applicationA completed college-level course on an official transcript shows admissions and scholarship committees you can do the work.
Study on your own scheduleNo start dates, no deadlines. Watch the lessons, practice, and take the final when you are ready.
130,000+students helped with college creditsACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Where the credit goes

Universities that work with NCCRS

Advanced Social Psychology carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

Thomas Edison State UniversityThomas Edison State UniversitySigned partnerUniversity of the PeopleUniversity of the PeopleSigned partnerCharter Oak State CollegeCharter Oak State CollegeSigned partnerStrayer UniversityStrayer UniversitySigned partnerColumbia Southern UniversityColumbia Southern UniversitySigned partnerIndiana TechIndiana TechSigned partnerPenn StatePenn StateWorks with NCCRSSouthern New Hampshire UniversitySouthern New Hampshire UniversityWorks with NCCRSSUNYSUNYWorks with NCCRS +many more cooperating universitiesFind my college →

Find my college → Not listed? Ask Athena in the corner of this page, or book a 15-minute call.

FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Classic Experiments Revisited: Robbers Cave, the Autokinetic Effect, and Milgram

What happened in the Robbers Cave experiment?
In Muzafer Sherif's Robbers Cave study, published in 1961, 22 boys aged 11 and 12 at an Oklahoma summer camp were split into two groups, the Rattlers and the Eagles. Competition for prizes quickly produced hostility, insults, and raids. Simple contact, such as shared meals, did not help. Hostility fell when the groups worked together on superordinate goals, such as fixing the water supply. Gina Perry's archival work later questioned how the study was run.
What did Milgram's obedience experiment find?
Stanley Milgram's studies at Yale, first published in 1963, found that 65 percent of participants in the main condition obeyed an experimenter's instructions to give what they believed were 450-volt shocks to a learner, who was actually a confederate receiving no shocks. People asked to predict the outcome beforehand expected only a tiny fraction to go that far. The gap shows how strongly a situation can drive behavior.
What changed obedience levels in Milgram's experiment variations?
Obedience dropped when the authority was weakened or the victim was brought closer. It fell when the experimenter gave orders by telephone, when two experimenters disagreed, when participants had to press the learner's hand onto a shock plate, and when the study moved from Yale to a run-down office building in Bridgeport. It rose when participants only performed a secondary task while someone else delivered the shocks.
Has Milgram's obedience experiment been replicated?
Partly. Jerry Burger's 2009 replication stopped at 150 volts for ethical reasons and found that 70 percent of participants were willing to continue past that point, not significantly different from Milgram's rate at the same stage. Critics, including Gina Perry, note that experimenters sometimes departed from the script and that some participants doubted the shocks were real. Interpretations have also shifted, from Milgram's agentic state to engaged followership.

About the Advanced Social Psychology course

How many college credits is Advanced Social Psychology?
Advanced Social Psychology (Psychology 310) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
How much does Advanced Social Psychology cost and what is included?
$250, paid once, with lifetime access: all 85 video lessons, a practice quiz after each, the graded work and final exam, and an official transcript when you finish. Students who want several courses choose UPI Study PRO instead.
Which universities accept UPI Study credits?
UPI Study has signed partner agreements with universities such as Thomas Edison State University, University of the People and Charter Oak State College, and works with universities such as Penn State, SNHU and SUNY. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities. Use "Find my college" on this page to check yours.
How long does Advanced Social Psychology take?
It is self-paced with no deadlines. The 85 lessons total about 15 hours of video; most students add reading and practice time and finish in a few weeks to a few months, on their own schedule.
How are the exams done?
Quizzes and assignments are online in the course. The final exam is taken online with proctoring; a person on the UPI Study team checks assignments, usually within two days.
How do my credits reach my college?
When the course shows 100% complete, request the official transcript from your dashboard. It is sent to the college you name, and you can send it to more than one. Check your college first with "Find my college" on this page, or ask Athena.

Ready for the full course? Earn 3 credits in Advanced Social Psychology.

85 video lessons, a quiz after each one, and the graded work that earns the credit. Recommended for credit by NCCRS.

Enroll in Advanced Social Psychology →Download the syllabusEvery course with PRO →
Advanced Social Psychology
3 credits · NCCRSEnroll →