Growing up in the United States, I’ve been exposed to a culture that emphasizes competition. Whether it was in sports, video games, academics, or even band, we are often pressured in some way to be better than everyone else. In my first years of college, I became fascinated with cooperative video and board games. I loved the idea of having everyone work together and, if all goes well, share the feeling of victory. As I learned to play more cooperative games, I began to wonder whether we could use more cooperation in American society. After all, is having a culture so focused on competition good for the relationships between people and groups? The Robber’s Cave experiment by Sherif (1988) seems to suggest otherwise, showing that intergroup relationships suffer in competition but build up in cooperation.
The Robber’s Cave experiment, as summarized by Gaertner et al. (2000), investigated the effects of cooperation and competition on two groups of boys. When the randomly assigned groups engaged in competitive activities against each other, the relationship between their groups became very adversarial. This outcome led to the realistic group conflict theory, which stated that the hostility between the groups resulted from real competition and conflicting goals (Gruman et al., 1988, pg. 407). When groups view each other as obstacles or even enemies in accomplishing a goal, intergroup tensions may increase dramatically and lead to intergroup conflict. It is not difficult to think of social groups in the United States, such as those of political beliefs, that constantly compete and conflict with one another on a national level. Could a national culture of competition be facilitating and possibly even worsening these kinds of intergroup conflicts?
At the same time, the Robber’s Cave experiment also shed light on how to reduce intergroup conflicts: cooperation. When the two groups were instructed to complete tasks that could only be completed through cooperation, intergroup relations improved and both groups had more positive views of one another. One possible reason for this outcome, as discussed by Gaertner et al. (2000), is that the two groups began to view themselves less as two separate groups and more as one larger one. Cooperation helped take down the barriers that previously separated the groups. Members of both groups could now see each other as equals sharing in a common struggle, resulting in positive intergroup bonds. Cooperation between groups of people can create opportunities for them to set aside their differences and build strong intergroup bonds with one another.
There is a lot of emphasis on competition in the United States, with the idea that you should do whatever it takes to get ahead of the others. However, based on previous research on how competition and cooperation affect intergroup relationships, I would argue that society needs less competition and more cooperation. By looking for ways to cooperate rather than compete, we may be able to reduce the hostilities that exist between many groups here today. We may also foster harmonious relationships with one another, opening ourselves to new perspectives and accomplishing greater goals together.
References
Gaertner, S. L., Dovidio, J. F., Banker, B. S., Houlette, M., Johnson, K. M., & McGlynn, E. A. (2000). Reducing intergroup conflict: From superordinate goals to decategorization, recategorization, and mutual differentiation. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4(1), 98-114. http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1037/1089-2699.4.1.98
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (2017). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Sherif, M. (1988). The Robbers Cave experiment: Intergroup conflict and cooperation. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Tags: Applied social psychology, competition, cooperation, culture, intergroup relations, psych424, Robber's Cave
Great blog post on competition and intergroup conflict, and I absolutely agree that here in the U.S. competition (in general) is an extreme sport. All reality shows that are based around competition force incredible challenges – on-the-spot creativity, extreme time management (i.e., make a winning entree in 20 minutes, etc.), and rigorous expectations – in order to ‘win’ on the show. Gaertner et al.’s analysis on the Robbers Cave experiment found that “categorization-based approaches not only can reduce bias individually but also can facilitate each other reciprocally” where “decategorization, recategorization, and mutual intergroup differentiation processes” all contributed to “the reduction of intergroup bias and conflict” (Gaertner et al., 2000). In 2012, psychology and anthropology researchers discussed “human tribalism and parochialism” as the “tendency to categorize individuals on the basis of their group membership, and treat ingroup members benevolently and outgroup members malevolently” by citing the male warrior hypothesis in intergroup conflict and competition (McDonald et al., 2012). McDonald et al. hypothesized that “tribal inclination is an adaptive response to the threat of coalitional aggression and intergroup conflict perpetrated by ‘warrior males’ in both ancestral and modern human environments” in that “male coalitional aggression could have affected the social psychologies of men and women differently” (2012). The researchers noted empirical evidence from “social psychological studies testing various predictions from the ‘male warrior’ hypothesis” showing “striking differences in within-sex reproductive variance outcomes, inducing relatively strong intrasexual competition among men in particular” (McDonald et al., 2012). The article discusses an interesting take on intergroup conflict and competition, which is the “evolutionary and biological roots of intergroup aggression” and “offered a novel theory,” the male warrior hypothesis, “inspired by recent findings in evolutionary psychology, social psychology, biology, and anthropology” in order to explain the “deep evolutionary history of intergroup conflict” (McDonald et al., 2012).
In 2000, another group of researchers studied “the distinct nature of intergroup phenomena” through social identity theory” discussing two social-psychological interventions “to reduce intergroup conflict,” finding that the first program improves “contact between members of previously hostile groups” and the second changes the “the structure of social categorizations (via decategorization, recategorization, and crossed categorization)” (Hewstone & Greenland, 2000 which is similar to Gaertner et al.’s findings). The European Journal of Social Psychology also published a study that set out to test the hypothesis of future consequences by “indirect manipulations of the consideration of future consequences reduce intergroup competition” finding that “intergroup competition was reduced from 42 to 24%” and the “discontinuity between intergroup versus interindividual competition was reduced when participants were trained to consider the future consequences of their decisions” (Wolf et al., 2009). One of the main constructs identified in reducing intergroup competition is cited by the researchers as ‘intergroup distrust’ where “future consideration reduces intergroup competition by reducing intergroup distrust” (Wolf et al., 2009). Lastly, Deschamps and Brown studied Sherif’s research and were specifically interested in “superordinate goals on intergroup differentiation and attraction” concluding that there are “circumstances when superordinate goals may not reduce intergroup conflict” and these were “predictable from a consideration of group distinctiveness and the implications of this for social identity” and discussing that the “introduction of superordinate goals may not reduce intergroup conflict but actually exacerbate it” (Deschamps & Brown, 1983).
References
Deschamps, J. C., & Brown, R. (1983). Superordinate goals and intergroup conflict. British Journal of Social Psychology, 22(3), 189–195. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8309.1983.tb00583.x
Gaertner, S. L., Dovidio, J. F., Banker, B. S., Houlette, M., Johnson, K. M., & McGlynn, E. A. (2000). Reducing intergroup conflict: From superordinate goals to decategorization, recategorization, and mutual differentiation. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4(1), 98–114. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2699.4.1.98
Hewstone, M. and Greenland, K. (2000), Intergroup Conflict. International Journal of Psychology, 35: 136-144. https://doi-org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1080/002075900399439
McDonald, M. M., Navarrete, C. D., & Van Vugt, M. (2012). Evolution and the psychology of intergroup conflict: the male warrior hypothesis. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 367(1589), 670–679. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41433544
Wolf, S. T., Cohen, T. R., Kirchner, J. L., Rea, A., Montoya, R. M., & Insko, C. A. (2009). Reducing intergroup conflict through the consideration of future consequences. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39(5), 831–841. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.592