What Robbers Cave Can Teach You About Duo-Politics
Either-or fallacy is terrible reasoning
If you’ve ever screamed for or against, in support of or in opposition to a particular political party, find yourself excusing behaviours with lame excuses or amplifying what the other side does, you’re probably a victim of Robbers Cave.
Robbers Cave?
Robbers Cave experiment is probably one of the least talked about psychological experiments out of many, and it offers a powerful insight into human psychology.
Back in 1954, Muzafer Sherif, a Turkish-America social psychologist, took 22 boys - 11 year old fifth graders - to Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma to conduct an experiment into ‘realistic conflict theory’.
The boys were described as having “average-to-good school performance and above average intelligence with a protestant, two parent background”, and thus were not known for misbehaving, nor did they come from dysfunctional family backgrounds.
The boys were divided into two teams — political camps, if you will. The teams were divided as evenly as reasonably possible, making sure skills and abilities were evenly distributed amongst the group.
The groups were kept separate from each other, and the two groups decided upon names for themselves: the Eagles and the Rattlers. These emblems were then stencilled onto shirts and flags. Distinct in-group cultures formed, with each team having their own culture and identity. If this sounds familiar to politics, it should.
Conflict Phase Begins
Neither group was initially aware of the other at this point, and therefore had no reason to hate the other. In order to test his conflict theory, Muzafer Sherif set up a series of competitions between the two groups over 4 days.
These included baseball, tug-o-war, pitching tents and more. Prizes were given to the winners, which included medals and tool knives, with no prizes given to the losing team. Innocuous events that are non-threatening.
Even before the contests began and before they had met anybody from either group, both groups were already spewing vitriol for the other side, including talk by Rattlers of taking possession of a field to keep the other side off.
Experimenters set up situations where one team — the Rattlers — were late, and would discover the other team — the Eagles — ate their picnic in their absence. Things rapidly escalated where Eagles burned the flags of the Rattlers, and the Rattlers ransacked the Eagles cabin in response.
Violence After 4 Days Of Imaginary Party Politics
These were two imaginary, non-existent groups that didn’t exist 4 days earlier, and the children hadn’t been told by anyone to act this way. They automatically adopted this ‘us versus them’ either-or fallacy instinctively.
They had become so violent towards each other, over imaginary — practically political — teams, that the researchers had to physically separate them and end the conflict phase of the program early. The boys had a two-day cooling off period and were told to list characteristics (remember: the teams were balanced in skills and abilities). They listed their own in-group favourably and the outgroup (‘the other side’) unfavourably.
Even when researchers tried to have the two groups meet in order to reduce tensions — without any competition or hostile tasks — the hostility between the two tribalistic, ingrained, pseudo-political groups would only worsen. A common enemy — a common problem — had to emerge before infighting was reduced. It was never completely stopped.
What This Teaches Us About Duo-Politics
Robbers Cave is used to exploit you and everyone you love, by shoehorning you into an equivalent false dilemma, where instead of two stupid sounding names like ‘Eagles’ or ‘Rattlers’, you get ‘Democrats’ or ‘Republicans’, ‘Labour’ or ‘Tory’, ‘Donkeys’ or ‘Elephants’, ‘Vaxxers’ versus ‘Anti-vaxxers’, you versus ‘Incels’, you versus ‘Election Deniers’.
Rah-rah-rhetoric involving Robbers Cave is used to make people make a dumb choice between two bad choices, invoking stupid appeals to ‘lesser evil’ fallacies whilst you get shafted by all sides and never look for common ground or shared solutions.
A little bit of inspired competition in media, rhetoric, words, setting, resources, wages and more and you end up at each other's throats.
How dare you disagree with me you anti-Trump, TDS suffering Fascist, you Communist, you Capitalist Pig, you Democrat, you Nazi, you Liberal, you Racist, you Bigot, how dare you air dissent with the in-group, don’t you know we’re all on the good guy team?
We’re on Team Patriotic Good Guy Heroic Lifesaving Do-The-Right-Thing Greater Good Team, it is the other side who hurl abuse and invent nonsense ideas, they’re the party of war and corruption and immorality! Those damn Nazi-Communist Liberal-Republican bastards!
The media do Robbers Cave daily, telling you to sponsor one side or other in rah-rah rhetoric, with vitriol suggesting murder, violence, abuse of power, censorship and more “but that’s just the other side” screams the Robbers Cave sufferer, “they’re the ones threatening me”.
Alas, no, they’ve told them that you’re the threat, and you’re told they’re the threat. You’re all working class fighting amongst yourselves whilst the rich riddle you with defective poison shots as they abuse power against everybody (just because some people opt to comply with the abuse of power doesn’t mean they’re exempt from it).
They won’t just divide on political groups either, but entire countries: ‘Iran this, Russia that, China this’. Apparently the ground of nations itself are at war with you, everyone in that country is bad and hates you. There’s no hardworking, common, decent folk there who have no beef, everyone who lives there is secretly your enemy.
It Applies To The Ukraine-Russia War
The irony is both sides will likely smugly declare it is the other side suffering from Robbers Cave, but, alas, no, both of you are. A new duo-camp has emerged.
Vote Camp Pro-Ukraine or Camp Pro-Russia. Both sides will scream at you being pro one-or-the-other in an attempt to make you fall in line with their groupthink.
There’s no room for nuance in Robbers Cave. You cannot be anti-war-in-general like Elon Musk, or you end up on a Ukrainian kill list, even if you previously helped the Ukrainians. In-fact, it doesn’t matter if you’re a 13 year old Ukrainian child proposing a peace plan to the UN, you still get put on the kill list.
Or, like Edward Slavsquat, you get attacked in ‘alt media’ for pointing out Russia have mandated vaccines for military service because it doesn’t align with ‘alt media's’ rah-rah-rhetoric of painting Russia continuously as a grand hero. There can’t be a scenario where all countries were evil and mandated the shot, so it must be a lie, all evidence be damned.
It doesn’t matter if the statements are true, well-evidenced, and come from the Russian government itself, it doesn’t align with the in-group thinking that a country’s government is infallible and thus Robbers Cave experiment kicks in again.
You’re just a globalist mainstream supporting pro-Ukrainian fascist you pig, how dare you highlight tyranny in Russia? Don’t you know there’s tyranny in [insert every other country also with vaccine mandates]? Ad hominem tu quoque never tasted better.
How Can You De-Condition Yourself From Robbers Cave?
Firstly, reject party politics. It is the absolute bane of freethinking. A party is another way of saying ‘group’ or ‘tribe’. You should vote on ideas, not people or parties. Who cares if General S—tstain the Fourth implements your idea, so long as it is implemented?
The second is to immediately reject anyone trying to identify a generalised ‘outgroup’, like ‘you’re pro-Putin’, ‘you’re a Fascist’, ‘you’re a Communist’, etc.
Outgroup generalisation is also Robbers Cave and it is a braindead form of argument because it doesn’t disprove any points being made, it is just saying ‘he’s the outgroup, hate him!’, which is tribalistic.
Be sure to try to call out such Robbers Cave behaviours and push back. Don’t let such braindead tribalism grow or it becomes worse, as outgroups and ingroups polarise along lines. A good trick is to remind the audience they don’t have to pick a side. The lesser of two evils is still evil. Saying the poison shots weren’t mandated doesn’t make them any less poisonous.
Look For It In Yourself
Seeing it in others is the easy part. You’ll see it everywhere. Sports teams. Politics. Video games. Online groups. Seeing it in yourself is the hardest part, because you won’t even know you’re doing it at first.
Catch yourself if you find yourself talking about ‘outgroups’, trying to trash an entire social strata of people. People aren’t cookie cutter, there’s variation within groups. Try to imagine a version of yourself in the other side or camp. Imagine what they think or feel.
If you find yourself talking about one ‘outgroup’, try to mention the other ‘outgroup’ as a counter-balance, so even if you cannot avoid the name calling or group identity politics, you are at least trying to neutralise the debate.
Don’t be surprised if both sides attack you and accuse you of “fence sitting” or being a “traitor” for the ‘other’ side even if you’re not involved in their garbage politics.
Pushback against false accusations. Don’t try to justify yourself to them, as it seems like grovelling. Instead, call them out for having such simplistic, one-dimensional thinking and behaviour. Highlight how free you are to think and to question by not being bound by their one-dimensional party politics.
Avoid In-group Arrogance
Never think yourself or your ‘team’ superior or better than the other side, even if it seems like they’re ‘trash’. Media reporting is nearly always lopsided, and it is what they don’t say that is just as crucial.
They might say a particular part of town is rife with crime. What they won’t report is the people there work as doctors, donate blood, give charitably, or do generous things (these aren’t “interesting” or “newsworthy” to the media).
Try to find things they are doing better than you are. Maybe they’re braver, maybe they’re more vocal than you are. Maybe they’re more effective or achieve their goals faster. Can you learn anything from them?
Don’t fall into the trap of either-or fallacy of Robbers Cave when it comes to duo-politics.
Individuals may read more about the Robbers Cave study here.
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very insteresting. the formation of in- and out-groups also has to do with want, or need, when demand is bigger than supply. and as kids my parents taught us not to blindly follow others if they'd do silly stuff and they used the example of lemmings jumping off a cliff to make us understand. although the bit about the lemmings apparently isn't true, we (sort of) got the message and learnt how to recognise manipulation.
This is an excellent teaching tool for all people.