4 Comments
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David Cramer's avatar

Robber's Cave experiment suggests maybe not much more than creating the groups would be necessary

huera's avatar

In Robber's Cave the experimenters delibarately antagonsed the kids. More importantly, the researcher tried this experiment before Robber's Cave, failed to antagonise the groups and buried the results.

I'm with Cremieux that Robber's Cave shouldn't be taken too seriously:

https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/the-vast-emptiness-of-social-psychology#:~:text=In%20nature%20and%20tribes%2C%20cooperation%20breaks%20down%20and%20good%20people%20do%20evil.

David Cramer's avatar

forced to be on good... terms?

Matt's avatar

The military is an existing institution that provides one kind of surrogate family, and the training definitely aims instil these levels of mutual responsibility and loyalty. You’re automatically around people of a similar mindset, and you definitely get to use some pretty great amenities! There’s some obvious downsides, of course.