Researchers reproduce Sherif's Robbers Cave study. At a summer camp, 22 boys are divided into two groups that bond independently for a week. After they meet in tournaments with prizes for only one team, hostility, name-calling, and raids escalate quickly. Counselors then arrange for both groups to push a stuck water-supply truck together.
Tajfel's minimal-group experiments suggested that intergroup bias does NOT require:
- A
Categorization into in-group and out-group
- Bcheck_circle
Actual competition or prior contact between groups
- C
Some form of social identity
- D
Awareness of group membership
Explanation
Tajfel showed mere categorization—even based on trivial criteria like coin-toss assignment—produces in-group favoritism without competition or contact, going beyond Sherif.