In the 1950s, a team of psychologists studying intergroup conflict collected 24 12-year old boys together and invited them to a summer camp called Robbers Cave. During the Phase 1 of the psychologists' experiment, each group did not know that the other existed. Boys in each group bonded with their fellow group members and each group came up with its own name (the Hawks and the Rattles) and designed a group flag. During Phase 2 of the experiment, the psychologists introduced the two groups to each other and soon after introduced a sports tournament with prizes for winners and nothing for losers. As campers grew closer to their "in groups" and bonded over a common dislike of the "out groups," conditions in the camp became so hostile that the Hawks burned the Rattles' flag and the Rattles ransacked the Hawks cabin and stole some of their trophies and belongings. During Phase 3 of the experiment, the psychologists reduced the hostility between the groups by presenting them with a serious logistical problem: the pipes that supplied all of the water to the camp had been tampered with so that none of the boys could access water. As the boys worked toward a new "superordinate goal," as the experimenters called it, that was not zero-sum, but beneficial for all, they peacefully worked together. After solving a number of other superordinate problems together, the boys even requested that they be able to sit with other team members on their bus ride home from the camp.
These results initially seem inconsistent with Olson's theory of groups. The first point of potential inconsistency lies in the absence of the free rider problem in the campers at Robbers Cave. The psychologists reported that the boys, when working toward their superordinate goals, were all involved in the labor that it took to achieve them. However, this exception from from the free rider rule seems reasonable: unlike the characters of Olson's two main analogy groups (firms in a competitive industry and taxpaying citizens), the boys at Robbers Cave looked to secure extremely high gains (accessing their only water supply) in exchange for a very minimal personal investment. (The opportunity cost of the boys' labor on the pipes is fairly low- they were giving up their leisure, but this price is small compared to income or profits that is asked of firms and citizens.) The free rider problem could have also been absent because the size of the entire group was fairly small (24 boys). The second potential point of inconsistency lies in the fact that the group productivity* stayed at a high level even though the group size doubled from Phase 2 to Phase 3. This discrepancy can be solved by re-examining the first point: an absence of the free rider problem means low organization costs. Low organization costs mean fewer barriers to group productivity.
*I'm using the word productivity here to generally describe the hard work that the boys put into their tasks (eg. becoming the best sports team during Phase 2, or fixing the water problem during Phase 3).
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While the free rider problem may not have caused fatal dehydration, it seems to have decreased the campers’ efficiency in solving the Drinking Water Problem. The authors write 1) that work lasted 45 minutes, interest lagged during the last 15 minutes and 2) that 15-19 boys (roughly 60%-80%) watched from the sidelines and 3) that “completion of the task was not in view.” Perhaps if the boys unclogging the drain had been allowed to form a union and offer selective incentives to workers, the task could have been completed faster. The union could have posted guards around the faucet to ensure that non-members would go thirsty. Perhaps they could have denied water to the camp counselors and demanded better camping conditions. Unfortunately, Muzafer Sherif et al would probably not have been willing to structure the experiment this way and risk ethics violations. Then again, it was 1954.
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