The Lost Boys: inside Muzafer Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment

by Gina Perry

Overview

The fascinating true story of one of the most controversial psychological experiments of the modern era

Competition. Prejudice. Discrimination. Conflict.

In 1954, a group of boys attended a remote summer camp in Oklahoma. There they were split into two groups, and encouraged to bully, harass, and demonise each other. The results would make history as one of social psychology’s classic studies: the Robbers Cave experiment.

Conducted at the height of the Cold War, the experiment officially had a happy ending: the boys reconciled, and psychologist Muzafer Sherif demonstrated that while hatred and violence are powerful forces, so too are cooperation and harmony. Today it is proffered as proof that under the right conditions warring groups can make peace. Yet the true story of the experiments is far more complex, and more chilling.

In The Lost Boys, Gina Perry explores the experiment and its consequences, tracing the story of Sherif, a troubled outsider who struggled to craft an experiment that would vanquish his personal demons. Drawing on archival material and new interviews, Perry pieces together a story of drama, mutiny, and intrigue that has never been told before.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781925548303
Publisher:	Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Publication date:	04/16/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	504 KB

About the Author

Gina Perry is an Australian writer. Her feature articles, columns, and essays have been published in The Age and The Australian, and her short fiction has been published in a number of literary magazines, including Meanjin, Westerly, and Island. Her first book, Behind the Shock Machine, was about Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiences, and her co-production of the ABC Radio National documentary on the experiments won the Silver World Medal for a history documentary in the 2009 New York Festivals radio award. In 2013 she was a finalist in the UNSW Bragg Prize for Science Writing.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Part 1

1 Tangled Beginnings 7

2 In the Wild 17

3 Lost and Found 33

Part 2

4 The Watchers 53

5 Initiation 80

6 Showdown 110

7 Robbers Cave 148

8 Nation States 170

9 Sweet Harmony 193

Part 3

10 Empire 229

11 Burning Memory 247

12 America and Back 267

13 Oklahoma 289

14 The Museum of Innocence 311

A Note on Sources 339

Chapter Notes 347

References 363

Acknowledgements 373

Editorial Reviews

01/14/2019

Using archival notes and new interviews, Australian psychologist Perry (Behind the Shock Machine) looks at a notable 1954 experiment in Oklahoma’s remote Robbers Cave State Park in her unsatisfying history. After recruiting almost two dozen 11-year-old boys and dividing them into two competitive teams, social psychologist Muzafer Sherif and his team showed how, over the course of a few weeks, friendships could devolve into intense, sometimes violent, antagonism. Conversely, the boys would drop their antagonism and reunite when facing a common challenge. Perry uncovers some deep flaws in the experiment, which she calls a “choreographed enactment,” with the staff sometimes acting as “agents provocateurs.” Perry also spends time with some of the surviving subjects, now in their 70s, exploring whether any psychological effects remain. However, she drops this line of inquiry abruptly to devote her book’s last third to Sherif’s biography, which Perry hypothesizes might have influenced his “tribal war and peace research”: as a boy in the early 1920s, he witnessed particularly brutal violence between Greeks and Turks in the Anatolian town where he grew up. This seems plausible, but Perry does not really anchor it in Sherif’s own writings. Her long profile of him, and description of his experiment, will likely remain unsurpassed, but she never clearly establishes the Robbers Cave study’s long-term significance. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

When the first punch is thrown in the opening chapter, you know you’re in for a wild ride. In The Lost Boys, academic sleuth Gina Perry investigates the back story of a real-life Lord of the Flies study of human behavior at a summer camp. The fascinating journey—which takes us through the history of psychology, Turkey, and even American summer camps—reads more like a detective novel than a psychological history book.”
—Susannah Cahalan, author of the New York Times bestseller Brain on Fire

“Perry writes about Sherif’s complicated past, why he was able to carry out the test, and how the boys banded against each other at the camp. But she also digs into the theory behind it, which feels spookily relevant now: the idea that we easily pick sides based on arbitrary circumstances, and that can lead to violence.”
—Outside Magazine

“[F]ascinating and not a little chilling.”
—Esquire

“This is a wonderful book; I couldn’t stop reading once I started. Gina Perry is not only a thorough researcher, she’s also a great writer. A lot of psychology textbooks will have to be updated after her groundbreaking research.”
—Rutger Bregman, author of Utopia for Realists

“A cleareyed assessment of a significant chapter in the history of psychology and social science.”
—Kirkus

"This brilliant reexamination of a study that resonates today should interest scholars as well as undergraduate and graduate psychology students." STARRED REVIEW
—Library Journal

"In assessing the ostensible success of the experiment and the work of Sherif, who emerges as an extremely difficult man, arrogant and conceited, Perry has done prodigious research."
—Booklist

"[This] long profile of him [Sherif], and description of his experiment, will likely remain unsurpassed."
—Publishers Weekly

“In The Lost Boys, Gina Perry has created a meticulously-researched, skilfully crafted account of a decades-old experiment that still casts a shadow over the lives of its subjects. This is a fascinating, disturbing and utterly compelling cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific obsession.”
Michael Brooks, author of The Quantum Astrologer's Handbook

“In The Lost Boys, Gina Perry puts these extraordinary experiments under the microscope. As in her 2013 book Behind the Shock Machine, which probed psychologist Stanley Milgram’s 1960s research on obedience, she is unsatisfied with the half-truths lazily handed down in textbooks…The result is an enlightening read, and a ripping yarn.”
—Nature

“[A] fascinating study.”
—The Guardian

From the Publisher

Praise for Behind the Shock Machine

“A necessary and gripping book.”

Maria Tumarkin

When the first punch is thrown in the opening chapter, you know you’re in for a wild ride. In The Lost Boys , academic sleuth Gina Perry investigates the back story of a real-life Lord of the Flies study of human behaviour at a summer camp. The fascinating journey—which takes us through the history of psychology, Turkey, and even American summer camps—reads more like a detective novel than a psychological history book.”

Susannah Cahalan

‘Touching and horrifying.’

Times Literary Supplement - Barnaby Crowcroft

[A] fascinating study.”

The Guardian

Intriguing…Written in an engaging style, it will fascinate both academics and casual readers alike.”

Canberra Weekly

[A]s engrossing as a thriller.”

Irish Examiner

In The Lost Boys , Gina Perry has created a meticulously-researched, skilfully crafted account of a decades-old experiment that still casts a shadow over the lives of its subjects. This is a fascinating, disturbing and utterly compelling cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific obsession.”

Michael Brooks

In The Lost Boys , Gina Perry puts these extraordinary experiments under the microscope. As in her 2013 book Behind the Shock Machine , which probed psychologist Stanley Milgram’s 1960s research on obedience, she is unsatisfied with the half-truths lazily handed down in textbooks…The result is an enlightening read, and a ripping yarn.”

Nature

‘An engrossing expose of the Robbers Cave experiment, a classic study in social psychology, was also a fine historical recreation.’

ABR's ‘Books of the Year 2018' - Gideon Haigh

[F]ascinating and not a little chilling.”

Esquire

[Perry’s] analysis of Sherif’s scientific process benefits from a distance, seeing revelations that Sherif and his staff were too close to see. It was enthralling and appalling at the same time.”

Tonstant Weader

Praise for Behind the Shock Machine

“Fine, thought-provoking science writing.”

Adelaide Advertiser

In The Lost Boys , Gina Perry returns to the terrain of morally dubious and manipulative psychological experiments.”

The Saturday Age

Perry writes about Sherif’s complicated past, why he was able to carry out the test, and how the boys banded against each other at the camp. But she also digs into the theory behind it, which feels spookily relevant now: the idea that we easily pick sides based on arbitrary circumstances, and that can lead to violence.”

Outside Magazine

Mesmerising…Perry is a deeply thoughtful and empathetic writer.”

Spectator

[F]ascinating.”

The TImes

Enthralling.”

Australian Book Review

Praise for Behind the Shock Machine

“A remarkable example of how good creative non-fiction is researched and written…a compelling true story that fascinates and informs at the same time.”

Lee Gutkind

A fascinating and finely written study of one of the best-known social experiments of the twentieth century. Through archive research and interviews with participants, Gina Perry uses her investigative flair to reconstruct the context, characters, and stakes of this strange piece of history.”

Darian Leader

This is a wonderful book; I couldn’t stop reading once I started. Gina Perry is not only a thorough researcher, she’s also a great writer. A lot of psychology textbooks will have to be updated after her groundbreaking research.”

Rutger Bregman

[Gina Perry’s] central point never loses its shock value: ‘How many psychological wounds were caused in pursuit of scientific and historical understanding?’”

The Mail on Sunday

Fascinating…excellent.”

Weekend Australian

[An] excellent piece of non-fiction interrogating one of the most celebrated pieces of psychological research of the mid-20th century.”

Herald Sun

★ 03/01/2019

Perry (Behind the Hock Machine) presents the fascinating true story of the infamous Robbers Cave experiment, perhaps the most controversial psychological study of modern times. In the early 1950s, a group of boys attended a remote summer camp in Oklahoma. For purposes of the study, they were divided into two groups and encouraged to bully, harass, and demonize one another. In the end they reconciled, and the principal researcher, psychologist Mazafur Sherif, showed that while hatred and violence are powerful forces so are cooperation and harmony. Prejudice, hostility, and brutality, Sherif found, were the result of attitudes and relationships among various factions in society. Perry contextualizes the study, which was conducted at the height of the Cold War, and draws on archival material and new interviews to offer an updated analysis. VERDICT This brilliant reexamination of a study that resonates today should interest scholars as well as undergraduate and graduate psychology students. Also consider Paige Rawl's memoir Positive, one of the best titles on bullying to date.—Claude Ury, San Francisco

Library Journal

2019-01-13

The story of a Turkish-American social psychologist who devised experiments to reveal the sources of brutality.

While conducting research in the Archives of the History of American Psychology, Australian psychologist Perry (Culture and Communication/Univ. of Melbourne; Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments, 2013) came across the papers of Muzafer Sherif (1906-1988), a noted psychologist who devoted his life to proving that tribal loyalty and peer pressure shape conflict and reconciliation. Sherif, Perry discovered, was a complicated, often abrasive man who could be demanding and, at times, charming; he pursued his work "with a singular focus and an apparently unshakeable faith in his own theory" about the cause of brutality. The contradictions of his personality intrigued the author, as did his experiments, in which young boys were brought to a specially designed summer camp, induced to form friendships, then goaded into competition with one another to foment hatred, and finally manipulated into cooperating to solve a common threat. Sherif and his researchers interacted with the boys in various roles, taking detailed notes. Reading that material, Perry became disturbed about the ethics of Sherif's work, especially the 1954 Robbers Cave experiment. There, at an Oklahoma state park, about two dozen boys were assembled "in an alien environment, surrounded by adults whose behavior puzzled and sometimes troubled them." As one researcher admitted to the author, the staff overtly "engineered events and set up misinformation so that one group would get angry with the other and retaliate." Perry interviewed several men who had been at the camp as children to discover how they had been affected, and she traveled to Turkey to investigate Sherif's youth for insight into his obsession with proving that brutality was not inherent in human nature but instead a product of social interaction. In grounding Sherif's work in historical and biographical context, the author offers insight into how an experimenter shapes findings and raises salient questions about the ethical implications of psychological research.

A cleareyed assessment of a significant chapter in the history of psychology and social science.

Kirkus Reviews