The Den Of Thieves Experiment: Creating Conflicts From Nothing
We often wonder how so many social conflicts can exist. So many wars that have happened to humanity, so many ethnic or religious clashes, so many problems for coexistence or collaboration between people. The den of thieves experiment is a way to clear up all these doubts with surprising results.
This type of study was devised in the middle of the 20th century, just after the end of the Second World War, a time when countless psycho-social experiments emerged that provided answers to many unknowns derived from the conflict.
The den of thieves experiment took place in the United States, near Oklahoma, and was designed to detect the prejudices and ideological burdens that individuals carry with them on shoulders, often causing the most serious problems such as xenophobia, misogyny, and homophobia. Intolerance “of the other”, in short. There is a kind of “them against us” mantra that we often think we don’t identify with.
It was then two professors from the University of Oklahoma in the United States, Muzafer Sherif and Carolyn Sherif, who had the idea of doing this research. For this they selected two groups of children between 10 and 11 years old without a history of conflict, with stable families and a correct childhood to avoid external conditions.
First of all, none of the members of both groups (a total of 24 children) had prior knowledge of the experiment, and none of them knew each other or had crossed paths, since they were selected from different schools. It is important to insist on this section for the successful completion of the experiment.
A place was selected in the open field, in nature. It is the ideal place to get rid of any social stigma, a way to equate the individual with the rest by dressing in the same clothing, sharing a similar space and respecting it.
The experiment It was held in the well-known Cueva de los Ladrones Natural Park (Oklahoma, USA), and that’s where its name comes from. As soon as they stepped onto the field, the tutors completely randomly divided the children into two groups, called Group A and Group B.
1. Feeling of identity
In this first phase or stage of the experiment, the authors are in charge of encourage the feeling of belonging to a group through joint activities such as swimming, hiking or searching for wood for campfires. In short, activities that strengthen interpersonal relationships.
2. Conflict phase
In the second stage of the den of thieves experiment, the teachers introduced elements or situations of friction between the two participating groups, differentiating facts that caused conflict. The verbal confrontation increased its presence and the children expressly asked for competitive activities to see who was better.
3. Collaboration phase
Surprised by how easy the friction phase had been, They decided to interrupt it and quickly move to the reconciliation phase To do this, the researchers strove to carry out activities with a common goal to eliminate these artificial prejudices that had been created. An imaginary agent was introduced that sought to destroy their edible reserves.
Again, the results were again significant. Groups A and B They decided to put aside their differences to fight a single enemy Apart from going in the same direction, the gestures of solidarity and fraternity that occurred between them also increased. The bad guy was no longer “the other”.
And what is the purpose of the thieves’ den experiment? This type of research aims to clear up some unknowns that we often ask ourselves. The results of the aforementioned case showed curious data, especially considering that the participants were people without a special predisposition to conflict.
The teachers were overwhelmed by the ease with which the groups came to create a feeling of hatred towards others. **It got to the point of not wanting to sit with each other at lunchtime, avoiding any type of close contact, including visual contact. As we mentioned previously, this phase had to be shortened.
On the other hand, collaboration overcame confrontation just as quickly. What does this tell us? Good, surely the human being is more manipulable than many really think, a phenomenon that the ruling, economic and scientific classes take very good advantage of. It is enough for us to be told that something is bad or good to believe it.
