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

254 Pages·2018·1.193 MB·English

by  Gina Perry

THE LOST BOYS
Gina Perry is an Australian writer. She is author of Behind the Shock
Machine: the untold story of the notorious Milgram psychology experiments,
and was a co-producer of the ABC Radio National documentary ‘Beyond the
Shock Machine’, which won the Silver World Medal for a history
documentary in the 2009 New York Festivals radio awards. In 2013 she was
runner up for the Bragg UNSW Prize for Science Writing, and her work has
been anthologised in Best Australian Science Writing (2013 and 2015). Her
feature articles, columns, and essays appear in publications including The
Age, The Australian, and Cosmos. Gina has a PhD from the University of
Melbourne, where she is an associate in the School of Culture and
Communication. Learn more about Gina at www.gina-perry.com.

Scribe Publications
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2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom
First published by Scribe 2018
Copyright © Gina Perry 2018
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved
above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced
into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
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prior written permission of the publishers of this book.
9781925322354 (Australian edition)
9781911344391 (UK edition)
9781925548303 (e-book)
CiP records for this title are available from the National Library of Australia
and the British Library.
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Contents
Prologue
Part One
1 Tangled Beginnings
2 In the Wild
3 Lost and Found
Part Two
4 The Watchers
5 Initiation
6 Showdown
7 The Robbers Cave
8 Nation States
9 Sweet Harmony
Part Three
10 Empire
11 Burning Memory
12 America and Back
13 Oklahoma
14 The Museum of Innocence
A Note on Sources
Chapter Notes
References
Acknowledgements
‘No social science is more extravagantly autobiographical than psychology.’
Jill Lepore
Prologue
Robbers Cave State Park, Oklahoma, 1954
After the sun had gone down, the boys raced one another from the swimming
hole to their cabins. They were still jubilant from their win, fizzing with
excitement, eager to get back and pass around their prize again, the handsome
silver knives fanned out on a stiff cardboard stand. Will shouted ‘Told y’all!’
triumphantly when he reached the cabin first. Panting and laughing, he threw
open the cabin door — and stopped dead. Mattresses hung drunkenly from
the bunks; pillows and clothes and comic books spilled across the floor. The
knives, which they’d put on a makeshift table by the window, were gone. He
let his breath out in a rush, then turned and started running, pushing past the
group of dismayed boys who had crowded in behind him.
Outside, the long twilight was fading, and the stone huts dotted through the
park were disappearing into the dark. He heard the others calling to him to
wait up, but he didn’t stop. He ran along the dusty track, feet pounding, and
across the stream, his heart racing so hard he could hear his blood thrumming
in his ears. Behind him the others had almost caught him up. The jumble of
their voices quietened and the air was full of the sound of panting breaths. No
need to stop and think, they just followed their instincts — an animal need to
retrieve what was theirs. Will raced past the mess hall, where the sounds of a
cowboy tune twanging on the radio and the clatter of dishes reminded him of
home, of his parents’ heads bowed as they said grace over supper. But he ran
faster, thrusting those images behind him. His parents couldn’t help him now.
And prayers were no use here. But he wasn’t afraid — he was as fierce as the
soldiers and the Indians whose spirits whispered in the trees. When he first
came here, he tried not to think about what animals were moving through the
dark. Now he bared his teeth as he ran. Tonight he wouldn’t be scared if a
mountain lion stepped out of the shadows, or a bear climbed down from a
tree. Behind him, the other boys rushed. They were a single panting pack,
zigzagging in and out of trees, feet flying, crushing pine needles, startling
birds.
He bashed on the cabin door with both fists. ‘Come on out and fight!’
At the edge of the clearing, man-sized shadows moved into the trees.
The biggest boy, who they called Red, sneered at them from the open
doorway. ‘Look who it is! The babies!’ He swung the door open wide to
reveal the boys inside the cabin, who huddled together, talking in low, urgent
voices.
Will caught the glint of a knife in Red’s hand. ‘Give them back!’
‘Get on your belly and crawl,’ Red jeered, and pushed him hard in the
chest.
Will staggered back. Behind him someone taunted, ‘Come out, yellow
bellies!’
Will rushed forward, howling and punching the air, but Red shoved him
with both hands, and Will sprawled in the dirt. As he got to his feet, Red
slapped his face with an open palm. Will’s cheek stung and his eyes filled
with water. The boys behind Will shrank back.
‘Crybaby!’ Red laughed.
‘Am not.’ Will used his head as a battering ram and threw himself at Red’s
stomach. They both fell, rolling and grabbing at each other, punching and
struggling. Some of the boys inside the cabin ran out. One threw a punch and
it was game on: they shoved and spat at one another, their faces contorted
with fear and rage. The air was filled with shrill, frightened cries.
Social psychologist Muzafer Sherif, disguised as the camp caretaker,
scribbled excitedly in his notebook, hardly able to tear his eyes away from
the boys rolling and punching and kicking. Here was the proof for the theory
that he’d been working on for years, that normally upstanding and fair-
minded eleven-year-olds could turn into brutal savages. An observer coming
across the scene, he later wrote proudly, would never have known that these
‘disturbed, vicious … wicked youngsters’ were actually boys who were ‘the
“cream of the crop” in their communities’.
Will rolled on top of Red, but Red grabbed his hair and pulled hard. They
were both howling, but neither would let go. Then hands were trying to pull
them apart, and Will heard adult voices. Will tried to resist but the man had
hold of his arm and pulled him to his feet. ‘Cut it out now, fellas,’ the man
said. ‘Or someone’s gonna get hurt.’
Will was too busy trying to take a swing at Red to notice how pleased the
man sounded.
Part One
1
Tangled Beginnings
It was a hot, overcast summer day in 1954 as a yellow bus drove twelve boys
towards the foothills of the San Bois Mountains in south-eastern Oklahoma.
The drive from Oklahoma City took just over four hours, and most of the
boys, who had been strangers when they boarded the bus, had made new
friends by the time they arrived.
Social psychologist Muzafer Sherif had chosen the location carefully. The
attractions of the nearest town, McAlester, with its soda fountains and picture
theatre, were far behind, but the boys didn’t mind. The Robbers Cave State
Park would be theirs for the next three weeks. It was their first summer camp,
a sojourn that promised excitement and adventure. Outside of McAlester, the
bus took a winding dirt road and ascended the mountain. Thunder rolled in
the distance, promising rain that never came.
They turned off at a pyramid of logs carved with the letters ‘Robbers Cave
State Park’, named because it was the hiding place of legendary outlaws such
as Jesse James and Belle Starr. It seemed an ideal setting. A handful of pretty
stone cabins dotted the treed park. There were lakes and a stream for
swimming, a mess hall, a baseball pitch. And the mountains, with their
hidden caves.
The boys explored the park, hiking, canoeing, and swimming. After they
saw two rattlesnakes at the creek, they named themselves the Rattlers. For a
few days they had the place to themselves, and pretty soon they felt as if they
owned it. What they didn’t know was another yellow bus had arrived,
carrying a second group of boys from Oklahoma City, and that soon they
would be locked in fierce competition.
Two weeks later, their faces covered with camouflage paint, the Rattler
boys crept up in the darkness towards the cabin of their enemy, the
interlopers who called themselves the Eagles. The Rattler boys raided the
cabin, upturning beds, emptying suitcases, and terrorising the frightened
Eagles. The midnight raid sparked days of retaliation and violence.
Nothing like the Robbers Cave experiment had been done before or has
been done since. Dr Muzafer Sherif and his team of researchers, disguised as
camp staff, closely observed the two groups during what the boys had been
told was a regular summer camp. Sherif predicted that when he brought two
groups together in a week-long contest of games and feats of skill, for which