About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about Sherif’s Robbers Cave study (1954), focusing in particular on: (i) this as a classic study on prejudice which explored realistic conflict theory in a field experiment involving two groups of boys at a summer camp; (ii) Sherif’s procedure and how his findings suggest that prejudice is not related to personality but arises out of a particular social context where a limitation of resources leads to conflict between separate social groups.

About the lecturer

Dr Juliet Wakefield is a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Nottingham Trent University. Dr Wakefield is a member of the Groups, Identities, and Health research group and has research interests in the social identity approach and implications of group membership. Some of Dr Wakefield’s recent publications include ‘Communities as conduits of harm: a social identity analysis of appraisal, coping and justice-seeking in response to historic collective victimisation’ (2022) and ‘The link between family identification, loneliness, and symptom severity in people with eating disorders’ (2022).