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Key points
- Modern society faces growing polarization, driven by algorithms and echo chambers.
- Cultivating shared goals can reduce divisions, as shown by the Robber's Cave Experiment.
- Invest in social infrastructure to combat polarization and foster belonging.
In the scorching hot summer of 1954, the Columbia University social psychologist Muzafer Sherif ran a controversial experiment at an Oklahoma summer camp. He and his colleagues divided a cohort of 11- and 12-year-old boys into two groups and deliberately set them up to distrust each other.
The groups of boys at Robber’s Cave State Park—all from similar white, middle-class, Protestant backgrounds—had virtually no contact with the other, and each formed its own strong in-group identity with its own flag, songs, friendly games, and other bonding exercises. When the two groups finally met, it was to compete in raucous sporting events for prizes and privileges—rewards they could win at the expense of the other group. The tensions started with name-calling but soon devolved into stealing, vandalism, and violence. At a particularly dramatic moment, one group burned the flag of the other as the boys screamed and threw rocks at each other.
Sound familiar?
On the 70th anniversary of the Robber’s Cave Experiment, the setup seems less like an academic study than a metaphor for the polarized state of modern society.
In the age of the algorithm, we increasingly live in separate, sorted echo chambers where we share news, entertainment, and social media with our own cultural and ideological cohorts. At a time of anxiety about economic, technological, and demographic change, demagogues often use ‘othering’ as a potent strategy to mobilize voters. And—in the era of work-from-home and shuttered common spaces—it’s harder to benefit from humanizing chance encounters with the ‘other.’
Earlier this year, across Canada, protestors against the enactment of a Federal Carbon Price blocked highways, hurling epithets at government officials to decry the cost of climate policies. At the same time, large movements across the country continue to seek to stop the construction of oil and gas pipelines, and people strike from work and school to demand more aggressive action to save the climate. These groups of protestors may inhabit the same country, but they inhabit totally different worlds in terms of news, information, and social discourse.
This isn’t just political polarization. It’s a dimension of social isolation. And it’s now a global phenomenon.
This summer, in towns across the U.K., anti-immigrant protesters—inspired by online falsehoods—threw rocks at the windows of people they perceive to be taking their jobs and changing their culture. In the U.S., otherwise mundane school board meetings have devolved into fierce battles over different perspectives on issues like vaccines, race, and gender. Politics, virtually everywhere, feels less like a contest of ideas and more like a zero-sum fight between rival groups—different circles of belonging.
It can feel like we’re all living in the Robber’s Cave Experiment these days.
So, what’s the way out?
The 70-year-old psychology study offers a potential answer. After the group conflicts between the boys reached a fever pitch, the researchers introduced situations in which the two groups had to work together to solve common problems. Both groups of boys, for example, had to push a broken-down truck back to the campsite to get food and supplies on which they all depended. The groups were forced to put aside their differences to achieve tangible objectives for mutual benefit. Starting small, the researchers found ways to enmesh the two groups in a mutual sense of meaning.
The answer, in short, was cultivating shared purpose.
This isn’t always easy. When the pandemic first struck, I remember—amidst the despair—feeling a glimmer of hope that the shared challenge could unite people and bring an end to polarization. I soon found that I was wrong. We can’t simply count on challenges to automatically create a sense of shared purpose.
Rather, to realize the insight of the Robber’s Cave Experiment, we need to build social infrastructure for belonging.
This can start with remaking our information ecosystems—not just to ban hate speech, but to reduce the financial incentives for divisiveness. Design features and algorithms are often primed to maximize in-group news and opinion because that drives user engagement and helps sell ads. One answer is to require social media companies to help break the information siloes and place the objectives of shared purpose above the profit motive.
We also need investments in volunteerism—including national service. A recent poll from the Harvard Institute of Politics found a substantial drop in volunteerism among Millennials and Gen Z, relative to earlier generations. While I believe it’s a very good thing that younger generations have never known a draft or compulsory military service, it’s also important to acknowledge that national service—especially of the peaceful sort—can be a powerful catalyst for shared belonging. A range of studies demonstrate the unique value of service as a path to social connectedness. To build a deeper sense of shared purpose, we should invest in programs to engage or employ young people, older people, or anyone in a career transition in necessary work like public health, community redevelopment, disaster relief, ecological restoration, or other projects and purposes for shared benefit.
These are just a few of the many strategies we can employ to build belonging at a systemic scale. Investments in high-quality schools, community centers, public transit, arts, and social services, and health care aren’t just investments in public well-being. These are investments in strong community bonds, too.
The bottom line is simple: we need to make belonging a central focus of not just policymaking, but also everyday discourse and decision-making.
By the final day at Robber’s Cave State Park, there were blossoming friendships between members of the two groups. On the bus home, the campers reportedly sang a spirited rendition of the musical Oklahoma! together, and few were ready to leave.
Even when polarization and isolation appear to be insurmountable, a politics of belonging is still possible.
