Very interesting that the children in the 1953 experiment correctly identified that the real outgroup was the researchers rather than the artificial outgroup of other children created by the researchers.
@@MadScientist267 It’s only a theory if they aren’t actually being manipulated. These kids were. I’d like to think that any kids seeing through something like that would be future leaders who can think critically and recognize who is actually doing them harm instead of alienating arbitrary groups of people just because some charismatic leader tells them to.
@@MadScientist267 remember when the NSA spying on you was a "conspiracy" watch citizen four the actual documentary of snowden's flight to russia by that very spying agency out to make him disappear so it could remain "just a crazy conspiracy"
"When preteens were given weapons!" I was like 9 years old when I got my first pocket knife, in the 90s. Granted it had all of a 2" blade, but learning to use a small tool knife responsibly is something I think most children should learn.
Like all of the kids in my family, I received a pocket knife when I was five years old. Safety and responsibility was taught and enforced. My kids have knives as well. They don't hunt, but they do fish. So, knives are a tool that can be used as protection if absolutely necessary. Kids can learn how to use something that people think is dangerous in a responsible way. Do you still have your first pocket knife?
Hell i was a mid 90s baby and even i got several knifes as a kid. We grew up messing around outside and hunting small game in the woods. My siblings and i were all shooting by 6 or 7. My older sister of 3 years was always a hell of a shot. Lmao
Yes but that was the choice of your parents or caretakers. They knew you well enough to know that you were capable handling it. A stranger giving a kid a tool that is capable of harm during an experiment like this? Surely you can understand that it's a poor choice. We are lucky that these children kept their heads about them.
As someone who was at a summer camp as a child that immediately formed tribalistic conflict and devolved into violence because the only adult in the camp didnt keep an eye on us I feel like I've gone through a similar experience. It got to the point where a kid got rushed off to a hospital due to sharpened stick related injuries. Based on my anecdotal experience I doubt the researchers behavior was required to incite violence or that intergroup mending at the end.
It would be interesting to see it done with consent in the current era, coming from being an 80s kid as well our school camps at a conservative boys school were really just our usual thuggery and picking on people, except out in the bush. Looking back on it, I wonder if some of those teachers deliberately engineered the crap we go up to or we were just barely domesticated teens. In any case there wasnt any long term effects and most of us managed to form cross-group friendships between boarding students and day boys, eventually. To some extent I'd also nominate the better side of each other in terms of being faced with adversity, people tend to work together rather than apart which makes me kind of dubious of the experiment to begin with the bias mentioned and adults also have different approaches to one another.
My take: I might have been lied to, but if I had paid $260 and found out my son had actually outsmarted a bunch of University professors i would be very proud of him.
The real life Lord of the Flies actually ended well. 6 boys who wrecked on a Pacific Island near Tonga actually helped each other survive for more than a year. They were also different races. This shows that such situations can actually end well (especially when they don't have researchers antagonizing them).
I never really trust the "humans are inherently programmed for vicious competition between rival groups" experiments that artificially establish the competing groups and choose the experimental subjects from cultures where competition is held up as a good thing in itself. The situation you mention is a great example of how actually, people can react to extreme hardship by pulling together and refusing to abandon anyone -- especially when there's nobody (and no circumstance) enforcing an in-group/out-group dynamic.
Generally humans are more prone to helping than hurting each other. People also tend to forget how much time passed before violence arose in Lord of the Flies, that it was triggered by the children finding a body, and that the author was writing about a very specific group of kids, not humans as a whole
@@somedragonbastard *Lord of the Flies* was also an expression of belief rather than a documentary; what the author thought would be an expression of behavior outside the influence of (Western) civilization.
* common goal (I wonder how likely the kids would be to start a fight if there were no adults around, they might be less likely knowing there'd be no one there to help them). I think that 'shared, mutually-beneficial goals' was probably the key take-away from the study (i.e. goals around mitigating boredom, ensuring survival, not going hungry, emotional comfort, assuming plentiful resources). It's so easy for humans to devolve in to basic tribalism (he has a different skin colour to me = fear, but I can't articulate this, nor am I emotionally mature enough to ameliorate it so -- anger and suspicion!), especially when there's a lack of resources around and survivalism is provoked (e.g. Donner Party, The Raft of the Medusa).
LotF is about Original Sin. As a Jew, I didn't understand the book until I recognized the title is Beelzebub translated to English, and realized that. (Jews don't relate to Original Sin in the same way as Christianity.)
Honestly, as a teacher, I think the 1953 experiment sounds downright funny. The researchers were so careless and the children were a lot more clever than they were given credit for. I'd love to hear a bit more out of it, but I suppose there isn't much information since it was canceled?
@@KutWrite what an odd takeaway from an account of a defective and abusive experiment - politics! Tell me, it's raining outside here, does politics cause that as well?
@@TheGavrael the video briefly mentioned politics, not make politics a primary focus. That's like commenting on a video on economics and because the existence of political contributions was mentioned once, early in the video, commenting at length on politics in general and using a single sentence to justify the comment. Especially on a study that was so problematic as to make P torturing to fake results look like a good and valid practice! Seriously, the data was so tortured during the study as to say whatever they wanted it to say just to stop the torture. The observers literally became participants, invalidating all observations or theories being tested.
Interesting that you consider the knives as prizes in a summer camp as "weapons". My mind immediately thought of them as fitting wilderness survival tools.
UK cultural difference. In the UK knives aren't seen as utilitarian tools, they are seen as pure weapons. Mainly due to the ever increasing knife crime rate in the UK and the absence of firearms.
Aside from the lack of consent and other issues that can be justified in the context of an experiment, they actually made the parents pay for it. "We want to do a psychological study on your kid in the middle of nowhere for a few weeks. And no, you can't visit. So... will you be paying us by cash or check?"
Nice one 🍻 'Why are there microphones in our tents?' Also, children are good at noticing when adults are acting differently than usual. I feel like the researchers heavily underestimated the cognitive abilities of the young lads.
"Wait and who is funding this study?? And they want to see if they can stoke divisions among white protestant Americans??... ...sir, I'm noticing a pattern but I know I'm not supposed to."
Children are naturally curious, but this "camp" is new to all of them. What else would they have to analyze and talk about other than this different new camp experience they all have?
@@Danielson1818 1949 was right after the war. These children were pre-boomers. These kids where probably very well aware of being able to hunt, build shelter, and possible make their own weapons. It wasn't till the college kids thinking they where smart running around during Vietnam that we saw such a social and moral decline in American society. After 100 years of being close to or at war with our neighbors, society was starting to move towards the right direction on America.
@@richardhands904 we've got people celebrating a 9 y.o. boy stripping qnd dancing for grown f@cking men. You are scorned for protecting your children from drag queen story hour. What moral decline? Drugs are bad OK and we know that. These people sold their soul, or never woke it up.
I have a feeling many fights with children were rarely stopped quickly. I’m from that neck of the woods. If a fight broke out there was an older voice saying “let them get it outta their system”. The elders felt that there was typically a lesson to be learned in a fight wether you win or lose. 1954 would’ve probably held that sentiment a lot more strongly than we do today.
Yep I'm from that generation of let them fight it out. Let's be honest fighting usually solves whatever the problem was before it escalated to something more. I personally think that's why we have such a mental health problem with kids nowadays because they're taught it's not ok to protect yourself.
@@lazydaze3134 The kids dont need to protect themselves if the adults (be parents, teachers, etc) were to give a damn and stop pointless bouts from starting.
@@lazydaze3134 All that does is teach children might makes right. That's why we had such horrible child abuse and domestic violence back then. We've always had mental health issues, the difference is back then we didn't record it or identify it. The reason those particular numbers are rising is because our doctors and teachers and such were not educated on how to recognize this as an illness. The same number of people are mentally ill as always, it's just we are actually diagnosing and treating them and therefore statistics are rising. Back in the day if someone presented with symptoms of anxiety or depression we told them to toughen up or go to church and they went untreated and thus not represented in the statistics. We only "treated" (I use that term loosely) the most severe mental illnesses back then like schizophrenia, autism or being a woman/minority. I'm obviously being sarcastic there but as a psychiatric historian you'd be astonished at the number of admission papers I've read where a husband had his wife committed because she stopped wearing make up everyday or wasn't performing her 'household or wifely duties' up to the husbands standard. This in turn created a very strange bias in statistics suggesting women and minorities were far more likely to become mentally ill reinforcing ignorant stereotypes. The point is use skepticism and look into statistics, especially of the mental health variety and I'd even go so far as to say most of the mental health statistics pre 2000ish isn't just wrong, it's flat out intentionally misleading.
Let's just take a moment to appreciate that whether it was ethical or scientific or none of the above, these people took some kids out to the woods, got them to form gangs, and armed them.
@@giveusakiss1time Unethical experiments, lifelong scarring and a few hundred today-dollars seems like a bargain price to get rid of the kid for a week in the summer. I mean who wants that little monster around? He's not even twelve and forming armed gangs! I blame society.
Funnily enough, the UK, where Plainly Difficult is made, has NOT recognised the Armenian Genocide, going as far as publishing an internal Document called "Was there a Armenian Genocide?" Scottland and Northern Ireland have independantly recognised it, but not England. I really hope this was just a slip up, cause I'd hate to have watched a Genocide Denier all these years.
My first thought was maybe youtube doesn't like genocide. I could understand not saying it to keep monetization, but if that's the case you could phrase it a lot of different, better ways.
Honestly not that bad. You rated this a number higher than the *Stanford Prison Experiment!* The parents definitely should have been almost fully informed on what was going to happen, especially since they wouldn’t even be there, but no serious injuries occurred, and it seems like the kids even had a pretty good time. I would probably look back on it fondly if I took part of it.
I just finished the book on it about 3 wks ago. The way I've seen some people talk about it on social media, I was expecting to read about an all out brawl towards the end. It was nothing like that, they actually worked together and made friends towards the end.
@@JohnnyTheDredonly because behavior modification wasn't yet introduced like "physically adjusting". As a kid who went through the newest programs in the early 2000s. Think Jason Bourne but the targets are kids from broken homes with one foot in the juvenile system.
Ummm, there's a like button, a view counter and sub count for that. You humans lol. Hurry up and evolve already. You waste your lives praising people in extra curricular ways. Why don't you let the data do it for you. You're trying to tie your emotions to his values you energy leech.
@@kateapple1 he just outlines what happens, everyone learns differently lmao Plus a lot of Big editing youtube channels are watered down and way too overwhelming for me, so I prefer Mr Plain, it's literally in the name loll
If you really want to study "in groups," just be a teenage girl going through an all-girls high school. It only took a week or two for me to realize what groups I wasn't welcome in. And this was in the early 1990s. I can't imagine it has gotten any better over time.
You watch this channel for fun so you're probably at least above average in terms of intelligence. Smart women draw the ire of the fem collective wherever they are, school, office, video game industry. Doesn't matter. Mediocre women identify smart women as a threat and move to undermine them. So sick of seeing this. I freaking loathe the femcollective.
It hasn’t. It’ll always be like that I’m sure it’s a bit more welcoming but not terribly much. You can still tell where you’re not welcomed and your presence isn’t very much wanted.
teenage girls are the worst none of them ever wanted to hang out with me so instead i always played with the boys and got along well i bet its those bullies from back in the day that preach inclusion and peace today
I was expecting a more horrific outcome from the experiment, but at least am glad that it ended more peacefully than harmfully. I do wish that the least the information was given to them by the end, in an attempt to be truthful and mend any conflict, thus teaching a lesson about the dangers of tribalism and unreasonable hatred. This entire study was practically unnecessary given the natural instinct and situations that arise in school settings, and definitely would have been possible to witness naturally in the 50s.
I totally expected someone to get stabbed. They probably should have had a formal debrief or something, but overall it was probably a fun experience for the boys.
Absolutely lol. Considering the emphasis on the trophy knives and theft of those knives, I was honestly dreading the outcome and expecting to hear how the knives were put to the test
When they started giving out knives I totally expected one of them to end up dead, not gonna lie. Whoever nicknamed this experiment the real life lord of the flies has never read the book, LOL
@@tinnitusisnotmusic6807 there was a literal lord of the flies situation with a bunch of children stranded on a Pacific island. Interestingly, no strife as outlined in the book occurred, all cooperated and eventually got rescued and returned home happy and healthy.
I’d rate it even lower, this was hardly an unethical experiment and not even remotely horrifying. Maybe a 2? They would’ve likely acted this way regardless of being in an experimental setting, I remember doing similarly dumb sh!t when I was a kid.
It's a pretty realistic experiment of general human behavior. Adults TODAY literally act like this on a daily basis... we sadly almost never truly overcome the negative sides of us being tribal in nature...
Didn't really require being set up as an experiment even. As you say, you could just look at interscholastic, next-town-over, opposing sports team rivalry amongst boys/young males. You'd get the same results. Young boys/men like fighting and see themselves as superior to the "other" group. There's nothing new in this. It's quite literally the majority of the history of humanity.
The experiment kind of reminds me of army basic training, where instructors promote inter squad rivalry in order to get the best out of their squad, obviously intervention occurs to prevent things getting out of hand. I think the staff may have unknowingly influenced the children, it would be impossible for them to remain totally impartial. Thought provoking episode, my only criticism would be your description of the Armenian genocide as deportations, the word genocide was coined specifically to describe those atrocities.
@N Fels Bullying was not uncommon in the British army of my youth, (1970's), the victims seemed to me, to be those of different ethnicity or race, although there were also the "Private Pile" sort, picked on for lack of fitness or effort. Sadly this did result in some suicides but again sadly this is also common amongst school children, the victims there, those perceived as "different". Perhaps it's a cultural thing, the six Tongan boys marooned on Ata island solved every problem thrown at them, including conflict resolution and survived for fifteen months until their rescue.
@N Fels My experience of training conscripts in the late 80-ies early 90-ies. the rules where very simple. Any coscript that where perceived as genuinely unfit for service, where sent to speak to the shrink or doktor depending on the reason. At this time getting kicked out on non physical reasons didn't look good in your CV. As I understod speaking to older officers the 70-ties where a very different thing as the 68-movment and flower power era had its high, it was the norm to be obstructive and difficult. this where the the golden era of group punishment and "grey punishment" to keep them in line. Conscripts that really scared them but where difficult to get rid of where the one's that wanted to learn "the tools of the revolution" That is always a problem intelligent extremists rightwing, leftwing, religious or whatever....
@N Fels I was in the US Navy during the 70's. I worked in the engineroom. When I reported to 1 ship, I could tell there was a serious lack of leadership aboard. It was a period of 'all volunteer" Navy (join the Navy, or go to Vietnam). There were three groups in the engine room, in order of the numbers, most to least was: Pot smokers Alcoholics Jesus freaks All were just barely giving a shit. Problem (or maybe advantage) for me was that the enlisted people above me, were the Alcoholic faction. The (one) Jesus freak, didn't care about saving souls, the rest were the predominant group was the pot heads... Yeah, I fit in the majority.. But, I have the one trait that most don't. I'm lazy.. I don't like having to do the same thing over and over again, because I didn't do it right the first time! So I taught the rest of the crew how to fix shit right the first time, so that we weren't working ALL the time! The division officer would bypass the Chief, 1st and 2nd and come to me (a 3rd) to get things done. One time he wanted something done, that was not "hard", but because of the heat and other discomforts, was gonna be a tough sell to get done. I told him I'd get it done, and done better than he'd ever believe, but he was gonna be the bad guy, the "common enemy" if you will (wasn't a stretch, he was an ass!) He didn't think it would work, but agreed to play along.. Yeah, it worked! Piece of equipment looked like it just come from the factory when done. He got a pat on the back for such a beautiful engine room, I got transferred off that POS, him and about 50% of the Officers (up to and including the CO) were relieved for cause 3 weeks later! Happy ending!
@@nubbetudde8922 "My experience of training conscripts in the late 80-ies early 90-ies" Conscripts? In the early nineties? Jesus Christ man, what sort of hell-hole country forces people to be in the military in the nineties? Were you in Iraq? Iran? Fucking North Korea? I feel sorry for you because I don't know what it must have been like to grow up in a military dictatorship like you did.
I also live in oklahoma and have gone to the park dozens of times for different reasons. I was also in the boyscouts and we would go there to maintain the campsites and trails. We have branched out a little since then and now we go to places elsewhere in the state or in other states but my time in scouting came to an end years ago upon reaching eagle scout. Fond memories there though despite some areas in the park being quite earie at times. I actually stayed there earlier this year and witnessed a flash flood that turned a little creek near our campsite into a raging waterway, all my years in the outdoors and it had to have been one of the craziest weather events I have ever witnessed which is saying something. We were familiar with the girl scout murders that occurred at camp Scott elsewhere in the state but I also never knew of this experiment until today. My time in the boyscouts had some similarities to this story just without the experiment, at least to my knowledge lol. This was in the 2000's though so long after this event took place. We did however hear stories of the military activities outside the backside of the park but to this day I'm still not too sure what was happening there.
I am from the area around Robbers Cave, and as a kid, went to a conservative church summer camp there almost every year. It’s a beautiful area. Didn’t hear about the experiment until sociology class in college.
I'd definitely rate this one MUCH lower on the ethics scale. Maybe a 4 at most. It wasn't an inherently dangerous experiment so the consent issue doesn't seem so big to me, and the fist fighting and general mischievousnous of the boys seems pretty on par for kids in the 1950s. Given this one took on the name "real life lord of the flies" I was half expecting one kid to end up in the ER
@@advena996 when we were kids, a pocket knife was for whittling sticks. It would be ludicrous to think a kid would get injured with a harmless pocket knife. Today the opposite seems true
It shouldn't even be referenced as "real Lord of the Flies" as it has zero relation to the plot of the book. The kids were fully manipulated by the researchers every step of the way.
This. What is the deal with sociology being held to 1000x the ethical standard as other branches of science? Poor bastards need to go before a review board just to hand out a questionaire. Meanwhile people researching weapons and sticking electrodes in mices brains get rubberstamped. I smell the corrupting influence of grant money again. A familiar stink.
I'm personally very suprised that you gave this a 7 out of 10. That's higher than the scores you gave in other videos where they tortured and killed animals. I would give this a 2 or 3. I probably wouldn't mind someone putting me through a similar test honestly.
Right? Like yeah, it was a manipulated experiment, but you have to think about it from the kids' perspective. They got to go on a trip, make friends (and enemies, which kids do seem to find enjoyable), play games, and watch a movie. In the end, the rivalry was settled and the prize was even shared. Sounds like a pretty good time to me. Edit: AND the results were actually (sorta) useful. For once.
@@the_Overture I totally agree. He gave the experiments where they literally give animals depression and ruin the rest of their lives and hopes for a regular interactions with any other animals a 4 or 5. Then gives this one where kids basically just go to camp while being observed a 7!? I would also rate this one a 2 or 3, solely because the lack of consent and small amount of violence.
Agreed. I would give it a 4 at the most. Yes, there was no informed consent, but that's understandable as there would be no way to run an untainted experiment with it. There was no long-lasting trauma or damage. Imo the most unethical part of this is that they made the parents pay tbh
what the heck did this sociopath rate those if it was seriously lower than 7?? anything involving animal abuse is automatically a 10/10 on the scale of how immoral it is
I grew up in Wilburton where Robbers cave is and have been camping there a ton both as a child in the Boy Scouts and as an adult with my children. It’s really interesting to find out about this happening in my own back yard. Good job.
Lol when you mentioned the seating, I'm remembering this little experiment that this Marine Cpl lecturer did to us during Marine Boot Camp. Just outside of a large outdoor classroom with a canopy, our Drill Instructors formed us up at one of the entrances and told us to wait for the teacher or lecturer as we usually do, as we were drilled to do. We were first there, followed by our sister platoon who we were sharing the class with. When the lecturer and his Lcpl TA came in, he gave us a simple command: "Take a seat." We did and we did two notable things. First we all sat in a formation, shoulder to shoulder, filling one side of the steel bleachers without any gaps. Second, we split ourselves between our platoons, ours on the left side of the classroom where we entered, the other platoon to the right side, with a clear and open gap in the middle between one. Now, we weren't really directly competing with one another, we were all there to do one thing: To be Marines. However, there is a scoring between the 4 platoons on which platoon performed the best during our training, but there was no prize aside from bragging rights that basically disappeared as soon as we left Boot Camp. The Marines there in front of us both laugh and informed us that we didn't need to fill up the seat like that. In that we could had sat anywhere on the large bleacher, even with our friends and fellow recruits. However, the Cpl did told us that he had asked the drill instructors to stage their platoons in front of the two entrances to the outdoor classrooms, just to run this little experiment; to see what we would do. This little experiment kinda shows how influential the Instructors/Adults really are to their kids, and that we tend to group and side with our own when you're unfamiliar with the other group, which we were, we only really interacted with the other platoons when we went on shared spaces like the track, classrooms, chow hall, etc. So after that, the Cpl suggested to us to move around while they set up the projector and props for the lecture. Allowing us to mingle with one another without the ire of the Drill Instructor. The class went on just fine. Even though I don't remember what he taught us, I still remember that one time in Boot Camp.
It's extremely reassuring that if you show people/children who the real out-group is that manipulates others into situations like these, there is a chance they will unite to revolt against the true out-group.
This experiment honestly doesn’t seem that bad. There was no heavy emotional damage, little kids fighting isn’t that uncommon even now, much less back then, kids steal things from each other and get overly competitive about silly things, and after it all the group all ended up friends anyway, there was no long term animosity. Whether the results were ultimately useful is another question, but I’d argue that the conclusions probably are still useful, though different from the conclusions of the original researchers, kind of like the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment Though Stanford didn’t really tell us that those in places of power will always devolve into violence if unchecked, it still shows that people can be convinced to do horrible things if they’re told it’s for a greater cause, such as the advancement of science And in the case of this experiment, I would say it’s still a good example of how groups that despise each other can come to like each other through simple contact
@@sarahlynn7807 to be fair, that was just what you gave little boys at the time. I think they knew those knives were never going to be used on each other because the animosity was never going to run that deep, it was a playful elementary schooler rivalry not a true life or death war
I think it's the lack of a control group that invalidates any conclusion that was drawn from the experiment. It seems designed to prove RCT and lo and behold that is the conclusion that was drawn.
@@tommykarrick9130 I agree. Also, I think another aspect of group dynamics comes to light when looking at the results: any 2 (or more) groups can be manipulated to turn against one another based on nothing but pulling external strings. Which I believe can be a lesson to adults in the real world where the ethical consequences of being hostile to a group based on made up differences are much more dire. I'd say the main take from this and similar experiments is to always question those who are trying to make you look at anyone else as an enemy, as your Other. Be more like the kids and question the authority pushing hate onto you. Ok bye
John. I have just enjoyed your Robbers Cave Experiment video from a currently cold overcast and rainy part of Old Hickory Tennessee USA. Great job as always.
I guess you haven't heard, but the real life "Lord of the Flies" actually happened. A bunch of kids got stranded on an island. But guess what? They all worked together and thrived. That's what really happens when manipulative assholes don't interfere, be they scientists or politicians.
To be fair, if they were stranded and needed to work together to survive, that means the group had a common goal to work towards together and there wasn’t an “opposing” group
Pre-teens with weapons was a thing, but pre-teens back then had a better sense of boundaries. I was 10 when I got my first firearm (a .22-cal rifle). My friends and I would fill a pocket with ammo, strap on our 22s, and hop on our bikes to go plink tin cans in the woods. Our parents' greatest concern was, "be home in time for dinner." Nobody got hurt. And none of us kids ever considered picking up a rifle in anger. Times today are way different.
You're 100% wrong. Violence was far more prevalent before the 1980s. Way more of your generation were rapists and murderers than recent generations. Get off your high horse.
this is eerily similar to what I experienced during last year of my life. My country (I'm from eastern Europe) has mandatory military service. I finished my 9 month service only 2 weeks ago, everything is still very fresh. When we were brought to basic training, our company consisted of 2 platoons, around 40 boys each, each platoon seperated into 3 sections. Rivalry between the platoons quickly developed. After 11 weeks of basic training, we got sent to a combat unit we were assigned to. We were divided between two smaller, specialized companies, the staff company and heavy weapons company I served in. The division was random, and it so happened, that I was now mostly with guys from the former "other" platoon. it was weird, also, the commanders were much, much stricter, and our life was turned into social hell for like 2 months, I believe this helped with coheasion of newly formed groups. Due to both companies knowing each other, there were a lot of communication between us, even tho rivalry somehow started between the companies, even tho there was a lot of seperated friends. After the service, we organized the party, it was mainly our former platoon of basic training, thus friends, but I was the only one who was sent to the other company. it was weird to say the least. The whole service felt like a huge compilation of experiments you host on this channel. we learned to live in fear, we learnt to hide, we learnt to adapt, overcome, and not to mind external stressors. Funnily enough, I developed couple of really good friends. Well, I guess out of tens of draftees from different backgrounds, you'll find some people you enjoy being with. Thankfully as a NATO member we didn't get involved in you know what, and we got demobilized when our time was up. I wish luck on the new boys. Thank you for the video and thank you for reading.
As a psychology major I always LOVE learning about new experiments and different topics within psychology. The 1950s was a VERY INTERESTING TIME for psychological research and there were not as many “rules” back then. This video is very interesting and I would love to see if any of the kids are still living and how this experiment impacted or changed their lives in some way.
I live in Oklahoma, and have been to the fall festival at robber’s cave dozens of times, yet i had never, ever heard of this experiment, this is just incredibly wild, and even more insane that I’ve been there several times, and may have stood where an individual from these groups could have stood.
For me, it sort of echoes the 'red pill' term being thrown around these days. That's when we 'wake up' to the games being played in politics and how we are artificially divided as a society and that both sides are manipulated by the same people.
@15:49 Why is there a random black and white striped box in the upper right corner of the screen? It just randomly shows up and seems to serve no purpose.
I found your channel about two weeks ago and I can't believe it took me so long. Your content style is pretty much all I watch so it legit boggles my mind that it took so long for TH-cam to suggest your channel. I've been happily enjoying mini-binges ever since. I'm bummed that I will eventually catch up but I can't help it. I love that you actually research the topics and present them in your own words instead of regurgitating Wikipedia or some other source like a lot of channels do. This is one of the best channels on TH-cam, period. Thank you for every video, good sir. Obviously I enjoy them thoroughly. Much respect from Colorado. 👍
"I've been happily enjoying mini-binges ever since" - Yeah this is a great channel. Since you like to binge watch channels let me suggest a channel to you. It's called "Mr. Ballen" and he tells stories about all sorts of stuff in a highly entertaining and informative way. He's already got like 5.5 million subs or some shit. Check it out friend, I'm certain you'll like it. Let me know what you think.
I’m very curious at how violent the fights became. Hopefully none of the children received any severe injuries. I received an injury at summer camp that still causes me pain several decades later. It’s actually hurting right now. During “Capture the Flag”, I was one of the kids who agreed to protect our flag (guard). I caught two kids that were really close, and captured both of their socks. The boy grabbed my arm and kept twisting it slowly until it broke, even though I begged and pleaded for him to stop. The moment I saw that he wasn’t going to follow the rules, I was prepared to release the socks, but I wasn’t able to.
Jesus, that's incredibly messed up. Unfortunately we've all met someone like that, but that's not the norm in most childhood physical conflict. Kids old enough to play team games are old enough to feel compassion for others, sadly you ran into one who was apparently born without that trait. The fact that it was a game and not a fight makes his actions even more out of the norm, and that's not the sort of thing you grow out of either. Something seriously wrong there.
thats a combo of him "needing" to win and not wanting to lose. no one but a piece of shit who thinks winning is everything would break someones arm over a fucking game.
This is one where I think you cannot ignore the potential for influence and the lack of a control group absolutely skewing the results. I would love to see if modern researchers could even possibly sit down and with modern ethical and scientific guidelines create a useful comparable experiment because it seems that the "othering" behavior is so often taught and never just innate.
I love the little pause he does when he tells you the weather where he lives. Like, it’s an audio cue where you can clearly tell he’s looking out the window to see what it’s like outside before continuing on with his outro.
Think about it this way that's $260 in today's money, I went to a military school which offered summer training at the low low cost of about $110 a week for two weeks, which covered all the activities food water housing. So for 3 weeks $250 doesn't sound all that bad, it was a science experiment in this case but there's cost involved with everything especially with living creatures because they need to eat and drink.
Short history lesson about Robbers Cave: I was born/grew up in Oklahoma and would go to Robbers Cave at least once a year! It is so beautiful! The caves are super cool especially the history. The history consists of Belle Star and the James-Younger Gang who were very famous outlaws. She, Jessie James and the rest of the gang were being chased by the law after stealing horses. While on the run they hid out in Robber’s Cave, thus it’s name. While searching for them they were seen running into one of the caves and were quickly followed. By the time the authorities got to the cave they all had disappeared! The particular cave they hid in was more akin to a natural amphitheater. The most bizarre part is there was no escape from that particular cavern. There was no entrance to the other caves meaning it was literally a solid rock wall. No one has ever figured out how they disappeared and escaped. I can’t remember how many people from the gang there were but if I remember correctly it may have been approx 6. At any rate she later passed away in Eufaula, Oklahoma in 1889 after being shot in the back by authorities. Sorry I digressed from the content of the video… I just think it is a really cool story and wanted to share. Everyone have a blessed day!
@@kathleenvolle1789 no, the woman’s name was Belle Star. She was a notorious bank and train robber. She ran with Jesse James and the James Gang during her career as a criminal. In the sentence “She, Jesse James and the gang…” She is Belle Star. I’m sorry for the confusion.
I really enjoy your videos and found this one very interesting, if not surprising, it's pretty much normal human nature. My only confusion is in the title, "The Horror of..." While perhaps unethical by modern standards (though not of the time necessarily), I'd hardly call this a horror. Since I wasn't familiar with this incident, I didn't already know how it ended. I kept expecting it to end in the same manner as the Lord of the Flies (since you refer to it also). I expected somehow it got out of control, and one or more of the boys was killed, or at least injured, or some horrific accident happened during one the activities. But it sounded like the worst thing that happened was what normal kids do, fights, name calling, cabin-raids, sabotage, etc. And since it sounded like they pretty much all made friends at the end (instead of killing each other), I think the "horror" description is just absurd. When you introduced the knives as prizes, I thought surely that's foreshadowing, and some boy is going to get knifed by the end. But of course, nothing happened worse than a food-fight. Still, an interesting story, but hardly a "horror."
I agree. Maybe it has something to do with John's age and upbringing in Britain. I'm 50 and grew up in a small town in western Colorado. The things described were fairly common including fighting, playing sports and having knives. A knife prize would've been pretty cool! As kids that young, we never threatened each other with them, that wasn't tolerated. Good story but he presented it in an unfair light, especially given the time frame. These kids father's likely served in world war two. It was a different time with different ideologies, a conservative culture that had just defeated Hitler and almost no modern technology. Plus all the kids came from Oklahoma. Maybe they should've tried the experiment with kids from inner cities...
@Chuck Poore agreed, I've read William Goldings book and this is nothing like it... other than that fact that they both involve a group of schoolboys...
I think the video is just keeping to the main theme of the channel, for the most part. I agree that it is exaggerated for clickbait, but unfortunately, clickbait is becoming more and more necessary for smaller TH-camrs as they will otherwise be buried by the algorithm so I can understand its use here.
This is awesome. I went to summer camp for 3 years and we were divided into groups and we became fiercely tribal. We all had different group songs and sat in separate areas during meals. Also, all the kids in my group formed sub groups depending on which city they were from. We sometimes cooperated to accomplish goals but soon after re-segregated back to our groups.
You can kinda see a bit of this phenomenon occur in fandoms sometimes. Especially big fandoms like Sonic and Star Wars. They got different in groups focused on liking and disliking different aspects of the franchise, but if something especially bad happens to the franchise, they can all come together with a common agreement on it. In the case of Star Wars, everyone can agree that the Holiday Special is weird af, and in the Sonic fandom, everyone can agree that Ken Penders is an asshole and wrote some pretty shoddy storylines for the Archie Sonic comics.
It's also prominent in say computer ownership. Seriously. The competition between Atari ST owners and Commodore Amiga owners to all the way up to PS vs Xbox.
One thing I cannot stress enough here. At that time, informed consent and research ethics weren't a thing. Look at things like the Milgram Experiment. Those two concepts are relatively rare in research. So, at the time this was conducted, this research was not considered unethical.
The winning camp buying drinks for everybody was a solid choice that I was not expecting, and was probably the biggest point of interest out of the whole operation in my opinion.
Thanks for the lovely video presentation. I found it very interesting how different your life in Britain is from mine in America. I was born in Vegas in the 90's and given my first pocket knife at 6 for camping tool purposes. Later, I won my first rifle in a raffle at 12 where my younger brother won his. I hunted rabbits and birds from that age in the desert, and got my license to hunt Antelope, Deer, and Elk in the state at age 14. My younger cousins aged 7-12 in the past 4 years all have begun pistol and rifle shooting. Our whole extended family enjoy hunts every year. It's interesting that one of the criticisms was of staff at a camp killing a snake being abnormal. Animal control is important for the safety of people and shooting ends up being the best way to carry it out in camp settings. I also noticed you called the Armenian Genocide a 'deportation' and I wonder if that's how they taught it in your schools. Finally, I had to relisten when you were talking about which city the kids were selected from because you said 'Oklahoma' which is a state in our country. I assume you mean Oklahoma City which is the name of the city within that state. These kinds of different perspectives and acceptance of opposite norms prove to me that conflict is innate to us.
haha i had a similar moment of confusion when i heard him say "the city of Oklahoma" and it was the first time I stopped to think about how weird it sounds to say "the city of Oklahoma City" even though that would, technically, be the more correct phrasing.
@@TheGuindo For sure, I would have phrased it in my American dialect, "From Oklahoma City, instead of "From the city of..." Interesting how subtle differences in geography bring this about, I can't think of anywhere in UK with the same style of city name: Kent City, Suffolk City, or Belfast City. Hahaha. I guess it would be similar to saying, "The children were selected from the shire of Oxford."
There was an incident in 1966 where children were really lost on an island off the coast of Tonga without adult supervision for more than a year, and they organized a peaceful society and took care of each other while they waited for rescue. That's what you do when you're really in danger, as opposed to a sociological experiment or a summer camp where they were well aware that they would be fed and sheltered by adults. Lord of the Flies was a novel. It was a made-up story by a schoolmaster who maybe should have had a different profession. These incidents tell you far more about the nature of the researchers than of humanity in general.
It’s different. They didn’t create out groups and in groups. This experiment was not about children’s ability to survive. They were given food and clothing and adult supervision. It’s abt ingroups and our groups
The same thing happened during the 'Vid shortages and lockdowns. Sure some people fought and were stupid, but most people weren't monsters. People think there's this magical point where people just slide into absolute chaos but it doesn't happen without being taught over time. People voluntarily walked into executions during every single genocide despite having pretty good ideas about what was happening, for a more negative example. People don't just hurt each other without building up to it, it's built into evolutionary psychology not to. Acting like little scuffles and arguments between children is the same as slaughtering each other for 'dominance' are the same is incredibly disingenuous.
@@TheIcpfan23 dont get me started with that guy always standing on dudes foot. It gets me every time as well. I believe I seen them on a shirt in his merch section. I'm very tempted to get it.
True story: Several hundred years ago, in the US, twenty Comanche children (all ten years old) ten boys and ten girls, were sent into the wilderness by their parents to do a two week survival test. When the children returned, they discovered to their horror and sorrow that their village had been attacked by an enemy tribe. And they were the sole survivors of their tribe. The twenty children buried the dead and performed the funeral rites for their deceased loved ones. Afterwards, they rebuilt their village a hundred or so yards away from where the village formerly stood. And they did everything as they had been taught by the adults to do and so when they were grown, their tribe survived. 😐
@@TheGuindo Yes, that's true. I thought it was strange that none of the other tribes didn't take the orphans in, but then I discovered that they were afraid that the ones who had done the massacre, might retaliate by attacking theirs if they helped the kids. I don't know what enemy tribe had attacked in the first place but thank God they didn't go back to finish the job. 🙄
I always found the experiment to be a fascinating horror story since my middle school science and history teachers talked about it in separate occasions when I was looking at disturbing topics for both classes I felt it fit better into history class instead of science
12:24 "Weapons" 🤦♂️ what do you cut your food with ? A knife is also a weapon but if all you asociate a knife with is using it as a weapon you should start to question some Things. A knife is mostly a tool.
I have 4 nephews around the age of the boys in these studies and I nearly spit my coffee out when you mentioned they were offered knives as prizes. They’ve done physical damage to each other with things no more dangerous than stuffed animals. I can’t even wrap my head around the 1950’s, what a time it must have been 😂
I really enjoy that you don't just do the same videos that all the other channels do and instead focus on the lesser known topics. These are at least lesser known to me. Great video as always!
I live 20 miles from Robbers Cave now (I formerly lived in Wilburton where it's located as well) & have visited there many times but never heard this story. Thanks for making this video. Very interesting! 💌 Peace & Love from Oklahoma 💌
Wait, this is a seven? And yet the prison experiment was a six? I am so lost as to how this was worse. In this experiment, there were no serious injuries, both groups stayed healthy, and in the end they all got along. It seems to me the the whole experiment had no negative effect on anyone.
@@bob7975 I will always agree that you get bonus points for using children, but what was atrocious about it? I mean I don’t approve of it, I think it was pointless. But no one got hurt, and it seems like the children enjoyed their time overall. It was basically just a summer camp with notes being taken.The only immoral thing I can think of is that the parents didn’t know enough about what was going on.
Standford Prisoners were adults that voluneteered knowing the experiment and that was an actual experiment. These were kids that didn't realize they were in an experiment.
The best example that I have for modern day scientific research done on children in that age group without full consensual knowledge would be cancer research hospitals like St. Jude’s. Clearly these children know they are undergoing treatment. But they most likely do not realize the risks or the details of their treatment. This tells me that is not unethical for children to undergo scientific research without their consensual knowledge as long as their best interest is taking into account, they’re kept safe, and cared for, with their parents consent. In the 21st-century full knowledgeable consent and privacy is much more valued than it was in the time of the experiment. We can see this from the example of the children being interviewed in the schools without their parents even knowing it was happening. And to continue, it was more practiced for parents to put their children into the hands of other adult they trust without any contact with their children in that day and age. It was normal for the parents to have very little knowledge about what their children were doing. Now let’s take the Stanford prison experiment into account. I would argue that these men went into the experiment with even less knowledge of what was happening than the parents of the children, or the children themselves in the Robber’s cave experiment. These men were given even less privacy and much less autonomy. The prisoners were put into the hands of guards and researchers who had no care for their safety or health, and very little accountability for the way the prisoners were treated by the guards. If I may, I’d like to add in my own personal modern values on this topic. I believe it was wrong to put these children into the experiment, and I would never allow my children to take part in anything like it, especially since it was an incredibly unnecessary experiment. But in the end, the Stanford prison experiment caused great long term and short term damage, physically and psychologically to the prisoners involved. Whereas the Robber’s cave experiment caused no notable long term damage, and in the end seemed to be overall enjoyable experience to all minors involved excluding the couple children who were sent home for home sickness. Thank you for listening. I do value that we all seem disprove of the Robber’s cave experiment.
If you never been to robbers cave park, it is very beautiful and the cave is fun to explore. There are large group camps you can rent out and I can see how they could use one camp and another for the experiment. Very interesting and never heard of this at the park. One thing that is known is actual famous robbers hid out in the cave and area.
I would LOVE to see the 1953 group be made in to a movie! We need to see movies that show that groups that are manipulated against each other, realize that they real outsider are those doing the manipulating.
"Oh the 1950s when kids were given weapons" Going to state the obvious but a knife is more of a multifunctional tool. Got my first penknife when I was 5 and I was born in the 90s. The fact you could just go to a school and select a bunch of kids to be part of a study then ask the parents to pay for it is insane though. Especially as the parents knew it was a study. Also the price is pretty high when adjusted for inflation.
@@thegameranch5935 Carving wood, making toy bows and arrows and the like. I remember adults borrowing it while having a barbecue at a local farm that was open to the public. I probably carried knives in public between the ages of 5 and 14 than after that. Mainly due to dumb UK 'anti knife crime' laws restricting what I could and couldn't carry coming into effect around then. Never stabbed anyone. Seems that even the boys in this study didn't stab anyone despite fighting over knives.
@@PierceMD I agree mate, just stating you could call most tools a weapon. I mean, I'm not really sure if I'd rather fight someone holding a pocket knife or someone holding a claw hammer...
I was a boyscout - even without an experiment, we could get pretty tribal. Each troop of scouts (your whole group from one source) was broken down into patrols of about a dozen boys each. The patrols regularly competed in events against each other, tended to form their own cliques, and occasionally harassed the other patrols in the troop. When multiple troops came together (for a jamboree, or large summer camp) it got worse. Whole troops would harass one another - tent and camp raids, etc. It was never bad enough to start fights, and the adults and counselors usually just considered it "boys being boys" and all having a bit of good fun. But if wouldn't have taken much. I remember at once large camp, we made small catapults to prove our lashing skills. They could lob tennis balls a bit more than 100 yards. And so of course, a few patrols from 2 troops got together, set up catapults, and in the middle of the night started raining tennis balls and then rocks into a site at the other end of the camp. That one did cop some disciplinary action, but even 14yo me could see the counselors trying not to laugh as they described how rude it is to be woken up by rocks raining from the sky onto your campsite.
This is particularly interesting for me as I grew up in Oklahoma and I have gone to Robber's Cave more than probably most people. I have recovered campsites at the park, restored trails, and hiked every inch of the park enough times that I could wander in the park for hours and never need a map or compass to find my way. I was also in boy scouts, I'm an eagle scout even, and although while I was in scouts robbers cave wasn't our summer camp, it was camp Tom Hale elsewhere in the state, and now as an adult I am fascinated by tru crime and psychology. We always heard of a girlscout troop who had been brutally murdered at camp Scott elsewhere in Oklahoma around the same time as this, perhaps a decade or so later. Robbers cave in some places has a very earie feeling to it which I have only really come to realize upon revisiting the site as an adult. At our summer camps there was always hundreds of people there so although there were friendships made nothing was ever so tribalistic although there might have been some minor conflicts throughout the week. My family was originally from California but moved to Oklahoma around the 90's which was when I was born so my time in the park took place in the late 2000's but nonetheless we heard many stories about military testing taking place outside of the park on land that was adjoining the park. I also found it somewhat interesting that one of the groups was called the rattlers as our leadership troop was called the rattlesnakes, which we voted on. Such interesting parallels and coincidents but either way it is a fascinating story that took place somewhere I am very familiar with. At our summer camp, tom hale, we would create flags like in the story, did skits and many of the things that are mentioned in this story.
A knife is not just a weapon it is a TOOL, children should be given access to things like this when they are still young and impressionable so that they can learn the difference -- before they get to the age where they start to make their own observations about the world. It should be used as an opportunity to learn responsibility, respect, and safety. It should not be given flippantly, it should come with an understanding that it will be taken away if misused, and the child should feel the honor of being entrusted with such an item.
This was a new one for me. Never heard of this one, so I'm wondering how many more questionable experiments like this have been done! Thanks for another great video! :) Watching from a currently rainy, windy, and chilly corner of Wisconsin in the US.
So...uh this is awkward. When you said the real life Lord of the Flies, I thought that a couple of them were going to die. RIP Simon, and Piggy, and that other kid.
When I was ages 2, 3 and 4,I went to something called a “laboratory preschool“. Basically it was children behaviour studies. But they didn’t tell the children. Every room had giant dark mirrors. It didn’t take me long to realise this, and to think that these giant mirrors were strange features. Me and some other children figured out that if we put our hands at the sides of our faces and looked directly into the mirrors, faces pushed against them, that we could see chairs or people on the other side. I don’t know what that meant, but I knew we were being watched. It didn’t bother me. I just realised that I had an audience for the show.😊
Interesting subject! Glad you covered all the lead up experiments, esp the one where the boys discovered the experiment! Despite the obvious issues, I like that they attempted to unite the two groups through a common goal (fixing the water) rather than by introducing a third party to be an enemy. A glimmer of hope for humanity! Let's go look under rocks for lizards together and share our snack money!
This experiment actually shows us the nasty effects of tribalism and how it can easily influence us as all we'd need to do to trigger it is to be in a group and as soon as you identify with that group, you will show in-group bias for ones own group and out-group prejudices to any competing group. This experiment has been done a few times with the most notable being the Standford prison experiment but you only need to look at society today to see it's true effects with men hating feminists, straight hating gays and white hating minorities all brought together with their groups like LGBTQ and BLM. Tribalism is the biggest cause of prejudice and discrimination in the world and it's not getting any better, in fact, it has gotten much worse thanks to idiots who believe putting us into groups based on race, gender and sexual orientation will solve prejudice but it has only enabled it further.
Hi. It’s the Armenian Genocide. Not “deportations.” My great grandparents’ brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles were shot in the head and had their bodies dumped in a mass grave in Erzurum, not deported somewhere. I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal and isn’t even what the video is about, but it’s misinformation like this that is letting the Ottoman Empire get away with it. I’ve been a long time follower of your account and this just disappoints me.
i’m an adult volunteer for a youth group and we have summer camp every year. the kids are well cared for and counselors and volunteers (who go through extensive background checks) are always keeping watch over the kids so no drama or safety issues occur. sportsmanship and kindness are heavily promoted and any trouble (bullying, stealing, fighting, etc.)that comes along is dealt with accordingly. in short, it’s a great and safe environment, but the kids still act this way when they are around another group ( the kids are split into groups) it’s human nature to be competitive
comparing this study to some of the others shown by your channel, I feel like it is one of the more harmless once. yes it has its flaws, but i think it compares pretty good to an experience a child might get just by being in school.
Well done, John. This is the first 'Dark Side of Science' vid I've been able to make it through the whole way. I'll be looking for more about the Sharifs now, thank you for the overview.
This was not nearly as bad as I was afraid when I clicked on this. I was pleasantly surprised. Only part of the experiment I have a visceral reaction to was rigging the contest to create friction. Whoever wins, let them win fair and square.
@@jnerdsblog Unclear if it was necessary, and if their cheating were exposed it would have blown the entire ruse, creating a repeat of the previous attempt. Thus it was risky at best. Regardless, I'm aware there are things that are objectively more objectionable about this let's say experiment, but a visceral reaction is not necessarily rational.
One of the most interesting stories I’ve ever heard and I’m from Oklahoma, Been to Beautiful Robbers Cave, and was in the Boy Scouts until I made Eagle Scout.
Another Dark side of Science Video: th-cam.com/video/ctagJrR3HKk/w-d-xo.html
Very interesting that the children in the 1953 experiment correctly identified that the real outgroup was the researchers rather than the artificial outgroup of other children created by the researchers.
Future conspiracy theorists 🤣
@@MadScientist267 It’s only a theory if they aren’t actually being manipulated. These kids were. I’d like to think that any kids seeing through something like that would be future leaders who can think critically and recognize who is actually doing them harm instead of alienating arbitrary groups of people just because some charismatic leader tells them to.
@@BeeWhistler My only point is that's the mindset needed
@@MadScientist267 it's always a conspiracy until you find out they really are doing these things and so much worse
@@MadScientist267 remember when the NSA spying on you was a "conspiracy" watch citizen four the actual documentary of snowden's flight to russia by that very spying agency out to make him disappear so it could remain "just a crazy conspiracy"
this is such a 90's kids' movie plot. Summer camp, secret scientists, rivalries, tasks, bullying, and a happy ending with a moral of the story
Hahaha I didn't even look at it like that till I read your comment, but dang you are correct. LOL, call Disney quick!
It's the plot to "Lord of the Flies"
Often fiction takes inspiration from truth.
Goosebumps did have one..
@@mikehinkley3468
Well at this point I thinks it's more the other way around, the movie is based on the experiment
"When preteens were given weapons!"
I was like 9 years old when I got my first pocket knife, in the 90s. Granted it had all of a 2" blade, but learning to use a small tool knife responsibly is something I think most children should learn.
Got my first .22 and learned to shoot at 10. Thanks grandpa, it served me well!
Like all of the kids in my family, I received a pocket knife when I was five years old. Safety and responsibility was taught and enforced. My kids have knives as well. They don't hunt, but they do fish. So, knives are a tool that can be used as protection if absolutely necessary. Kids can learn how to use something that people think is dangerous in a responsible way. Do you still have your first pocket knife?
@@RT-qd8ylI just gave my youngest daughter my first rifle last year when she passed the hunter's safety course. It's a good feeling.
Hell i was a mid 90s baby and even i got several knifes as a kid. We grew up messing around outside and hunting small game in the woods. My siblings and i were all shooting by 6 or 7. My older sister of 3 years was always a hell of a shot. Lmao
Yes but that was the choice of your parents or caretakers. They knew you well enough to know that you were capable handling it. A stranger giving a kid a tool that is capable of harm during an experiment like this? Surely you can understand that it's a poor choice. We are lucky that these children kept their heads about them.
It warms my heart to think about a group of children realizing that they're the subjects of an experiment, and rallying against the researchers!
But that showed one of the points in the study, because the situation became a goal for both groups.
Kinda like the 2020 global experiment that was eventually exposed.
That would make a great plot for a movie. Or just make this into a movie, based on true stories are the best !!!
Inspirational.
That kind of happened in the experiment of the isolated boat in the middle of nowhere. The name eludes me.
As someone who was at a summer camp as a child that immediately formed tribalistic conflict and devolved into violence because the only adult in the camp didnt keep an eye on us I feel like I've gone through a similar experience. It got to the point where a kid got rushed off to a hospital due to sharpened stick related injuries.
Based on my anecdotal experience I doubt the researchers behavior was required to incite violence or that intergroup mending at the end.
I had the same type of experience at a summer camp during the late 1960's. No hospitalizations, but plenty of bullying and a few fights.
It would be interesting to see it done with consent in the current era, coming from being an 80s kid as well our school camps at a conservative boys school were really just our usual thuggery and picking on people, except out in the bush. Looking back on it, I wonder if some of those teachers deliberately engineered the crap we go up to or we were just barely domesticated teens. In any case there wasnt any long term effects and most of us managed to form cross-group friendships between boarding students and day boys, eventually.
To some extent I'd also nominate the better side of each other in terms of being faced with adversity, people tend to work together rather than apart which makes me kind of dubious of the experiment to begin with the bias mentioned and adults also have different approaches to one another.
Tribal thinking is genetically ingrained into humans. The us vs them mentality is instinctual.
We used to do all this on our own lol
Stuck it his eye, man!
My take: I might have been lied to, but if I had paid $260 and found out my son had actually outsmarted a bunch of University professors i would be very proud of him.
That's $3k in today's money
@@johnavila8070 You really didn't pay attention did you?
@@johnavila8070you absolute buffoon
@@johnavila8070 did you even watched the hole video
Sounds like an 80s family-friendly comedy.
The real life Lord of the Flies actually ended well. 6 boys who wrecked on a Pacific Island near Tonga actually helped each other survive for more than a year. They were also different races. This shows that such situations can actually end well (especially when they don't have researchers antagonizing them).
I never really trust the "humans are inherently programmed for vicious competition between rival groups" experiments that artificially establish the competing groups and choose the experimental subjects from cultures where competition is held up as a good thing in itself. The situation you mention is a great example of how actually, people can react to extreme hardship by pulling together and refusing to abandon anyone -- especially when there's nobody (and no circumstance) enforcing an in-group/out-group dynamic.
Generally humans are more prone to helping than hurting each other.
People also tend to forget how much time passed before violence arose in Lord of the Flies, that it was triggered by the children finding a body, and that the author was writing about a very specific group of kids, not humans as a whole
@@somedragonbastard *Lord of the Flies* was also an expression of belief rather than a documentary; what the author thought would be an expression of behavior outside the influence of (Western) civilization.
* common goal (I wonder how likely the kids would be to start a fight if there were no adults around, they might be less likely knowing there'd be no one there to help them). I think that 'shared, mutually-beneficial goals' was probably the key take-away from the study (i.e. goals around mitigating boredom, ensuring survival, not going hungry, emotional comfort, assuming plentiful resources). It's so easy for humans to devolve in to basic tribalism (he has a different skin colour to me = fear, but I can't articulate this, nor am I emotionally mature enough to ameliorate it so -- anger and suspicion!), especially when there's a lack of resources around and survivalism is provoked (e.g. Donner Party, The Raft of the Medusa).
LotF is about Original Sin. As a Jew, I didn't understand the book until I recognized the title is Beelzebub translated to English, and realized that. (Jews don't relate to Original Sin in the same way as Christianity.)
Honestly, as a teacher, I think the 1953 experiment sounds downright funny. The researchers were so careless and the children were a lot more clever than they were given credit for. I'd love to hear a bit more out of it, but I suppose there isn't much information since it was canceled?
One is doomed to fail when one proceeds upon the assumption that children are stupid.
@@spvillano That explains a lot about our "education" (aka indoctrination) system... and politicians as well!
@@KutWrite what an odd takeaway from an account of a defective and abusive experiment - politics!
Tell me, it's raining outside here, does politics cause that as well?
@@spvillano The video mentions politics, so I don't think the takeaway is that odd.
@@TheGavrael the video briefly mentioned politics, not make politics a primary focus. That's like commenting on a video on economics and because the existence of political contributions was mentioned once, early in the video, commenting at length on politics in general and using a single sentence to justify the comment.
Especially on a study that was so problematic as to make P torturing to fake results look like a good and valid practice! Seriously, the data was so tortured during the study as to say whatever they wanted it to say just to stop the torture. The observers literally became participants, invalidating all observations or theories being tested.
Interesting that you consider the knives as prizes in a summer camp as "weapons". My mind immediately thought of them as fitting wilderness survival tools.
UK cultural difference. In the UK knives aren't seen as utilitarian tools, they are seen as pure weapons. Mainly due to the ever increasing knife crime rate in the UK and the absence of firearms.
@@freedfg6694mainly due to the UK being continually enriched by vibrant and diverse cultures.
@@apokalypthoapokalypsys9573mostly due to you fannies disarming yourselves and pretending the state was always trustworthy.
Most boys a few decades ago had pocket knives . In a museum school in Windemere (William Wordsworth attended), the boys were allowed knives in school.
He's from London I believe he said in another video.
Aside from the lack of consent and other issues that can be justified in the context of an experiment, they actually made the parents pay for it.
"We want to do a psychological study on your kid in the middle of nowhere for a few weeks. And no, you can't visit. So... will you be paying us by cash or check?"
Seems like a lot of money to pay for the camp. Wonder if this excludes some poor families.
@@kittredgeseely3542 I would think so, some families can't afford breakfast or lunch for their kids, so the public schools have to provide them.
Well it was run by the AJC lol 👃
OMG it's Disgusting that the parents had to pay for camp, and that they weren't allowed to see there child.
Yet we continue to pay our taxes to feds who commit atrocities that make this look like an average preschool day.
Nice one 🍻
'Why are there microphones in our tents?'
Also, children are good at noticing when adults are acting differently than usual. I feel like the researchers heavily underestimated the cognitive abilities of the young lads.
"Wait and who is funding this study?? And they want to see if they can stoke divisions among white protestant Americans??...
...sir, I'm noticing a pattern but I know I'm not supposed to."
Children are naturally curious, but this "camp" is new to all of them. What else would they have to analyze and talk about other than this different new camp experience they all have?
@@Danielson1818 1949 was right after the war. These children were pre-boomers. These kids where probably very well aware of being able to hunt, build shelter, and possible make their own weapons.
It wasn't till the college kids thinking they where smart running around during Vietnam that we saw such a social and moral decline in American society. After 100 years of being close to or at war with our neighbors, society was starting to move towards the right direction on America.
@@dontneedtoknow5836 Tell me specifically what has declined? Not this nebulous society.
@@richardhands904 we've got people celebrating a 9 y.o. boy stripping qnd dancing for grown f@cking men.
You are scorned for protecting your children from drag queen story hour.
What moral decline?
Drugs are bad OK and we know that. These people sold their soul, or never woke it up.
I have a feeling many fights with children were rarely stopped quickly. I’m from that neck of the woods. If a fight broke out there was an older voice saying “let them get it outta their system”. The elders felt that there was typically a lesson to be learned in a fight wether you win or lose. 1954 would’ve probably held that sentiment a lot more strongly than we do today.
Yep I'm from that generation of let them fight it out. Let's be honest fighting usually solves whatever the problem was before it escalated to something more. I personally think that's why we have such a mental health problem with kids nowadays because they're taught it's not ok to protect yourself.
@@lazydaze3134 The kids dont need to protect themselves if the adults (be parents, teachers, etc) were to give a damn and stop pointless bouts from starting.
@@lazydaze3134 Just like how wars usually solves problems? Of course it does, for the winners that is.
@@lazydaze3134 All that does is teach children might makes right. That's why we had such horrible child abuse and domestic violence back then.
We've always had mental health issues, the difference is back then we didn't record it or identify it. The reason those particular numbers are rising is because our doctors and teachers and such were not educated on how to recognize this as an illness.
The same number of people are mentally ill as always, it's just we are actually diagnosing and treating them and therefore statistics are rising. Back in the day if someone presented with symptoms of anxiety or depression we told them to toughen up or go to church and they went untreated and thus not represented in the statistics. We only "treated" (I use that term loosely) the most severe mental illnesses back then like schizophrenia, autism or being a woman/minority.
I'm obviously being sarcastic there but as a psychiatric historian you'd be astonished at the number of admission papers I've read where a husband had his wife committed because she stopped wearing make up everyday or wasn't performing her 'household or wifely duties' up to the husbands standard. This in turn created a very strange bias in statistics suggesting women and minorities were far more likely to become mentally ill reinforcing ignorant stereotypes.
The point is use skepticism and look into statistics, especially of the mental health variety and I'd even go so far as to say most of the mental health statistics pre 2000ish isn't just wrong, it's flat out intentionally misleading.
I wish there was an adult around to help me, when I was horribly bullied to the point of kids throwing stones at me and burning my hair off.
Let's just take a moment to appreciate that whether it was ethical or scientific or none of the above, these people took some kids out to the woods, got them to form gangs, and armed them.
What can I say the 50's were a different time!
Don't forget that the parents paid for their children to be lab rats.Charging $25 for a so-called summer camp.smh
@@giveusakiss1time Unethical experiments, lifelong scarring and a few hundred today-dollars seems like a bargain price to get rid of the kid for a week in the summer.
I mean who wants that little monster around? He's not even twelve and forming armed gangs! I blame society.
@@giveusakiss1time what made me lol is the fact they charged them 7 for the movie , that's like 70 with inflation 😅
Let’s be honest, these were boys in the woods. They were already armed.
“Arminian deportations” is a really nice way of saying Genocide…
Funnily enough, the UK, where Plainly Difficult is made, has NOT recognised the Armenian Genocide, going as far as publishing an internal Document called "Was there a Armenian Genocide?" Scottland and Northern Ireland have independantly recognised it, but not England. I really hope this was just a slip up, cause I'd hate to have watched a Genocide Denier all these years.
When he said that I wondered if he was representing Turkey's interest or his personal opinion is that the genocide never happened.
Right??!
I was about to write the same thing but came here to see if anyone else had thought the same thing.
My first thought was maybe youtube doesn't like genocide. I could understand not saying it to keep monetization, but if that's the case you could phrase it a lot of different, better ways.
Honestly not that bad. You rated this a number higher than the *Stanford Prison Experiment!* The parents definitely should have been almost fully informed on what was going to happen, especially since they wouldn’t even be there, but no serious injuries occurred, and it seems like the kids even had a pretty good time. I would probably look back on it fondly if I took part of it.
I just finished the book on it about 3 wks ago. The way I've seen some people talk about it on social media, I was expecting to read about an all out brawl towards the end. It was nothing like that, they actually worked together and made friends towards the end.
@@JohnnyTheDredonly because behavior modification wasn't yet introduced like "physically adjusting". As a kid who went through the newest programs in the early 2000s. Think Jason Bourne but the targets are kids from broken homes with one foot in the juvenile system.
Cause this was kids not adults
Agree
Let's all take a moment to appreciate how much work it takes to create a 30 minute mini documentary! Thank you John from Plainly Difficult!
Brutal dedication
simp
Dude this was the most boring piece of content I’ve watched all week….
Ummm, there's a like button, a view counter and sub count for that. You humans lol. Hurry up and evolve already. You waste your lives praising people in extra curricular ways. Why don't you let the data do it for you. You're trying to tie your emotions to his values you energy leech.
@@kateapple1 he just outlines what happens, everyone learns differently lmao
Plus a lot of Big editing youtube channels are watered down and way too overwhelming for me, so I prefer Mr Plain, it's literally in the name loll
If you really want to study "in groups," just be a teenage girl going through an all-girls high school. It only took a week or two for me to realize what groups I wasn't welcome in. And this was in the early 1990s. I can't imagine it has gotten any better over time.
now it's just all trans kids hanging out
Pretty is as pretty does.
You watch this channel for fun so you're probably at least above average in terms of intelligence. Smart women draw the ire of the fem collective wherever they are, school, office, video game industry. Doesn't matter. Mediocre women identify smart women as a threat and move to undermine them. So sick of seeing this. I freaking loathe the femcollective.
It hasn’t. It’ll always be like that I’m sure it’s a bit more welcoming but not terribly much. You can still tell where you’re not welcomed and your presence isn’t very much wanted.
teenage girls are the worst
none of them ever wanted to hang out with me so instead i always played with the boys and got along well
i bet its those bullies from back in the day that preach inclusion and peace today
Kind of funny to hear pocketknives at a woodland camp referred to as "weapons."
"But where to get so many children...?"
Best mad scientist quote ever.
I was expecting a more horrific outcome from the experiment, but at least am glad that it ended more peacefully than harmfully.
I do wish that the least the information was given to them by the end, in an attempt to be truthful and mend any conflict, thus teaching a lesson about the dangers of tribalism and unreasonable hatred. This entire study was practically unnecessary given the natural instinct and situations that arise in school settings, and definitely would have been possible to witness naturally in the 50s.
I totally expected someone to get stabbed. They probably should have had a formal debrief or something, but overall it was probably a fun experience for the boys.
Absolutely lol. Considering the emphasis on the trophy knives and theft of those knives, I was honestly dreading the outcome and expecting to hear how the knives were put to the test
When they started giving out knives I totally expected one of them to end up dead, not gonna lie. Whoever nicknamed this experiment the real life lord of the flies has never read the book, LOL
@@tinnitusisnotmusic6807 there was a literal lord of the flies situation with a bunch of children stranded on a Pacific island. Interestingly, no strife as outlined in the book occurred, all cooperated and eventually got rescued and returned home happy and healthy.
Ethical research rules now state that the subjects should be debriefed to tell them what was being tested and to undo any possible harm done.
25 bucks for three weeks of peace and quiet sounds like a pretty good deal.
$25 in 1953 = ~$287 in 2024
300$.
@CharlieApples still a good deal for 3 weeks. Lol. Daycare runs the same price for 1 week
Cheap ass jewish organization could have paid for it instead of the parents. Oh wait! 😅
Having your kids get experimented on is peace and quiet what…
I'd give it a 4. While the kids may have been manipulated, the results are pretty typical of any normal summer camp or interscholastic sport.
I’d rate it even lower, this was hardly an unethical experiment and not even remotely horrifying. Maybe a 2? They would’ve likely acted this way regardless of being in an experimental setting, I remember doing similarly dumb sh!t when I was a kid.
@@Sniperboy5551 ikr? no one was even stabbed
@Sniperboy5551
You honestly think this isn't unethical?
I seem to have stepped into a comment thread of crazy.
It's a pretty realistic experiment of general human behavior. Adults TODAY literally act like this on a daily basis... we sadly almost never truly overcome the negative sides of us being tribal in nature...
Didn't really require being set up as an experiment even. As you say, you could just look at interscholastic, next-town-over, opposing sports team rivalry amongst boys/young males. You'd get the same results. Young boys/men like fighting and see themselves as superior to the "other" group. There's nothing new in this. It's quite literally the majority of the history of humanity.
The experiment kind of reminds me of army basic training, where instructors promote inter squad rivalry in order to get the best out of their squad, obviously intervention occurs to prevent things getting out of hand. I think the staff may have unknowingly influenced the children, it would be impossible for them to remain totally impartial. Thought provoking episode, my only criticism would be your description of the Armenian genocide as deportations, the word genocide was coined specifically to describe those atrocities.
@N Fels Bullying was not uncommon in the British army of my youth, (1970's), the victims seemed to me, to be those of different ethnicity or race, although there were also the "Private Pile" sort, picked on for lack of fitness or effort. Sadly this did result in some suicides but again sadly this is also common amongst school children, the victims there, those perceived as "different". Perhaps it's a cultural thing, the six Tongan boys marooned on Ata island solved every problem thrown at them, including conflict resolution and survived for fifteen months until their rescue.
@N Fels My experience of training conscripts in the late 80-ies early 90-ies. the rules where very simple. Any coscript that where perceived as genuinely unfit for service, where sent to speak to the shrink or doktor depending on the reason. At this time getting kicked out on non physical reasons didn't look good in your CV. As I understod speaking to older officers the 70-ties where a very different thing as the 68-movment and flower power era had its high, it was the norm to be obstructive and difficult. this where the the golden era of group punishment and "grey punishment" to keep them in line. Conscripts that really scared them but where difficult to get rid of where the one's that wanted to learn "the tools of the revolution" That is always a problem intelligent extremists rightwing, leftwing, religious or whatever....
@N Fels I was in the US Navy during the 70's. I worked in the engineroom.
When I reported to 1 ship, I could tell there was a serious lack of leadership aboard. It was a period of 'all volunteer" Navy (join the Navy, or go to Vietnam). There were three groups in the engine room, in order of the numbers, most to least was:
Pot smokers
Alcoholics
Jesus freaks
All were just barely giving a shit.
Problem (or maybe advantage) for me was that the enlisted people above me, were the Alcoholic faction. The (one) Jesus freak, didn't care about saving souls, the rest were the predominant group was the pot heads...
Yeah, I fit in the majority..
But, I have the one trait that most don't. I'm lazy..
I don't like having to do the same thing over and over again, because I didn't do it right the first time!
So I taught the rest of the crew how to fix shit right the first time, so that we weren't working ALL the time!
The division officer would bypass the Chief, 1st and 2nd and come to me (a 3rd) to get things done.
One time he wanted something done, that was not "hard", but because of the heat and other discomforts, was gonna be a tough sell to get done.
I told him I'd get it done, and done better than he'd ever believe, but he was gonna be the bad guy, the "common enemy" if you will (wasn't a stretch, he was an ass!) He didn't think it would work, but agreed to play along..
Yeah, it worked! Piece of equipment looked like it just come from the factory when done. He got a pat on the back for such a beautiful engine room, I got transferred off that POS, him and about 50% of the Officers (up to and including the CO) were relieved for cause 3 weeks later!
Happy ending!
@@nubbetudde8922 "My experience of training conscripts in the late 80-ies early 90-ies"
Conscripts? In the early nineties? Jesus Christ man, what sort of hell-hole country forces people to be in the military in the nineties? Were you in Iraq? Iran? Fucking North Korea?
I feel sorry for you because I don't know what it must have been like to grow up in a military dictatorship like you did.
I feel like that was probably done because of TH-cam censors.
I live in Oklahoma, and Robbers cave is one of my favorite places to go. I never knew about this experiment till today.
i vacationed there back around 03. i did the tour with the cant see your hand in front of your face thing. we stayed there for a few days
I went to a church summer camp there as a child in the 80s. I can’t remember any of it.
I literally grew up in wilburton and didn't know about this lol
I also live in oklahoma and have gone to the park dozens of times for different reasons. I was also in the boyscouts and we would go there to maintain the campsites and trails. We have branched out a little since then and now we go to places elsewhere in the state or in other states but my time in scouting came to an end years ago upon reaching eagle scout. Fond memories there though despite some areas in the park being quite earie at times. I actually stayed there earlier this year and witnessed a flash flood that turned a little creek near our campsite into a raging waterway, all my years in the outdoors and it had to have been one of the craziest weather events I have ever witnessed which is saying something. We were familiar with the girl scout murders that occurred at camp Scott elsewhere in the state but I also never knew of this experiment until today. My time in the boyscouts had some similarities to this story just without the experiment, at least to my knowledge lol. This was in the 2000's though so long after this event took place. We did however hear stories of the military activities outside the backside of the park but to this day I'm still not too sure what was happening there.
I am from the area around Robbers Cave, and as a kid, went to a conservative church summer camp there almost every year. It’s a beautiful area. Didn’t hear about the experiment until sociology class in college.
"Pots and pans"
A yes. The conservative way. Hide the truth.
@@SonofTheMorningStar666 Yes, this is the forum for politics. Great job😂
@@abrahamlincoln9758 Spacelord mentioned the conservative church.
@@SonofTheMorningStar666 He mentioned his personal connection to the story. He didn't preach conservatism.
I'd definitely rate this one MUCH lower on the ethics scale. Maybe a 4 at most. It wasn't an inherently dangerous experiment so the consent issue doesn't seem so big to me, and the fist fighting and general mischievousnous of the boys seems pretty on par for kids in the 1950s. Given this one took on the name "real life lord of the flies" I was half expecting one kid to end up in the ER
I think it went ok because the boys must have had some restraint, rather than anything the researchers did. They literally gave them knives 😬.
@@advena996 when we were kids, a pocket knife was for whittling sticks. It would be ludicrous to think a kid would get injured with a harmless pocket knife. Today the opposite seems true
It shouldn't even be referenced as "real Lord of the Flies" as it has zero relation to the plot of the book. The kids were fully manipulated by the researchers every step of the way.
This. What is the deal with sociology being held to 1000x the ethical standard as other branches of science? Poor bastards need to go before a review board just to hand out a questionaire. Meanwhile people researching weapons and sticking electrodes in mices brains get rubberstamped. I smell the corrupting influence of grant money again. A familiar stink.
I was thinking 4 before he said 7 and I can't think of any good reason it would be that high. Nothing bad happened.
I'm personally very suprised that you gave this a 7 out of 10. That's higher than the scores you gave in other videos where they tortured and killed animals. I would give this a 2 or 3. I probably wouldn't mind someone putting me through a similar test honestly.
Right? Like yeah, it was a manipulated experiment, but you have to think about it from the kids' perspective. They got to go on a trip, make friends (and enemies, which kids do seem to find enjoyable), play games, and watch a movie. In the end, the rivalry was settled and the prize was even shared. Sounds like a pretty good time to me.
Edit: AND the results were actually (sorta) useful. For once.
@@the_Overture I totally agree. He gave the experiments where they literally give animals depression and ruin the rest of their lives and hopes for a regular interactions with any other animals a 4 or 5. Then gives this one where kids basically just go to camp while being observed a 7!? I would also rate this one a 2 or 3, solely because the lack of consent and small amount of violence.
The morally bankrupt quackery of...*summer camp*
Agreed. I would give it a 4 at the most. Yes, there was no informed consent, but that's understandable as there would be no way to run an untainted experiment with it. There was no long-lasting trauma or damage.
Imo the most unethical part of this is that they made the parents pay tbh
what the heck did this sociopath rate those if it was seriously lower than 7?? anything involving animal abuse is automatically a 10/10 on the scale of how immoral it is
Plainly Difficult recommending a channel with no videos is just part of their inimitable zen style. ♡
🤣
I grew up in Wilburton where Robbers cave is and have been camping there a ton both as a child in the Boy Scouts and as an adult with my children. It’s really interesting to find out about this happening in my own back yard. Good job.
Lol when you mentioned the seating, I'm remembering this little experiment that this Marine Cpl lecturer did to us during Marine Boot Camp. Just outside of a large outdoor classroom with a canopy, our Drill Instructors formed us up at one of the entrances and told us to wait for the teacher or lecturer as we usually do, as we were drilled to do. We were first there, followed by our sister platoon who we were sharing the class with.
When the lecturer and his Lcpl TA came in, he gave us a simple command: "Take a seat." We did and we did two notable things. First we all sat in a formation, shoulder to shoulder, filling one side of the steel bleachers without any gaps. Second, we split ourselves between our platoons, ours on the left side of the classroom where we entered, the other platoon to the right side, with a clear and open gap in the middle between one. Now, we weren't really directly competing with one another, we were all there to do one thing: To be Marines. However, there is a scoring between the 4 platoons on which platoon performed the best during our training, but there was no prize aside from bragging rights that basically disappeared as soon as we left Boot Camp.
The Marines there in front of us both laugh and informed us that we didn't need to fill up the seat like that. In that we could had sat anywhere on the large bleacher, even with our friends and fellow recruits. However, the Cpl did told us that he had asked the drill instructors to stage their platoons in front of the two entrances to the outdoor classrooms, just to run this little experiment; to see what we would do.
This little experiment kinda shows how influential the Instructors/Adults really are to their kids, and that we tend to group and side with our own when you're unfamiliar with the other group, which we were, we only really interacted with the other platoons when we went on shared spaces like the track, classrooms, chow hall, etc.
So after that, the Cpl suggested to us to move around while they set up the projector and props for the lecture. Allowing us to mingle with one another without the ire of the Drill Instructor. The class went on just fine. Even though I don't remember what he taught us, I still remember that one time in Boot Camp.
It's extremely reassuring that if you show people/children who the real out-group is that manipulates others into situations like these, there is a chance they will unite to revolt against the true out-group.
Hope it happens soon before things get to bad
This experiment honestly doesn’t seem that bad. There was no heavy emotional damage, little kids fighting isn’t that uncommon even now, much less back then, kids steal things from each other and get overly competitive about silly things, and after it all the group all ended up friends anyway, there was no long term animosity. Whether the results were ultimately useful is another question, but I’d argue that the conclusions probably are still useful, though different from the conclusions of the original researchers, kind of like the results of the Stanford Prison Experiment
Though Stanford didn’t really tell us that those in places of power will always devolve into violence if unchecked, it still shows that people can be convinced to do horrible things if they’re told it’s for a greater cause, such as the advancement of science
And in the case of this experiment, I would say it’s still a good example of how groups that despise each other can come to like each other through simple contact
Ok but you gotta admit the knives were not a good prize idea for an experiment pitching children against each other.
honestly I think it's the plot of Meatballs starring Bill Murray
@@sarahlynn7807 to be fair, that was just what you gave little boys at the time. I think they knew those knives were never going to be used on each other because the animosity was never going to run that deep, it was a playful elementary schooler rivalry not a true life or death war
I think it's the lack of a control group that invalidates any conclusion that was drawn from the experiment. It seems designed to prove RCT and lo and behold that is the conclusion that was drawn.
@@tommykarrick9130 I agree. Also, I think another aspect of group dynamics comes to light when looking at the results: any 2 (or more) groups can be manipulated to turn against one another based on nothing but pulling external strings. Which I believe can be a lesson to adults in the real world where the ethical consequences of being hostile to a group based on made up differences are much more dire. I'd say the main take from this and similar experiments is to always question those who are trying to make you look at anyone else as an enemy, as your Other. Be more like the kids and question the authority pushing hate onto you. Ok bye
John. I have just enjoyed your Robbers Cave Experiment video from a currently cold overcast and rainy part of Old Hickory Tennessee USA. Great job as always.
Thank you!
I guess you haven't heard, but the real life "Lord of the Flies" actually happened. A bunch of kids got stranded on an island. But guess what? They all worked together and thrived. That's what really happens when manipulative assholes don't interfere, be they scientists or politicians.
A bunch of friends*
@@CertifiedPG and it happened 15 years after this experiment
To be fair, if they were stranded and needed to work together to survive, that means the group had a common goal to work towards together and there wasn’t an “opposing” group
MEDIA, you forgot MEDIA
I guess you didn't read the comments before just having to post the same thing that 40 other people posted 🙄
'Armenian deportations' is a rather odd way to describe the massacres that happened to the Armenians en masse
They got deported 6 feet. Below?
It’s genocide
They were deported from this plane of existence
It’s deportation cause they got sent back to hell
Nice trendy colours.
Pre-teens with weapons was a thing, but pre-teens back then had a better sense of boundaries. I was 10 when I got my first firearm (a .22-cal rifle). My friends and I would fill a pocket with ammo, strap on our 22s, and hop on our bikes to go plink tin cans in the woods. Our parents' greatest concern was, "be home in time for dinner." Nobody got hurt. And none of us kids ever considered picking up a rifle in anger. Times today are way different.
You're 100% wrong. Violence was far more prevalent before the 1980s.
Way more of your generation were rapists and murderers than recent generations. Get off your high horse.
Calling this a "horror" is a pretty long stretch. This sounds like a typical summer camp experience.
sit down troll
this is eerily similar to what I experienced during last year of my life. My country (I'm from eastern Europe) has mandatory military service. I finished my 9 month service only 2 weeks ago, everything is still very fresh. When we were brought to basic training, our company consisted of 2 platoons, around 40 boys each, each platoon seperated into 3 sections. Rivalry between the platoons quickly developed. After 11 weeks of basic training, we got sent to a combat unit we were assigned to. We were divided between two smaller, specialized companies, the staff company and heavy weapons company I served in. The division was random, and it so happened, that I was now mostly with guys from the former "other" platoon. it was weird, also, the commanders were much, much stricter, and our life was turned into social hell for like 2 months, I believe this helped with coheasion of newly formed groups. Due to both companies knowing each other, there were a lot of communication between us, even tho rivalry somehow started between the companies, even tho there was a lot of seperated friends. After the service, we organized the party, it was mainly our former platoon of basic training, thus friends, but I was the only one who was sent to the other company. it was weird to say the least. The whole service felt like a huge compilation of experiments you host on this channel. we learned to live in fear, we learnt to hide, we learnt to adapt, overcome, and not to mind external stressors. Funnily enough, I developed couple of really good friends. Well, I guess out of tens of draftees from different backgrounds, you'll find some people you enjoy being with. Thankfully as a NATO member we didn't get involved in you know what, and we got demobilized when our time was up. I wish luck on the new boys.
Thank you for the video and thank you for reading.
Bless you
Hope you're doing well now 😊
As a psychology major I always LOVE learning about new experiments and different topics within psychology. The 1950s was a VERY INTERESTING TIME for psychological research and there were not as many “rules” back then. This video is very interesting and I would love to see if any of the kids are still living and how this experiment impacted or changed their lives in some way.
I live in Oklahoma, and have been to the fall festival at robber’s cave dozens of times, yet i had never, ever heard of this experiment, this is just incredibly wild, and even more insane that I’ve been there several times, and may have stood where an individual from these groups could have stood.
The children rallying together against the sus experiment gives me actual hope for mankind.
For me, it sort of echoes the 'red pill' term being thrown around these days. That's when we 'wake up' to the games being played in politics and how we are artificially divided as a society and that both sides are manipulated by the same people.
"Pandemic of the unvaccinated"
@15:49
Why is there a random black and white striped box in the upper right corner of the screen?
It just randomly shows up and seems to serve no purpose.
I found your channel about two weeks ago and I can't believe it took me so long. Your content style is pretty much all I watch so it legit boggles my mind that it took so long for TH-cam to suggest your channel.
I've been happily enjoying mini-binges ever since. I'm bummed that I will eventually catch up but I can't help it.
I love that you actually research the topics and present them in your own words instead of regurgitating Wikipedia or some other source like a lot of channels do.
This is one of the best channels on TH-cam, period. Thank you for every video, good sir. Obviously I enjoy them thoroughly. Much respect from Colorado. 👍
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy the channel!
„well there‘s your problem“ is where you go next.
Under appreciated channel. Mr. Difficult is rational in a irrational world.
enjoy while it's magical -- you'll run out soon
"I've been happily enjoying mini-binges ever since" - Yeah this is a great channel. Since you like to binge watch channels let me suggest a channel to you. It's called "Mr. Ballen" and he tells stories about all sorts of stuff in a highly entertaining and informative way. He's already got like 5.5 million subs or some shit. Check it out friend, I'm certain you'll like it. Let me know what you think.
I’m very curious at how violent the fights became. Hopefully none of the children received any severe injuries.
I received an injury at summer camp that still causes me pain several decades later. It’s actually hurting right now.
During “Capture the Flag”, I was one of the kids who agreed to protect our flag (guard). I caught two kids that were really close, and captured both of their socks. The boy grabbed my arm and kept twisting it slowly until it broke, even though I begged and pleaded for him to stop. The moment I saw that he wasn’t going to follow the rules, I was prepared to release the socks, but I wasn’t able to.
Jesus, that's incredibly messed up. Unfortunately we've all met someone like that, but that's not the norm in most childhood physical conflict. Kids old enough to play team games are old enough to feel compassion for others, sadly you ran into one who was apparently born without that trait. The fact that it was a game and not a fight makes his actions even more out of the norm, and that's not the sort of thing you grow out of either. Something seriously wrong there.
thats a combo of him "needing" to win and not wanting to lose. no one but a piece of shit who thinks winning is everything would break someones arm over a fucking game.
I hope that youngster faced not only dismissal from the camp but psychological therapy- clearly he needed it.
And people wonder why I don't like kids.
@@WobblesandBean adults are worse- they should know better from lessons learned through childhood.
This is one where I think you cannot ignore the potential for influence and the lack of a control group absolutely skewing the results. I would love to see if modern researchers could even possibly sit down and with modern ethical and scientific guidelines create a useful comparable experiment because it seems that the "othering" behavior is so often taught and never just innate.
I love the little pause he does when he tells you the weather where he lives. Like, it’s an audio cue where you can clearly tell he’s looking out the window to see what it’s like outside before continuing on with his outro.
I went to school and that cured me of any great hope or respect for humanity irreparably by age 10.
Does wonders for ones nihilism, that
As a parent and grandparent they simply don't go to any camp or other places where conditions were sceptical
me before watching plainly difficult: science ain't that scary
me after watching plainly difficult: mommy help me
😬
@@PlainlyDifficult lol
Just trust the science... scary words being pushed into our brains today.
I think their parents did this 🤣
Science isn't scary. People's wrongful application of it is.
Alas, I don't have a candy to calm you down till mum arrives. Sorry mate.
Imagine being able to convince somebody to pay YOU $260 to let their child be part of a science experiment!
Girls gotta eat
Well… We do pay taxes so our kids can go to public schools…
For three fucking weeks mind you
Think about it this way that's $260 in today's money, I went to a military school which offered summer training at the low low cost of about $110 a week for two weeks, which covered all the activities food water housing.
So for 3 weeks $250 doesn't sound all that bad, it was a science experiment in this case but there's cost involved with everything especially with living creatures because they need to eat and drink.
But, Sheriff had grant money for this! Where did that go?
This experiment turned into a program called Passport for Adventure. I was part of that program in 1989. It was a great program. Changed my life.
Short history lesson about Robbers Cave: I was born/grew up in Oklahoma and would go to Robbers Cave at least once a year! It is so beautiful! The caves are super cool especially the history. The history consists of Belle Star and the James-Younger Gang who were very famous outlaws. She, Jessie James and the rest of the gang were being chased by the law after stealing horses. While on the run they hid out in Robber’s Cave, thus it’s name. While searching for them they were seen running into one of the caves and were quickly followed. By the time the authorities got to the cave they all had disappeared! The particular cave they hid in was more akin to a natural amphitheater. The most bizarre part is there was no escape from that particular cavern. There was no entrance to the other caves meaning it was literally a solid rock wall. No one has ever figured out how they disappeared and escaped. I can’t remember how many people from the gang there were but if I remember correctly it may have been approx 6. At any rate she later passed away in Eufaula, Oklahoma in 1889 after being shot in the back by authorities. Sorry I digressed from the content of the video… I just think it is a really cool story and wanted to share. Everyone have a blessed day!
They were most likely hobgobbled by the huddled goblins akin to the Hobbit story. And eaten. Lovely!
@@GogaBolz I’ll take that as a valid scenario! Lol!
Jesse James was a woman? Say what? When did that happen? What time line is this?
@@kathleenvolle1789 no, the woman’s name was Belle Star. She was a notorious bank and train robber. She ran with Jesse James and the James Gang during her career as a criminal. In the sentence “She, Jesse James and the gang…” She is Belle Star. I’m sorry for the confusion.
@@brennatotty ohhh, thanks for clearing that up for me. Whew! That had my 71 year-old self confused. 🤣
I really enjoy your videos and found this one very interesting, if not surprising, it's pretty much normal human nature. My only confusion is in the title, "The Horror of..." While perhaps unethical by modern standards (though not of the time necessarily), I'd hardly call this a horror. Since I wasn't familiar with this incident, I didn't already know how it ended. I kept expecting it to end in the same manner as the Lord of the Flies (since you refer to it also). I expected somehow it got out of control, and one or more of the boys was killed, or at least injured, or some horrific accident happened during one the activities. But it sounded like the worst thing that happened was what normal kids do, fights, name calling, cabin-raids, sabotage, etc. And since it sounded like they pretty much all made friends at the end (instead of killing each other), I think the "horror" description is just absurd. When you introduced the knives as prizes, I thought surely that's foreshadowing, and some boy is going to get knifed by the end. But of course, nothing happened worse than a food-fight. Still, an interesting story, but hardly a "horror."
Agreed. Love his videos, a long time subscriber, but that is a misleading clickbait title for sure.
I agree. Maybe it has something to do with John's age and upbringing in Britain. I'm 50 and grew up in a small town in western Colorado. The things described were fairly common including fighting, playing sports and having knives. A knife prize would've been pretty cool! As kids that young, we never threatened each other with them, that wasn't tolerated.
Good story but he presented it in an unfair light, especially given the time frame. These kids father's likely served in world war two. It was a different time with different ideologies, a conservative culture that had just defeated Hitler and almost no modern technology. Plus all the kids came from Oklahoma. Maybe they should've tried the experiment with kids from inner cities...
@Chuck Poore agreed, I've read William Goldings book and this is nothing like it... other than that fact that they both involve a group of schoolboys...
Flawed experiment and a flawed video title.
I think the video is just keeping to the main theme of the channel, for the most part. I agree that it is exaggerated for clickbait, but unfortunately, clickbait is becoming more and more necessary for smaller TH-camrs as they will otherwise be buried by the algorithm so I can understand its use here.
This is awesome. I went to summer camp for 3 years and we were divided into groups and we became fiercely tribal. We all had different group songs and sat in separate areas during meals. Also, all the kids in my group formed sub groups depending on which city they were from. We sometimes cooperated to accomplish goals but soon after re-segregated back to our groups.
Im not american but that sounds like a long time to spend at a summer camp
@@themug406 Had to reread it a few times :P
(Probably a reoccurring camp three summers in a row)
You can kinda see a bit of this phenomenon occur in fandoms sometimes. Especially big fandoms like Sonic and Star Wars. They got different in groups focused on liking and disliking different aspects of the franchise, but if something especially bad happens to the franchise, they can all come together with a common agreement on it. In the case of Star Wars, everyone can agree that the Holiday Special is weird af, and in the Sonic fandom, everyone can agree that Ken Penders is an asshole and wrote some pretty shoddy storylines for the Archie Sonic comics.
Yup! And it’s plainly obvious in bipartisan politics every day.
You should have seen the digimon shipping wars. now that's scary stuff.
It's also prominent in say computer ownership. Seriously.
The competition between Atari ST owners and Commodore Amiga owners to all the way up to PS vs Xbox.
@@junkman8742 I actually liked Jar Jar... C3P0 and R2D2 are the annoying ones in my opinion.
Sports fandom, especially soccer, even among local soccer teams in europe, can literally be homicidal.
One thing I cannot stress enough here. At that time, informed consent and research ethics weren't a thing. Look at things like the Milgram Experiment. Those two concepts are relatively rare in research. So, at the time this was conducted, this research was not considered unethical.
The winning camp buying drinks for everybody was a solid choice that I was not expecting, and was probably the biggest point of interest out of the whole operation in my opinion.
Thanks for the lovely video presentation.
I found it very interesting how different your life in Britain is from mine in America. I was born in Vegas in the 90's and given my first pocket knife at 6 for camping tool purposes. Later, I won my first rifle in a raffle at 12 where my younger brother won his. I hunted rabbits and birds from that age in the desert, and got my license to hunt Antelope, Deer, and Elk in the state at age 14. My younger cousins aged 7-12 in the past 4 years all have begun pistol and rifle shooting. Our whole extended family enjoy hunts every year.
It's interesting that one of the criticisms was of staff at a camp killing a snake being abnormal. Animal control is important for the safety of people and shooting ends up being the best way to carry it out in camp settings.
I also noticed you called the Armenian Genocide a 'deportation' and I wonder if that's how they taught it in your schools.
Finally, I had to relisten when you were talking about which city the kids were selected from because you said 'Oklahoma' which is a state in our country. I assume you mean Oklahoma City which is the name of the city within that state.
These kinds of different perspectives and acceptance of opposite norms prove to me that conflict is innate to us.
Thank you very well put!
haha i had a similar moment of confusion when i heard him say "the city of Oklahoma" and it was the first time I stopped to think about how weird it sounds to say "the city of Oklahoma City" even though that would, technically, be the more correct phrasing.
@@TheGuindo For sure, I would have phrased it in my American dialect, "From Oklahoma City, instead of "From the city of..."
Interesting how subtle differences in geography bring this about, I can't think of anywhere in UK with the same style of city name: Kent City, Suffolk City, or Belfast City.
Hahaha. I guess it would be similar to saying, "The children were selected from the shire of Oxford."
“Animal control” whats that murder of wildlife because humans have encroached on the animals habitat?
And 23:20 "I'm brassic mate" , typical 'city of Oklahoma' good ol boy slang
There was an incident in 1966 where children were really lost on an island off the coast of Tonga without adult supervision for more than a year, and they organized a peaceful society and took care of each other while they waited for rescue. That's what you do when you're really in danger, as opposed to a sociological experiment or a summer camp where they were well aware that they would be fed and sheltered by adults. Lord of the Flies was a novel. It was a made-up story by a schoolmaster who maybe should have had a different profession. These incidents tell you far more about the nature of the researchers than of humanity in general.
It’s different. They didn’t create out groups and in groups. This experiment was not about children’s ability to survive. They were given food and clothing and adult supervision. It’s abt ingroups and our groups
The same thing happened during the 'Vid shortages and lockdowns. Sure some people fought and were stupid, but most people weren't monsters. People think there's this magical point where people just slide into absolute chaos but it doesn't happen without being taught over time. People voluntarily walked into executions during every single genocide despite having pretty good ideas about what was happening, for a more negative example. People don't just hurt each other without building up to it, it's built into evolutionary psychology not to.
Acting like little scuffles and arguments between children is the same as slaughtering each other for 'dominance' are the same is incredibly disingenuous.
The novel isn’t supposed to be an actual story about boys going nuts on an island. It’s an allegory.
I spent my childhood at robbers cave and never knew about this. Learn something new everyday.
Since when did John get so funny? Seriously this video had some humor to it and I enjoyed it.
The stepping on the foot set it off for me everytime lol
@@TheIcpfan23 dont get me started with that guy always standing on dudes foot. It gets me every time as well. I believe I seen them on a shirt in his merch section. I'm very tempted to get it.
Woodworking was a popular hobby. Knives were useful for camping, too.
Gotta love how one/two experiments involving less than 100 participants influenced an entire theory.
Well, no matter how large the sample group is, scientists usually get the conclusions they're looking for.
"Pandemic of the unvaccinated"
True story: Several hundred years ago, in the US, twenty Comanche children (all ten years old) ten boys and ten girls, were sent into the wilderness by their parents to
do a two week survival test.
When the children returned, they discovered to their horror and sorrow that their village had been attacked by an enemy tribe. And they were the sole survivors of their tribe. The twenty children buried the dead
and performed the funeral rites for their deceased loved ones.
Afterwards, they rebuilt their village a hundred or so yards away from where the village formerly stood. And they did everything as they had been taught by the adults to do and so when they were grown, their tribe survived. 😐
bullshit
holy shit D: those poor kids
I guess they passed their survival test...... only to find it was no longer a test
@@TheGuindo Yes, that's true.
I thought it was strange that none of the other tribes didn't take the orphans in, but then I discovered that they were afraid
that the ones who had done the massacre, might retaliate by attacking theirs if they helped the kids. I don't know what enemy tribe had attacked in
the first place but thank God they didn't go back to finish the job. 🙄
Makes me wonder if the parents knew trouble might be coming and sent the kids out on a "survival test" just in case.
@@fhearchair8979 Only the 10-year-olds?
I always found the experiment to be a fascinating horror story since my middle school science and history teachers talked about it in separate occasions when I was looking at disturbing topics for both classes I felt it fit better into history class instead of science
12:24 "Weapons" 🤦♂️ what do you cut your food with ? A knife is also a weapon but if all you asociate a knife with is using it as a weapon you should start to question some Things. A knife is mostly a tool.
All this time having grown up in Oklahoma and visited Robbers' Cave plenty of times, this is the first I've heard of such influential work there.
Armenian genocide, not "deportations"
Rhetoric
Tells you everything you need to know about this content creator. Take anything you hear with a grain of salt…
Amen.
Yeah you should probably look up what genocide means
Forced relocation is genocide, it's not only killings. Not that the turks didn't kill a shit loads of Armenians.
I have 4 nephews around the age of the boys in these studies and I nearly spit my coffee out when you mentioned they were offered knives as prizes. They’ve done physical damage to each other with things no more dangerous than stuffed animals. I can’t even wrap my head around the 1950’s, what a time it must have been 😂
I really enjoy that you don't just do the same videos that all the other channels do and instead focus on the lesser known topics. These are at least lesser known to me. Great video as always!
Compared to the last to years of government induced conflict between the in/out groups, this was pretty mild.
More like 15 to 20 years.
Maybe 30+. Kinda since veitnam actually.
I live 20 miles from Robbers Cave now (I formerly lived in Wilburton where it's located as well) & have visited there many times but never heard this story. Thanks for making this video. Very interesting!
💌 Peace & Love from Oklahoma 💌
I live a few hours away and have been their and the only story I was told was bout two criminals useing the caves as an hideout.
Wait, this is a seven? And yet the prison experiment was a six? I am so lost as to how this was worse. In this experiment, there were no serious injuries, both groups stayed healthy, and in the end they all got along. It seems to me the the whole experiment had no negative effect on anyone.
They get a bonus point for using children. Any atrocity involving children gets a bonus point.
@@bob7975 I will always agree that you get bonus points for using children, but what was atrocious about it? I mean I don’t approve of it, I think it was pointless. But no one got hurt, and it seems like the children enjoyed their time overall. It was basically just a summer camp with notes being taken.The only immoral thing I can think of is that the parents didn’t know enough about what was going on.
@@musettedybala9557 they did kinda have secret microphones everywhere, which is kinda creepy and invasive IMO....
Standford Prisoners were adults that voluneteered knowing the experiment and that was an actual experiment. These were kids that didn't realize they were in an experiment.
The best example that I have for modern day scientific research done on children in that age group without full consensual knowledge would be cancer research hospitals like St. Jude’s. Clearly these children know they are undergoing treatment. But they most likely do not realize the risks or the details of their treatment. This tells me that is not unethical for children to undergo scientific research without their consensual knowledge as long as their best interest is taking into account, they’re kept safe, and cared for, with their parents consent.
In the 21st-century full knowledgeable consent and privacy is much more valued than it was in the time of the experiment. We can see this from the example of the children being interviewed in the schools without their parents even knowing it was happening.
And to continue, it was more practiced for parents to put their children into the hands of other adult they trust without any contact with their children in that day and age. It was normal for the parents to have very little knowledge about what their children were doing.
Now let’s take the Stanford prison experiment into account. I would argue that these men went into the experiment with even less knowledge of what was happening than the parents of the children, or the children themselves in the Robber’s cave experiment. These men were given even less privacy and much less autonomy. The prisoners were put into the hands of guards and researchers who had no care for their safety or health, and very little accountability for the way the prisoners were treated by the guards.
If I may, I’d like to add in my own personal modern values on this topic. I believe it was wrong to put these children into the experiment, and I would never allow my children to take part in anything like it, especially since it was an incredibly unnecessary experiment.
But in the end, the Stanford prison experiment caused great long term and short term damage, physically and psychologically to the prisoners involved.
Whereas the Robber’s cave experiment caused no notable long term damage, and in the end seemed to be overall enjoyable experience to all minors involved excluding the couple children who were sent home for home sickness.
Thank you for listening. I do value that we all seem disprove of the Robber’s cave experiment.
What exactly is the horror in this experiment?
His pronunciation of hierarchical at 7:50
Your videos are a ray of sunshine.
Thank you
If you never been to robbers cave park, it is very beautiful and the cave is fun to explore. There are large group camps you can rent out and I can see how they could use one camp and another for the experiment. Very interesting and never heard of this at the park. One thing that is known is actual famous robbers hid out in the cave and area.
Weird how you called it the “Armenian deportations” and not genocide 🤔
I would LOVE to see the 1953 group be made in to a movie! We need to see movies that show that groups that are manipulated against each other, realize that they real outsider are those doing the manipulating.
"Oh the 1950s when kids were given weapons"
Going to state the obvious but a knife is more of a multifunctional tool. Got my first penknife when I was 5 and I was born in the 90s.
The fact you could just go to a school and select a bunch of kids to be part of a study then ask the parents to pay for it is insane though. Especially as the parents knew it was a study. Also the price is pretty high when adjusted for inflation.
Why did you had a penknife?
A knife is as much a weapon as a hammer or a screwdriver.
@@thegameranch5935 Carving wood, making toy bows and arrows and the like.
I remember adults borrowing it while having a barbecue at a local farm that was open to the public.
I probably carried knives in public between the ages of 5 and 14 than after that. Mainly due to dumb UK 'anti knife crime' laws restricting what I could and couldn't carry coming into effect around then.
Never stabbed anyone. Seems that even the boys in this study didn't stab anyone despite fighting over knives.
@@ipellaers It still shouldn't be called a "weapon"
@@PierceMD I agree mate, just stating you could call most tools a weapon. I mean, I'm not really sure if I'd rather fight someone holding a pocket knife or someone holding a claw hammer...
Really good video.
The Creek the camp was next to, Moccasin Creek, is pronounced Mock - a - sin Creek.
Finally a happy ending in a plainly difficult video? no way!
I was a boyscout - even without an experiment, we could get pretty tribal. Each troop of scouts (your whole group from one source) was broken down into patrols of about a dozen boys each. The patrols regularly competed in events against each other, tended to form their own cliques, and occasionally harassed the other patrols in the troop. When multiple troops came together (for a jamboree, or large summer camp) it got worse. Whole troops would harass one another - tent and camp raids, etc.
It was never bad enough to start fights, and the adults and counselors usually just considered it "boys being boys" and all having a bit of good fun. But if wouldn't have taken much.
I remember at once large camp, we made small catapults to prove our lashing skills. They could lob tennis balls a bit more than 100 yards. And so of course, a few patrols from 2 troops got together, set up catapults, and in the middle of the night started raining tennis balls and then rocks into a site at the other end of the camp. That one did cop some disciplinary action, but even 14yo me could see the counselors trying not to laugh as they described how rude it is to be woken up by rocks raining from the sky onto your campsite.
I don’t know why I never get your notifications PD, but glad I caught this today! Great as always brother , please keep up the great work 💪
Thank you!
This is particularly interesting for me as I grew up in Oklahoma and I have gone to Robber's Cave more than probably most people. I have recovered campsites at the park, restored trails, and hiked every inch of the park enough times that I could wander in the park for hours and never need a map or compass to find my way. I was also in boy scouts, I'm an eagle scout even, and although while I was in scouts robbers cave wasn't our summer camp, it was camp Tom Hale elsewhere in the state, and now as an adult I am fascinated by tru crime and psychology. We always heard of a girlscout troop who had been brutally murdered at camp Scott elsewhere in Oklahoma around the same time as this, perhaps a decade or so later. Robbers cave in some places has a very earie feeling to it which I have only really come to realize upon revisiting the site as an adult. At our summer camps there was always hundreds of people there so although there were friendships made nothing was ever so tribalistic although there might have been some minor conflicts throughout the week. My family was originally from California but moved to Oklahoma around the 90's which was when I was born so my time in the park took place in the late 2000's but nonetheless we heard many stories about military testing taking place outside of the park on land that was adjoining the park. I also found it somewhat interesting that one of the groups was called the rattlers as our leadership troop was called the rattlesnakes, which we voted on. Such interesting parallels and coincidents but either way it is a fascinating story that took place somewhere I am very familiar with. At our summer camp, tom hale, we would create flags like in the story, did skits and many of the things that are mentioned in this story.
23:09 Why do people confuse loser and looser?
Learning to spell with social media instead of dictionaries
because they confuse your mom with you
Very interesting. For once I was glad no mysterious object with a blue glow was found. Glad no one was hurt for the sake of science.
A knife is not just a weapon it is a TOOL, children should be given access to things like this when they are still young and impressionable so that they can learn the difference -- before they get to the age where they start to make their own observations about the world. It should be used as an opportunity to learn responsibility, respect, and safety. It should not be given flippantly, it should come with an understanding that it will be taken away if misused, and the child should feel the honor of being entrusted with such an item.
This was a new one for me. Never heard of this one, so I'm wondering how many more questionable experiments like this have been done! Thanks for another great video! :) Watching from a currently rainy, windy, and chilly corner of Wisconsin in the US.
So...uh this is awkward. When you said the real life Lord of the Flies, I thought that a couple of them were going to die. RIP Simon, and Piggy, and that other kid.
Not Hollywood enough for you? So uh how is it, uh, awkward?
@@skylined5534 it's awkward because I thought they all like died or something, but they were fine
When I was ages 2, 3 and 4,I went to something called a “laboratory preschool“. Basically it was children behaviour studies. But they didn’t tell the children. Every room had giant dark mirrors.
It didn’t take me long to realise this, and to think that these giant mirrors were strange features. Me and some other children figured out that if we put our hands at the sides of our faces and looked directly into the mirrors, faces pushed against them, that we could see chairs or people on the other side. I don’t know what that meant, but I knew we were being watched. It didn’t bother me. I just realised that I had an audience for the show.😊
Interesting subject! Glad you covered all the lead up experiments, esp the one where the boys discovered the experiment!
Despite the obvious issues, I like that they attempted to unite the two groups through a common goal (fixing the water) rather than by introducing a third party to be an enemy. A glimmer of hope for humanity! Let's go look under rocks for lizards together and share our snack money!
This experiment actually shows us the nasty effects of tribalism and how it can easily influence us as all we'd need to do to trigger it is to be in a group and as soon as you identify with that group, you will show in-group bias for ones own group and out-group prejudices to any competing group. This experiment has been done a few times with the most notable being the Standford prison experiment but you only need to look at society today to see it's true effects with men hating feminists, straight hating gays and white hating minorities all brought together with their groups like LGBTQ and BLM. Tribalism is the biggest cause of prejudice and discrimination in the world and it's not getting any better, in fact, it has gotten much worse thanks to idiots who believe putting us into groups based on race, gender and sexual orientation will solve prejudice but it has only enabled it further.
Hi. It’s the Armenian Genocide. Not “deportations.” My great grandparents’ brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles were shot in the head and had their bodies dumped in a mass grave in Erzurum, not deported somewhere. I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal and isn’t even what the video is about, but it’s misinformation like this that is letting the Ottoman Empire get away with it. I’ve been a long time follower of your account and this just disappoints me.
i’m an adult volunteer for a youth group and we have summer camp every year.
the kids are well cared for and counselors and volunteers (who go through extensive background checks) are always keeping watch over the kids so no drama or safety issues occur.
sportsmanship and kindness are heavily promoted and any trouble (bullying, stealing, fighting, etc.)that comes along is dealt with accordingly.
in short, it’s a great and safe environment, but the kids still act this way when they are around another group ( the kids are split into groups)
it’s human nature to be competitive
comparing this study to some of the others shown by your channel, I feel like it is one of the more harmless once.
yes it has its flaws, but i think it compares pretty good to an experience a child might get just by being in school.
Well done, John. This is the first 'Dark Side of Science' vid I've been able to make it through the whole way. I'll be looking for more about the Sharifs now, thank you for the overview.
Thank you!
Superb reporting, challenging topic for science and history. Thanks!
2:22 the word's genocide dear
This was not nearly as bad as I was afraid when I clicked on this. I was pleasantly surprised.
Only part of the experiment I have a visceral reaction to was rigging the contest to create friction. Whoever wins, let them win fair and square.
...it was a science experiment first and foremost, not a sports camp. For the sake of the experiment they NEEDED to do that.
@@jnerdsblog Unclear if it was necessary, and if their cheating were exposed it would have blown the entire ruse, creating a repeat of the previous attempt. Thus it was risky at best.
Regardless, I'm aware there are things that are objectively more objectionable about this let's say experiment, but a visceral reaction is not necessarily rational.
@@jnerdsblog "it was a science experiment first and foremost"
You clearly have no fucking idea what science is.
One of the most interesting stories I’ve ever heard and I’m from Oklahoma, Been to Beautiful Robbers Cave, and was in the Boy Scouts until I made Eagle Scout.