Superordinate goals requiring joint effort reduce intergroup hostility

Evidence

Attainment of common goals must be an interdependent effort without intergroup competition (Bettencourt et al 1992). Sherif (1966) demonstrated this principle vividly in his Robbers’ Cave field study. — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Intergroup Contact Theory, 14

Categorization

• STORYSTEM: A summer camp where counselors secretly engineer a broken water main to force rival cabins to cooperate — a tight, self-contained narrative engine.
• DEFINE: Pins down ‘cooperation’ precisely: interdependence plus the absence of competition, not mere proximity.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Thomas F. Pettigrew, Intergroup Contact Theory, 14
• XREF: connects to: Event coalitions can achieve political goals while modulating internal difference and inequality — Michelle I. Gawerc, Coalition-building and the forging of…, 323