Evaluate Sherif's 'Robber's Cave' Experiment. (4 marks)

A key strength of Sherif's 1954 'Robber's Cave' study is that it has high validity. Sherif's experiment was set up as a two week long summer camp with participants who were not aware of the aim of the study. This means chance of demand characteristics are massively reduced. Demand characteristics is when participants guess or think they've guessed the aim of a study and then act to prove or disprove it (consciously or unconsciously). This causes studies to lack internal a validity as the results are being produced due to knowledge of the aim and not the independent variable, thus, since Sherif's study did not suffer from this, the internal validity is high.In terms of weaknesses, Sherif's study massively lacks generalisability. The sample used in the study consisted of 22 boys aged between 11 and 12 who were all from white, middle class backgrounds. Generalisability is how much the results of a study can be applied to the general population. Sherif's sample has two problems. Firstly, 22 people is a very small sample, meaning the results can not be representative of the wider population. Additionally, the fact that Sherif only used males of a certain age from particular backgrounds means that his results cannot apply to females, people older or younger than 11 and 12, or people from working class backgrounds. To improve this, the results of his study could be linked to other similar studies using different samples. However, his study alone cannot possibly be representative of many people and therefore massively lacks generalisability.