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Realistic conflict theory

Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT), also known as Realistic Group Conflict Theory (RGCT), is a model of intergroup conflict that describes how conflict and prejudice between groups stems from conflicting goals and competition for limited resources. Groups may compete for concrete resources such as money and land or abstract resources such as political power and social status which leads to hostility-perpetuating zero-sum beliefs. The RCT was originally proposed by Donald T. Campbell and was later elaborated on in classic experiments by Muzafer Sherif and Carolyn Wood Sherif. The Sherifs' Robbers Cave experiment provided evidence for the RCT by arbitrarily assigning boys at a summer camp with similar backgrounds to different groups. The boys in these groups then competed with each other and elicited hostile outgroup beliefs until a superordinate, cooperative goal was imposed that required the groups to work together resulted in decreased feelings of hostility. Sherif maintained that group behavior cannot result from an analysis of individual behavior and that intergroup conflict, particularly those driven by the competition for scarce resources, creates ethnocentrism.