« Koh Lanta » is a French tv show. 24 survivors are generally divided in two teams and try to survive facing difficult conditions on exotic islands. They only have water, their clothes and a backpack. While facing hunger they also need to compete in various physical and intellectual contests with the opposing team to win significant advantages like food or fishing gear. Also, each time a team loses, it must go through a council where each survivor will vote against a member of its team. The team member that receives the most vote get expelled from the show. The last one standing wins it all and go back home with a good amount of money. Why is this tv show interesting from a psychological point of view?
In 1954 Muzafer and Carolyn Sherif conducted an experiment that resulted in the « realistic conflict theory » (RCT). During this experiment 24 young boys were brought to a summer camp and went through three phases, the first one was the group formation, without first contacts the 24 were divided in two groups of 12 participants. Then, the second phase was named the friction phase and consisted in various sports competitions opposing the two groups. Finally, the groups were reunited in the third and last phase. Sherif observed an increasing hostility through the first two phases, though, this hostility vanished progressively during the last phase as « super-ordinate goals » were introduced. For example, the boys had to move a stuck truck but this one was too heavy for one team, so they had to cooperate which helped reducing the tensions between groups. The RCT shows how easily hostility can buid up between groups even if they are arbitrarily formed.
The similarities with the tv show « Koh Lanta » are obvious but there are three major differences. First, in-group hostility also appears as losing teams must expel some of their members. Also, the first two phases are identical to the experiment yet the last one differs. There’s a point in the tv show when the teams are gathered in a same team yet, no super-ordinate goal is effective as there can only be one winner so previous teams tend to still exist as survivors relies on the relations they built in their initial teams. Though, the last difference is that after the team « reunification », as it is called in the show, the contests become individual ones which may have an influence on the inter-individual relations. The most interesting fact from a social psychological point of view is that science allows to observe with accuracy how the groups are formed and the way they interact.
The general aspect of the application of the RCT to the tv show « Koh Lanta » has been presented. Currently, a season of the show is displayed every week and there was a particularity this year. Indeed, there were two group formations. The first one was based on the gender of the survivors; they spent a few days in this setting then the second one implied a removal of the first two teams to create two new mixed teams. During the first phase, the women’s team elaborated a « girl power » strategy to bring the most women possible at the final stages of the competition. Yet, during the second phase, the new setting implied cooperation between men and women and lead to the withdrawal of some women from the strategy and created conflicts between them. The occurring of these events shows how belonging to a group can affect behaviours even if the goal remains the same.
In closing, we can highlight how a tv show can be a way to re-enact some major scientific experiments. Indeed, the RCT explains clearly what happens in the first stages of the competition but also shows us that the chaos during the « reunification » ensues from the lack of super-ordinate goal which is wanted on the show to provide entertainment. Finally, this show can be an argument of the value of team building in organisations and how super-ordinate goals are primordial to promote cooperation.