The Stone Soup Experiment ─ Why Cultural Boundaries Persist

The Stone Soup Experiment tells the often surprising story of a cultural simulation game the author entered into with a class of undergraduate psychology students in the spring of 2008. It was part of a participatory science investigation designed to shed light on the ways culture emerges in newly-forming groups and the ways common understandings are developed among potential group members. As a researcher, Downing Wilson hoped to see evidence of the students’ identification with their groups, the invention and elaboration of cultural conventions and materials, as well as the borrowing and adaptation of cultural products from other groups when they came into contact with each other. Despite her knowledge from the relevant literature, the author was surprised by the strong emotional investments demonstrated by all of those involved, by the almost immediate formation of well-defined in-group vs. out-group boundaries, by the complexity and intensity of the negotiations that took place when these boundaries were breached, and by the sustained identification with the natal” group long after the simulation phase of the investigation was over. As she says in her introduction, I was completely unprepared for the stealing, cheating, lying, conspiracy, and betrayal that sent the project careening in entirely unexpected ways, and I certainly did not expect to be consumed by the group competition in a way that distorted my perspective and made impartial analyses impossible.” Even at the end of the class when the simulation was finished, the author’s efforts at reconciliation further polarized the groups and the group leaders alike. If they learned nothing else, they are all now certain that they did indeed create two distinct cultural groups, and that cultural boundaries are far easier to construct and fortify than they are to negotiate or tear down.

Deborah Downing Wilson is an instructor in the department of communication at the University of Nevada, Reno.