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Walker or Biter? Group Identity in a Grave New World
KATHERINE RAMSLAND
Rick Grimes: We can all live together. There’s enough room for all of us…. Now you put down your weapons, walk through those gates, you’re one of us. We let go of all of it, and nobody dies….
The Governor: Kill ’em all.1
Group identity is a core component of The Walking Dead. Some groups welcome strangers, others shun them, and still others embrace them with evil intent. The Walking Dead provides a perfect forum for discussing the tenets of group behavior that psychologist Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues studied in 1954.2 They designed a reality-based experiment to examine in-group identity in periods of conflict and periods of cooperation.
Parallels between their work and many of the situations depicted in The Walking Dead are so close, in fact, that the milieu itself could be framed as an experiment. What if protagonist Rick Grimes and his group discover that a researcher has placed them among flesh-eating creatures “for science”? With its extended conflicts and higher stakes, The Walking Dead builds on Sherif’s discoveries but supports a less optimistic conclusion.
Rick understands the value of cooperation. Generally, he prefers to negotiate for a peaceful settlement, whether with a benign farmer such as Hershel Greene or with a tyrannical madman such as the Governor. By the time he leaves the prison encampment, though, Rick has learned that success comes only when the other party is willing to meet him halfway. The secret lies in two interacting factors: (1) having a “superordinate goal” that both groups want but cannot achieve without the other’s help and (2) knowing that both groups possess, and will act on, this awareness. Sherif identified the first factor, but Rick learned the second one the hard way.
Groups
Groups are basic social units consisting of interdependent individuals with emotional ties and clear social status and roles in relation to other members.3 Groups develop values and rules of behavior from which members absorb a sense of in-group identity that buffers them from out-group individuals. After the zombie outbreak (known among some as the Turn4), countless people have become mindless flesh eaters and the odds for survival favor groups over individuals. Overarching the franchise in every form (comics, TV, games) is the notion that only those who pool their strengths ultimately will find or create a safe place. After a group forms, it protects its own (the in-group) and tends to keep outsiders (the out-group) out. Part of this process is to identify threats.5
During the early days of post-outbreak awareness, individuals are in transition; it’s like a game of musical chairs in which they’re not quite certain which seat they’ll get. Rick awakens from an unconscious state to a world transformed to chaos.6 He must deal with the unfathomable fact that shambling people all around want to eat him. He seeks others like himself.
Groups form quickly in this grave new world. Sometimes they form among people already associated with one another, such as Hershel’s family and the prison inmates. At other times, circumstance and location throw people together, as in the case of the roadside campers. Rick gets some of both.
He first meets Morgan Jones and his son, who orient him to what it takes to survive in the midst of these “walkers.”7 Rick learns that walkers are attracted to noise; their bite kills you, but then you come back as a walker; hunger drives them; and killing them requires destroying their brains. This helps, but he needs to find his wife, Lori, and son, Carl, and so he pushes on.
He crosses paths with Glenn and then, in the television version, Glenn’s fellow campers Andrea, T-Dog, and Merle.8 As they face off together against a walker herd, Rick proves his worth and gains in-group status. He travels with them to the campers’ location and finds Lori and Carl, as well as his law enforcement partner, Shane.9 The campers form The Walking Dead’s primary point-of-view group. They lose members but retain a core group.
It is evident that hierarchies and roles must develop for the group to function effectively in a world its members barely comprehend. Rick emerges as a leader. Tentative bonds form during the early days as weaker members look to stronger ones, and all cling to the hope that the nightmare will end. As they take risks, run missions (release Merle, rescue Glenn), and protect one another, their associations strengthen. Nasty retorts fade as respect and appreciation grow. A group identity forms. No outsider can mess with any in-group member without consequences.
Information Conformity and Group Identity
Absorbing group norms can be a subtle process. The social psychologist Muzafer Sherif12 ran an experiment to learn how people conform in unclear situations. Because every survivor in The Walking Dead experiences a loss of clarity, all are vulnerable to group pressure.
To study group influence on individual perception, Sherif projected a spot of light onto a wall in a dark room. From studies on perception, he knew that the autokinetic effect, a visual illusion, would make the stationary light appear to move. In the dark, people will estimate its movement in accordance with their mental norms.
He sent individual participants into the room. Their task was to estimate how far the light moved. Estimates varied from 8 to 31 inches. Each participant then entered a room with two others. Sherif composed each group of two individuals who had had similar estimates (say, 8 inches) and one whose estimate had diverged significantly (25 inches). As they watched the light together, they stated their movement estimates aloud. Over numerous trials, the estimates tended toward agreement. Without discussion, each group naturally found its own norm.
A week later, a more profound result occurred. When Sherif retested participants individually, he found that even if they once had diverged greatly from their group, they now replicated their group’s estimates. Sherif believed that they had absorbed a group norm. Differing from conformity by pressure, this is known as informational conformity.
To demonstrate its effect on The Walking Dead characters, let’s call Rick Grimes a low estimator and Shane Walsh a high estimator. The others in the initial group look to both as leaders until their differences put them at odds. The group absorbs Rick’s reasoned approach rather than Shane’s survival-of-the-fittest idea. With each new situation that requires a difficult choice, the group coheres around Rick’s stance. In unclear situations, most people look to others for definitive information.
Each member brings to the group whatever he or she can. In the city, Jacqui provides knowledge as a city zoning officer when they hope to escape through the sewers.10 In the woods, Daryl Dixon uses his skills as a tracker.11 Some members will change—a lot—as they make choices for the group. Daryl is a prime example. After starting out as a redneck, ready to hurt anyone he doesn’t like, he becomes a protector and even a leader. At first, its members view the group as temporary solace. Only as they realize that it might be all they will ever have do some adopt a new sense of themselves and their roles. Carol Peletier grows from a cowering, abused wife into a fierce and resourceful warrior.13
Dominant figures influence the group’s core values. Rick’s compassionate “family” seeks a safe haven,14 the paranoid Governor makes preemptive strikes and creates strict rules for Woodbury,15 the cannibal Gareth dictates the dehumanizing values of Terminus (“You’re the butcher or you’re the cattle”16), and the Monroes assign jobs in Alexandria. Personality issues recede in the face of collective effort and need. This is the first glimpse of how a goal that transcends differences—a superordinate goal—can inspire cooperation among adversaries.
Into the Robbers Cave
To learn about in-group versus out-group behavior, Sherif attempted to create controlled conditions in which relatively equal groups could compete for limited resources.17 The research team set up those conditions in a Boy Scout camp at the 200-acre Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. They sought to test the development of hierarchies and roles among strangers engaged in a series of choreographed tasks as well as to learn about the nature of in-group identity.18 Over the course of three weeks, the experiment was to evolve through three stages:
1. In-group formation, involving activities that promoted group identification.
2. Friction phase, which would bring the groups into conflict.
3. Integration phase, which would encourage conflicting groups to cooperate.
In Phase 1, the team recruited twenty-two boys and randomly divided the volunteers into two groups while keeping the groups relatively balanced in skill and strength. All the participants were around eleven years old and had similar educational levels (above-average IQs). None had experienced unusual stress or frustration in their homes. None had been a failure academically or socially. None had known any of the other research participants before the study, and neither group initially knew about the other.19
A bus took each group separately to cabins in different areas of the park. Counselors (researchers acting as participant observers) encouraged them to bond through enjoyable activities done together, such as swimming, a treasure hunt, and sports. The researchers kept records of the speed with which group identity was established. Leaders soon emerged, along with low-status members and rules for behavior. One forbade swearing, for example, whereas the other allowed more vulgarity.
This is like Rick’s group before Woodbury: Unaware of other groups, they work on doing what’s necessary to survive. They meet and incorporate Hershel’s family, lose a few members, and push on to find answers or at least a home. The Walking Dead’s in-group formation phase shows their bonding experiences, from entering dangerous terrain to talking quietly about their lives before the Turn. Andrea finds a necklace for her sister Amy in an abandoned store, and Rick, whom she previously had cursed out, mutes his law enforcement instincts and supports her impulse to take it.20 The rules have changed, and their “secret” draws them into a friendship.
At Robbers Cave, each group chose a name: the Eagles and the Rattlers. Each name became a badge of in-group identity. It helped establish to whom they were loyal. They even emblazoned flags with their group names.
In The Walking Dead, the groups normally don’t identify themselves with labels, but the name they use for those who have turned reflects their in-group identity. Glenn calls them geeks,21 but Rick, who heard the term walker from Morgan,22 influences a change that sticks. Woodbury residents call them biters,23 reflecting the Governor’s more defensive and aggressive temperament, and the stagnant hospital group uses rotters.24
At Robbers Cave, still in Phase 1, the boys asked the staff to arrange competitions, as if they wanted to prepare themselves for possible future competition. This further cemented in-group identity and group status. Similarly, in The Walking Dead, group members with skills teach others. For example, Shane teaches Andrea how to shoot.25 The Governor takes this further by creating dangerous contests with biters to keep his warriors primed.26
Conflict
In Phase 2 (the friction phase), the Eagles and the Rattlers became aware of each other. At first, they only caught glimpses. The Rattlers placed a flag on the baseball diamond to reinforce their claim to that territory. Each group asked the counselors to let them compete against the other to prove themselves.
The researchers set up tournaments, with prizes for different events. Only one group could claim the main trophy. The researchers also contrived certain situations, such as letting one group gain food items at the other’s expense. As the competitions progressed, group identity became more cohesive, and this increased animosity toward the out-group. Threats and name-calling escalated to theft, raids, and property damage. Each group burned the other’s flag. The Eagles won the trophy, but the Rattlers, claiming to have been cheated, stole the Eagles’ lesser prizes. Reportedly, each group became so aggressive that the two groups had to be separated forcibly. Phase 2 ended early, yet the researchers considered it successful. They had produced conditions that inspired intergroup conflict.
The Eagles and the Rattlers are like Rick’s prison group versus the Governor’s group at Woodbury. When the Governor learns about Rick’s group, he wants to lay claim to all it has.27 In his mind, there are only winners and losers, and the winners should acquire the scarce resources. Insults fly back and forth, and both groups resort to violent forays. Each views the other as an enemy. There are no camp counselors in this world, but cooler heads in Rick’s group prevail. After retrieving the group members they can save, the prison group hopes to coexist with Woodbury, but separately. The Governor, however, must have it all. He encroaches, prepared to take the prison and its resources by force. He will kill everyone there if necessary.28
After the Rattlers and Eagles cooled off, the counselors asked each participant to describe his group. To a man, each favored his own group and vilified the other. They demonstrated a form of groupthink, something the political scholar Irving Janis would define years later29 as a maladaptive form of decision making in which the members of a group tend to overly idealize their own position while exaggerating the evilness of “bad” groups. The group leader implies that only he has the right solution. Anyone who questions or argues with the leader and his theory is ostracized. When groupthink dominates, there is little chance for a successful outcome. When both groups do it, the odds for a disaster are almost insurmountable.
The Governor and Rick both view themselves as morally right. Each faults the other leader and his group for any negative consequences. The more the other side has done, the more the “good” group feels justified in defending itself and launching assaults.
The final phase of the Robbers Cave experiment involved an attempt to integrate the two groups despite their sour feelings about each other. First, the researchers set up activities for the competing boys to get better acquainted, believing that mingling as equals would increase their tolerance. However, those activities had little effect. The boys refused to socialize. Mere contact proved insufficient to get them to like one another.
The researchers switched to plan B. They set up superordinate goals. In other words, they created situations in which both groups needed or wanted something but could get it only by working together.30
The counselors took both groups to a new location and told them about vandalism that had damaged the drinking water system. To get water, they would have to repair the damage, and neither group could manage it alone. The boys were thirsty. They figured out what they needed to do. The researchers watched them work together to achieve this goal. Once it was accomplished, though, they reverted to their in-group preferences.
The next task was to offer a movie, but the groups would have to pool their money to see it. Then they worked on a stalled food truck. With each new task, they softened toward each other. They started to mingle spontaneously. They ate dinner together for the first time. By the time the bus left the camp at the end of the three weeks, the groups had integrated, with self-selected seating arrangements that did not follow group lines. The Rattlers even used their prize money from earlier competitions to buy a treat for the Eagles.
As the Governor threatens an imminent assault, Rick offers a way to cohabit in the prison, with everyone working the gardens and fighting off walkers for the greater good.31 Unfortunately, the Governor operates on Phase 2 thinking: Only one group can win, and his group is the most deserving. He cannot be persuaded. He gives Rick’s group two options: leave or die. Nothing will compel him, a man who kills anyone outside his group without a second thought, to cooperate with Rick’s inferior band. To the Governor’s mind, they are nothing but a threat that must be eradicated.
Out of the Cave
Despite its insights, there were limitations to Sherif’s experiment. The groups were small, the participants did not represent any general populations, and the time period was too brief to study such complex dynamics thoroughly. The science journalist Maria Konnikova says, “As the stakes rise, as the diversity increases, as the group identification becomes based on something more than a random division into cabins, so too does the difficulty of unraveling the enmity increase.”32
Sherif found that when a number of individuals who have no previous relationships interact, roles and status hierarchies form. Leaders and followers emerge, and group identities form around a set of values and rules. If they compete for resources with another group, they will form unfavorable stereotypes about the out-group and keep them at a distance. However, differences can be overcome if conflicting groups see a benefit from working together toward a superordinate goal that neither can achieve alone.
Back to the opening question: What if Rick’s group discovered that a researcher had placed them among flesh-eating creatures “for science”? Besides being upset, they could have told us much more than Sherif and his colleagues did.
Rick discovers similar principles with in-group versus out-group conflicts. Mere tolerance exercises would fail, as would high-minded appeals. However, a superordinate goal, such as having to pull together against a herd of walkers, stands a better chance. Even so, not everyone in the Robbers Cave experiment could drop the animosity and get along. Sherif paid little attention to them, but the seeds of people like the Governor were among those boys who simply could not get along.
Rick could not afford to ignore this lesson. Having a superordinate goal is a good strategy, but it works only when all conflicting groups are willing to cooperate to achieve it. The Walking Dead effectively illustrates Sherif’s results but also shows what’s missing in his experiment.
References
Franzoi, S. L. (2003). Social psychology (3rd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Janis, I. L. (1972). Victims of groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes. Boston, MA: Houghton, Mifflin.
Kirkman, R., & Bonansinga, J. (2012). The walking dead: Rise of the Governor. New York, NY: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press.
Konnikova, M. (2012, September 5). Revisiting Robbers Cave: The easy spontaneity of intergroup conflict. Scientific American. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/2012/09/05/.
Sherif, M. (1936). A study of some social factors in perception. Archives of Psychology, 27(187), 1–60.
Sherif, M., Harvey, O. J., White, B. J., Hood, W. R., & Sherif, C. (1954/1961). Intergroup conflict and cooperation: The Robbers Cave experiment. Norman, OK: Oklahoma Book Exchange.
Notes
1. Episode 4–8, “Too Far Gone” (December 1, 2013).
2. Sherif et al. (1954/1961).
3. Franzoi (2003), pp. 321–322.
4. Kirkman & Bonansinga (2012).
5. Janis (1972).
6. Episode 1–1, “Days Gone Bye” (October 31, 2010).
7. Episode 1–1, “Days Gone Bye” (October 31, 2010).
8. Issue 2 (2003); episode 1–2, “Guts” (November 7, 2010).
9. Episode 1–3, “Tell It to the Frogs” (November 14, 2010).
10. Episode 1–2, “Guts” (November 7, 2010).
11. Episode 2–1, “What Lies Ahead” (October 16, 2011).
12. Sherif (1936).
13. As Merle acknowledged in episode 3–15, “This Sorrowful Life” (March 24, 2013).
14. Episode 2–4, “Cherokee Rose” (November 6, 2011).
15. Episode 3–3, “Walk with Me” (October 28, 2012).
16. Episode 5–1, “No Sanctuary” (October 12, 2014).
17. Sherif et al. (1954/1961).
18. Franzoi (2003), pp. 243–245.
19. Sherif et al. (1954/1961); Franzoi (2003), pp. 243–245; Konnikova (2012).
20. Episode 1–4, “Vatos” (November 21, 2010).
21. Episode 1–2, “Guts” (November 7, 2010).
22. Episode 1–1, “Days Gone Bye” (October 21, 2010).
23. Episode 3–3, “Walk with Me” (October 18, 2012).
24. Episode 5–4, “Slabtown” (November 2, 2014).
25. Episode 2–6, “Secrets” (November 20, 2011).
26. Issue 31 (2006); episode 3–5, “Say the Word” (November 11, 2012).
27. Issue 28 (2006); episode 3–13, “Arrow on the Doorpost” (March 10, 2013).
28. Issue 42 (2007); episode 4–8, “Too Far Gone” (December 1, 2013).
29. Janis (1972).
30. Sherif et al (1954/1961).
31. Episode 4–8, “Too Far Gone” (December 1, 2013).
32. Konnikova (2012).