Conformity

Conformity is typically seen as a disposition to copy a majority of an individual’s reference group rather than any minority displaying a different option. Such a rule may cover a variety of [Page 431]psychological phenomena, including behaviors, stated perceptions, attitudes, or beliefs. This entry reviews developmental research on the topic, considering not only the simple rule to “copy the majority” but also more intense forms of this disposition that require either overriding personal preferences or making choices that further exaggerate any existing group bias.

The first of these two intense forms of conformity initially came to prominence in social psychology in the middle years of the 20th century. A good illustration comes from an experiment by Solomon Asch in 1951. Seven individuals were invited in turn to say which of three lines matched the length of a sample line. However, only one individual was truly the experimental participant and that person was last in line; other participants had been primed to say that one of the lines that was visibly different from the sample was the true match.

As many as one third of participants expressed agreement with this visibly faulty judgment and thus fit this concept of conformity. The effect has been extensively replicated and extended, including over 20 studies with youngsters at different stages of their life history, summarized further later in this entry.

The other intense form of majority influence was highlighted in a different field, focused on the transmission and evolution of culture. In theoretical work in the mid-1980s, mathematical modeling of conformist transmission or conformist bias revealed distinctive impacts in cultural evolution. An exaggerated disposition to copy majorities (e.g., recognizing that three quarters of the population prefer option A over B and copy A with a significantly greater probability than 0.75) enhances both intragroup cultural homogeneity and intergroup differences. This sense of conformity—sometimes distinguished as hyperconformity—may occur in individuals naive to the behavior or attitudes at stake, differing from conformity in the Asch sense. Only a handful of relevant studies exists so far for children.

In summary, conformity in the Asch sense of forgoing one’s own dispositions to follow the majority (sometimes called strong conformity) is different from conformist transmission (sometimes called hyperconformity), defined by the exaggerated tendency to copy highlighted by evolutionary modeling. These may be expected to be mutually exclusive effects, although in principle they could overlap. Both go beyond the more basic conformity of copy the majority. Studies in developmental psychology have addressed each of these three instantiations of conformity from infancy to adolescence, and adults have been studied within the fields of social psychology and cultural evolution, together offering lifespan coverage. Comparative studies of other species additionally enrich our understanding of the scope and significance of conformity.