Conformity in the Asch task as a function of age.
The social conformity paradigm of Asch (1956) was replicated to investigate the relationship between age and conformist behavior. One hundred ten Australian school children and adolescents between 3 and 17 years of age participated in the study. Each participant was placed in the position of being a minority of 1 against a wrong but unanimous majority of 3. The results indicate that conformity decreases with age in perceptually unambiguous tasks. Conflicting evidence from earlier studies can be attributed to task ambiguity in those studies.
Walker
M B
MB
Department of Psychology, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia.
Andrade
M G
MG
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007207:Individuation; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010553:Personality Development; D012858:Size Perception; D012925:Social Conformity; D012933:Social Identification