Conformity: Definitions, Types, and Evolutionary Grounding
Evolutionary Psychology, 2015
Conformity research in social psychology spans a century, but researchers have only adopted an ev... more Conformity research in social psychology spans a century, but researchers have only adopted an evolutionary perspective in the past 25 years. This change has been driven by gene-culture coevolutionary models and research on nonhuman animals. In this chapter, we outline why there is a credible basis for an evolutionary explanation for widespread behavioral conformity in humans. However, we caution that not all conformity in humans is the same because conforming in a perceptual judgment task in the laboratory (as per the Asch paradigm) is not equivalent to being an unwitting participant in a behavioral field study. Moreover, conformity has not been consistently defined across research disciplines, which hampers a valid assessment of its evolutionary origins. Theoretical models within social psychology and the study of gene-culture coevolution are valuable tools in the quest for evolutionary explanations of conformist behavior; they have utilized gained insights while inspiring simulations and empirical tests. We propose the idea of incorporating individuals’ habit adherence into the models to advance the study of conformity. Conformity is a powerful force in human decision making and is best understood from an evolutionary perspective.
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transmission) will crucially depend on whether individuals receive transmissions from many cultural parents or only from one. However, the modeling assumptions leading up to this conclusion have so far not been empirically assessed. Here we do this for the special case of transmission chains where each individual either receives the same story twice from one cultural parent (and retransmits twice to a cultural child) or receives possibly different versions of the story from two cultural parents (and then retransmits to two cultural children). For this case, we first developed a more general mathematical model of cultural retention that takes into account the possibility of dependence of error rates between transmissions. In this model, under quite plausible assumptions, chains with two cultural parents will have superior retention of culture. This prediction was then tested in two experiments using both written and oral modes of transmission. In both cases, superior retention of culture was found in chains with two cultural parents. Estimation of model parameters indicated that error rates were not identicaland independent between transmissions; instead, a primacy effect was suggested, such that the first transmission tends to have higher fidelity than the second transmission.
In experiment one, 378 individuals were observed in a computer laboratory. A rare behaviour was modelled by a number of naive models. As each individual entered the laboratory the proportion of models of the behaviour and the behaviour of the newcomer was recorded. In experiment two, 476 participants in psychology experiments took part (unknowingly) in an additional experiment where both proportion and group size were manipulated. Logistic
regression indicated that the proportion of models, but not group size, was a significant predictor of conformity in both experiments. The findings are discussed in terms of their
contribution to an evolutionary theory of human cooperative behaviour.
transmission) will crucially depend on whether individuals receive transmissions from many cultural parents or only from one. However, the modeling assumptions leading up to this conclusion have so far not been empirically assessed. Here we do this for the special case of transmission chains where each individual either receives the same story twice from one cultural parent (and retransmits twice to a cultural child) or receives possibly different versions of the story from two cultural parents (and then retransmits to two cultural children). For this case, we first developed a more general mathematical model of cultural retention that takes into account the possibility of dependence of error rates between transmissions. In this model, under quite plausible assumptions, chains with two cultural parents will have superior retention of culture. This prediction was then tested in two experiments using both written and oral modes of transmission. In both cases, superior retention of culture was found in chains with two cultural parents. Estimation of model parameters indicated that error rates were not identicaland independent between transmissions; instead, a primacy effect was suggested, such that the first transmission tends to have higher fidelity than the second transmission.
In experiment one, 378 individuals were observed in a computer laboratory. A rare behaviour was modelled by a number of naive models. As each individual entered the laboratory the proportion of models of the behaviour and the behaviour of the newcomer was recorded. In experiment two, 476 participants in psychology experiments took part (unknowingly) in an additional experiment where both proportion and group size were manipulated. Logistic
regression indicated that the proportion of models, but not group size, was a significant predictor of conformity in both experiments. The findings are discussed in terms of their
contribution to an evolutionary theory of human cooperative behaviour.