Conformity to Peer Pressure in Preschool Children

Haun, Daniel B. M.; Tomasello, Michael

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01666.x

Cited by 264 publications

(278 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…From a young age, children acquire stereotypes about social groups and are motivated to conform to members of their ingroup and of the majority consensus (7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19). Both of these aspects of social cognition rely on an expectation that social group members act alike.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many cultural behaviors, including social gestures and language, are acquired in the first few years, suggesting early biases for adopting the typical behaviors of one's own social group. In the laboratory, preschoolaged children adopt labels for objects endorsed by the majority of informants and conform to consensus perceptual judgments and actions, and they copy the actions of ingroup over outgroup members when group membership is conveyed by native vs. foreign speech (9)(10)(11)(12)(13). Children even show an understanding of groupbased social norms in their reactions to others' behavior, protesting when ingroup members, although not outgroup members, break conventions (14,15).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Preverbal infants expect members of social groups to act alike

Powell

Spelke

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

267

182

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The short ontogenetic time courses of conformity and stereotyping, both evident in the preschool years, point to the possibility that a central component of human social cognition is an early developing expectation that social group members will engage in common behaviors. Across a series of experiments, we show that by 7 months of age preverbal infants differentiate between actions by individuals that are and are not consistent with the actions of their social group members. Infants responded to group-inconsistent actions only in a social context: they failed to distinguish the same behavioral differences when presented with collections of nonsocial agents or inanimate objects. These results suggest that infants expect social group membership and behavior to covary, before extensive intergroup experience or linguistic input. This expectation is consistent with the socially motivated imitation and stereotyping evident in toddlers and preschoolers, and may play a role in the early emergence of one or both of these aspects of social behavior and cognition.social development | infancy

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Preverbal infants expect members of social groups to act alike

Powell

Spelke

2013

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

267

182

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In other social contexts, young children have been shown to defer to majority opinion, even when such an opinion directly contradicts their first-hand experience (Corriveau & Harris, 2010;Haun & Tomasello, 2011). For example, when preschoolers judged which animal image matched a model after exposure to an inaccurate peer consensus (Haun & Tomasello, 2011), and judged which of a set of three lines was longest after exposure to an inaccurate adult consensus (Corriveau & Harris, 2010), they conformed to the incorrect consensus opinion in approximately 20% to 37% of the trials.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, when preschoolers judged which animal image matched a model after exposure to an inaccurate peer consensus (Haun & Tomasello, 2011), and judged which of a set of three lines was longest after exposure to an inaccurate adult consensus (Corriveau & Harris, 2010), they conformed to the incorrect consensus opinion in approximately 20% to 37% of the trials. In the interracial social exclusion context explored in this study, only two children out of a sample of 90 (2.2% of the sample) sided with the consensus (social exclusion is "okay") anales de psicología, 2017, vol.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preschoolers’ Trust in Social Consensus Varies by Context: Conventional vs. Moral Domains

et al. 2016

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Título: La confianza de los niños en el consenso depende del contexto: convencional vs. moral. Resumen: Cuando una mayoría aprueba una exclusión social ¿los niños son fieles a sus opiniones personales o muestran deferencia hacia la mayoría? Teniendo en cuenta investigaciones previas sobre la preferencia de los niños por el testimonio de una mayoría de adultos frente al de un disidente cuando deben aprender palabras, en este trabajo se estudió esta preferencia por el consenso social en dos contextos: exclusión racial entre iguales y aprendizaje de palabras nuevas. El objetivo fue estudiar si la preferencia por la mayoría puede generalizarse a otros contextos. En este trabajo participaron 90 niños de Educación Infantil del grupo étnico mayoritario en España. Los resultados mostraron que los niños se alineaban con la mayoría significativamente menos en el contexto de exclusión que en el de aprendizaje de palabras. Además, rechazaban la opinión del consenso cuando este aprobaba la exclusión de un niño de una actividad grupal, incluso cuando el excluido era de un grupo étnico-racial diferente al propio; por el contrario, los participantes se alineaban con el disidente que condenaba la exclusión, a pesar de que esto implicaba oponerse a la mayoría. Estos resultados proporcionan información relevante sobre el desarrollo del conocimiento social infantil. Palabras clave: desarrollo social; desarrollo cognitivo; juicios morales; consenso social; testimonio.Abstract: Do young children give priority to following personal beliefs over the testimony of a majority group of adults that approves of social exclusion? Following current research on children's preference for nondissenters when learning the names for novel objects, this study investigated children's preference for consensus opinion in two contexts: Interracial social exclusion among peers and novel object labeling. The goal was to examine the generalizability of preference for the opinion of nondissenters in a socially relevant context. This study was conducted with 90 preschool children from the Spanish ethnic majority group. The findings revealed that participants sided with the consensus significantly less often in the social exclusion context than in the novel object labeling context. Moreover, young children did not defer to the opinion of a numerical consensus in the socially meaningful context when a group condoned the exclusion of a peer from a group activity, even when the peer was from an outgroup social category. Instead, participants agreed with a dissenter who claimed that it was not okay to exclude someone, despite the opposite opinion of a numerical majority. These results provide new information regarding children's social knowledge development.

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“…Furthermore, since faithful imitation is often related to the social context at the time of the demonstration and response (e.g., Nielsen & Blank, 2011;Nielsen, Simcock, & Jenkins, 2008;Over & Carpenter, 2009; see also work on conformity and audience effects, e.g., Haun & Tomasello, 2011), manipulating, for example, who is watching when could also be informative. It might also be interesting to manipulate the type of tool used in the demonstration.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%