TODDLERS COPY THEIR PEERS TO FIT IN , BUT APES DON'T
From the playground to
the board room, people often follow, or conform, to the behavior of those
around them as a way of fitting in. New research shows that this behavioral
conformity appears early in human children, but isn't evidenced by apes like
chimpanzees and orangutans.
"This does not
mean that conforming is the right thing to do under all circumstances --
conformity can be good or bad, helpful or unhelpful, appropriate or
inappropriate both for individuals and the groups they live in. But the fact is
that we conform often and that human sociality would look very differently
without it," Haun explains. "Our research shows that children as
young as 2 years of age conform to others, while chimpanzees and orangutans
instead prefer to stick with what they know."
The research, published
in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for
Psychological Science, is novel in that it provides a direct comparison between
apes and humans indicating that the tendency to abandon one's own preferences
just in to fit in appears to be particularly pronounced in humans.
In previous research,
Haun and colleagues had found that both human children and chimpanzees rely on
the majority opinion when they are trying to learn something new, which makes
sense if the group has knowledge that the individual doesn't. But other
research has shown that human adults sometimes follow the majority even when
they already have the relevant knowledge, just so that they don't stand out
from the group.
To find out whether
very young children and apes would also show this so-called
"normative" conformity, Haun and co-authors Michael Tomasello and
Yvonne Rekers presented 18 2-year-old children, 12 chimpanzees, and 12
orangutans with a similar reward-based task.
Each participant was
shown a box that contained three separate sections, each of which had a hole in
the top. By interacting with the box, the participants learned that although
the ball could be dropped in any of the three sections, only one of the
sections would deliver a treat (peanuts for the apes and chocolate drops for
the children).
After familiarizing
themselves with the box, the participants then watched while three familiar
peers, who had been trained to all strongly prefer the same colored section of
the box (different from the participants' preference), deposited their balls.
The tables then turned
and the participant had to decide which section to drop his or her own balls
into as his or her peers looked on.
The results revealed
that children were more likely to adjust their behavior to match that of their
peers than were the apes. Whereas the human children conformed more than half
of the time, the apes and orangutans almost always ignored their peers, opting
instead to stick with the original strategy they had learned.
A second study with a group
of 72 2-year-olds showed that children tended to switch their choice more when
they made the choice in front of their peers than when they made the choice
privately.
Interestingly, the
number of peers didn't seem to make a difference in whether children conformed
-- children were equally likely to switch their choice whether it was
demonstrated by one peer or by three peers.
The clear pattern of
conformity among the toddlers suggests that the motivation to fit in emerges
very early in humans.
"We were
surprised that children as young as 2 years of age would already change their
behavior just to avoid the relative disadvantage of being different," says
Haun.
The researchers are
currently investigating whether environmental factors, such as institutionalized
schooling and different child-rearing practices, impact children's tendency to
conform.
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