Conformity in the Asch Task as a Function of Age

• Published in: The Journal of social psychology Vol. 136; no. 3; pp. 367 - 372
• Main Authors: Walker, Michael B., Andrade, Maria G.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC Taylor & Francis Group 01-06-1996; Heldref; Clark University Press; Taylor & Francis Inc
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescents; Age; Age Differences; Age groups; Ambiguity; Australia; Behavior; Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child development; Child, Preschool; Children; Compliance (Psychology); Conformity; Congruence (Psychology); Developmental psychology; Developmental Stages; Experiments; Female; Foreign Countries; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Group Dynamics; Higher Education; Humans; Individuation; Internal-External Control; Male; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Peer Influence; Personality Development; Personality Traits; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Research methodology; Schools; Secondary Schools; Size Perception; Social Behavior; Social Conformity; Social Identification; Social Influences; Social Psychology; Social Science Research; Stimuli; Australia; Human; Preschool age; Social development; Social influence; School age; Social behavior; Stimulus ambiguity; Adolescent; Cognitive development; Conformity; Child; Preadolescent
• ISSN: 0022-4545; 1940-1183
• DOI: 10.1080/00224545.1996.9714014

The social conformity paradigm of Asch (19S6) 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.