Preschoolers’ extroversion influences their propensity and motivation to conform to peer testimony

• Both children and adults conform to others’ inaccurate testimony when making ostensibly simple decisions. Yet, some conform predominantly while others rarely or never do. Additionally, both children and adults can conform for a normative motivation and retain their initial perceptual assessment, or conform for an informational motivation and internalize the majority’s inaccurate testimony as true. Using an Asch-style paradigm we elicited conformity to a peer majority in 3.5-year-olds (n = 55) and used eye tracking to assess their private belief and thus infer their motivation. Participants who scored either low or high on extroversion conformed more often, indicating a U-shaped relationship between extroversion and conformity propensity. Specifically, more extroverted children conformed for both normative and informational reasons, while less extroverted children tended to only conform for informational reasons, highlighting the importance of children’s trait social engagement level in understanding conformity and its motivation.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

conformity; normative conformity; informational conformity; personality; extroversion; social development

Psychology

Psykologi

Psychology

Psykologi

Psychology

Psykologi

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