Most theories of social influence do not consider adult development. Theoretical and empirical wo... more Most theories of social influence do not consider adult development. Theoretical and empirical work in life span developmental psychology, however, suggests that age may reduce susceptibility to social influence. The present study examined age differences in social conformity for 2 classes of stimuli: judgments of geometric shapes and emotional facial expressions. As predicted, older people, compared with their younger counterparts, displayed lower rates of social conformity, and this age difference was most evident when judging emotional facial expressions. In his original work on conformity, Asch (1952) proposed at least two reasons why, in the face of peer pressure, some of his participants gave incorrect responses to a simple perceptual judgment task. Specifically, some participants gave incorrect responses because they lacked the self-confidence to disagree openly. Others gave incorrect responses because the unanimous majority made them uncertain about which answer actually was correct. Since then, conformity researchers have shown that those who are concerned with what others think of them, less sure of their own beliefs and knowledge, and less self-confident are more likely to conform to others, even when this means responding incorrectly
Most theories of social influence do not consider adult development. Theoretical and empirical wo... more Most theories of social influence do not consider adult development. Theoretical and empirical work in life span developmental psychology, however, suggests that age may reduce susceptibility to social influence. The present study examined age differences in social conformity for 2 classes of stimuli: judgments of geometric shapes and emotional facial expressions. As predicted, older people, compared with their younger counterparts, displayed lower rates of social conformity, and this age difference was most evident when judging emotional facial expressions. In his original work on conformity, Asch (1952) proposed at least two reasons why, in the face of peer pressure, some of his participants gave incorrect responses to a simple perceptual judgment task. Specifically, some participants gave incorrect responses because they lacked the self-confidence to disagree openly. Others gave incorrect responses because the unanimous majority made them uncertain about which answer actually was correct. Since then, conformity researchers have shown that those who are concerned with what others think of them, less sure of their own beliefs and knowledge, and less self-confident are more likely to conform to others, even when this means responding incorrectly
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