Susanne Hardecker
Is the majority always right? Young children's normative interpretations of majority and dissenting peer behavior
Hardecker, Susanne; Vreden, Carlo; Alcan, Ena
Authors
Carlo Vreden
Ena Alcan
Abstract
The present study investigates the social-cognitive underpinnings of young children's bias to follow the majority. More specifically, we focus on the question of whether children not only copy the behavior of a majority of peers, but whether they also understand this majority behavior as a social norm that everyone needs to follow. Additionally, we investigated whether seeing a unanimous majority or a majority and dissenting peer makes a difference for children's normative understanding. Participants included 180 preschool-age children (4-to-5 years old) who engaged in a conformity paradigm, where they either saw the behavior of a unanimous majority of peers, or additionally the behavior of a single dissenting peer, or only the behavior of two individual peers behaving differently (Control). Afterward, children mostly copied the unanimous majority and protested against others, when they deviated from this majority, thus indeed interpreting the behavior of a unanimous majority as a norm that others need to follow. However, when they had seen a majority as well as a dissenter, children's protest and copying in favor of the majority dropped. Overall, our findings show that preschool children interpret the behavior of a unanimous majority as normative. However, when children additionally see a dissenter's behavior, this normative interpretation is weakened.
Citation
Hardecker, S., Vreden, C., & Alcan, E. (2023). Is the majority always right? Young children's normative interpretations of majority and dissenting peer behavior. Social Development, 32(4), 1168-1191. https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12682
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Apr 5, 2023 |
Online Publication Date | May 3, 2023 |
Publication Date | 2023-11 |
Deposit Date | Feb 8, 2024 |
Publicly Available Date | Feb 8, 2024 |
Journal | Social Development |
Print ISSN | 0961-205X |
Electronic ISSN | 1467-9507 |
Publisher | Wiley |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 32 |
Issue | 4 |
Pages | 1168-1191 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1111/sode.12682 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2229753 |
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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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