A developmental study of persuasibility

Abstract

In recent years, no other aspect of social psychology has had more spokesmen and experimenters than that dealing with group conformity. Ever since the first exploratory studies in the area of conformity For the present, a broad definition of conformity suffices, and Wiener, Carpenter and Carpenter (1957) suggest the following: “the modification of behaviour in the direction of a norm, stated or implied.” (p. 289). like the classic experiments of Sherif (1935), and Asch (1956), which demonstrated the induction of conformity behaviour by group pressure, many studies have been performed to investigate the effect of additional variables on conformity. Task, situational and personal variables have been manipulated in a great variety of ways with the result that there has been a steady accretion of information about the dynamics of conforming behaviour. Yet, in reviewing the vast amount of literature that has been written on the topic, one is struck by the paucity of information, experimental and otherwise, about the developmental processes underlying this important facet of human social behaviour. In fact, there are proportionately very few experiments at all in the area of conformity or persuasibility which employ children as subjects.