If given the choice, would you decide to stand out as an individual or fit in with your peers? Society may value individuality and uniqueness among people, but history suggests that conformity has often been more crucial to our species’ survival. A recent study has found that the need to fit in is present in human children but not in chimpanzees or orangutans.
Without a natural instinct to flock together and copy each others’ actions, humans may never even have learned how to hunt or find drinkable water. Basic survival skills obviously aren’t as important today, but we still all know too well the pressure to conform. Be it wearing the latest fashions, owning the newest smartphone or even just having a college degree, these trends can influence many of the decisions we make and preferences we have in our day-to-day lives. In fact, as a study led by scientist Daniel Haun of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the University of Jena shows, the need to fit in manifests itself in human children as young as two years of age. Chimpanzees and orangutans, however, do not follow this tendency, suggesting that social conformity is particularly unique to the human species.
Haun and his team presented groups of two-year-old children, chimpanzees and orangutans with a task that involved placing a ball into any of three sections in a box. However, the choice of only one of the sections would result in an edible reward. All three groups quickly learned how to make the “right” choice — placing the ball in the section that gave them the treat.
However, once introduced to peers who had been trained to place the ball in a different section of the box, the groups’ reactions differed. Many of the chimpanzees and orangutans appeared to ignore the actions of others around them, continuing to act as they had before. In contrast, more than half of the human children quickly changed their actions to fit the actions of the others around them, despite having previously learned how to perform the task to receive the reward.
The same test was repeated with a different group of two-year-old children. Some were faced with the opportunity in private to switch which section they placed the ball in, while others were placed in groups. The children that had their peers looking on were much more likely to change their decision, further indicating the effects of the social pressure to conform.
Previous research has shown that human adults may adjust their actions to fit a group’s, just so they don’t stand out too much as individuals. This has often been interpreted as an effect of learned experience — many psychologists have argued that a simple reward-punishment system is most effective for teaching young children new tasks, as they learn to make the correct choices via trial and error. However, Haun’s research shows the power of instinctual conformity over such behavioral conditioning. The ultimate reward, for human beings of all ages, seems not to be the immediate, material gratification of a chocolate candy or the newest tech gadget. Instead, it is the feeling that comes with acceptance and belonging.
The fact that chimpanzees and orangutans did not mimic their peers’ actions points to cultural and environmental factors unique to human societies as the root of this tendency to conform. Haun and his team now plan to investigate some of these factors, including educational opportunities and economic status, to determine how they can influence our behavior even from the moment we are born.
Ultimately, no matter how much we value standing out as individuals, conformity is the key to stabilizing larger-scale diversity and practices among different groups of people. The need to conform, the drive to fit in, is just one of the many ways in which humans have evolved to distinguish themselves from their ancestors.
