If you are attacked in public, will a bystander come to the rescue?
Before age 12 children largely do their own thing and are unaffected by others.
Before age 12 children largely do their own thing and are unaffected by others.
Children start conforming with others from the age of 12 onwards, research finds.
Before that, children largely do their own thing and are unaffected by others.
From 12, though, people are more strongly influenced by society.
Some older children in the study followed other people’s advice even when they knew it was wrong.
It is well-known that adolescents are especially susceptible to social influence.
Dr Imogen Large and co-authors, write:
“Our results show that although young neurotypical children seem to be unaffected by social influence, adolescents develop a systematic bias of their responses in the direction of social influence and appear to do so by integrating social information into visual perceptual processing.”
For the study, 155 children aged 6 to 14 played a computer game that involved maneuvering around an object that was twisting one way or another.
Each child was given an advisor who sometimes fed them incorrect information about which way the object was twisting.
However, the child could see the direction by themselves.
This, then, put the child’s own perceptions in conflict with the social influence of another person.
The results showed that up to the age of 12 children tended to believe their own eyes and ignore incorrect advice.
After that, though, the power of social influence could be seen.
Those over 12 sometimes disregarded what they could see to go along with someone else’s advice.
Autistic children are an exception, however, and are much less affected by other people.
The authors write:
“That the same bias did not appear to emerge in autistic adolescents in this study may explain some of their difficulties in social interactions.”
→ Read on: the classic study on social conformity.
The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Large et al., 2019).
People find it very hard to avoid doing the same thing as those closest to them.
People find it very hard to avoid doing the same thing as those closest to them.
People are more likely to follow COVID-19 restrictions when their friends and family do, new research finds.
Social influence was a more powerful motivator than whether or not people agreed with the rules.
The findings underline the tremendous power of social influence on people’s behaviour.
The classic studies on conformity were done 70 years ago and they still have the power to surprise.
People find it very hard to avoid doing the same thing as those closest to them — it makes them anxious, self-conscious and fearful of disapproval.
Dr Bahar Tunçgenç, the study’s first author, said:
“We saw that people didn’t simply follow the rules if they felt vulnerable or were personally convinced.
Instead, this uncertain and threatening environment highlighted the crucial role of social influence.
Most diligent followers of the guidelines were those whose friends and family also followed the rules.
We also saw that people who were particularly bonded to their country were more likely to stick to lockdown rules–the country was like family in this way, someone you were willing to stick your neck out for.”
The research included almost 7,000 people in over 100 countries.
They were asked how much they followed and approved of local COVID rules.
The results showed that people’s personal principles had relatively little influence.
What mattered for people’s behaviour was what their friends and family did.
The results held across different countries, genders and age groups.
People were even more likely to follow the rules if they felt close to the country — as though it were part of their family.
Professor Ophelia Deroy, study co-author, said:
“Public policies are on the wrong track: We see scientists and politicians trying to boost the public’s approval of the measures, so that vaccination campaigns and lockdowns get the support of the citizens, but approval does not mean compliance!
You may make up your own mind about the measures, or listen to experts, but eventually, what you do depends on what your close friends do.”
The study was published in the British Journal of Psychology (Tunçgenç et al., 2021).
People whose brains were most strongly affected by isolation were those who routinely had richer social lives.
The food that symbolises high status.
Loneliness is the biggest threat to human longevity.
People will try to help each other out, even to their own cost and even when their motivations do not align.
The bias operates in a matter of milliseconds and is hard to avoid.
The bias operates in a matter of milliseconds and is hard to avoid.
People whose clothes make them look ‘richer’ are automatically judged more competent, psychological research finds.
Whether it is a sweater, t-shirt or suit, better clothes lead to more positive snap judgements.
These assumptions about people are made in a matter of milliseconds and are very hard to avoid.
Dr DongWon Oh, the study’s first author, said:
“Other labs’ work has shown people are sensitive to how rich or poor other individuals appear.
Our work found that people are susceptible to these cues when judging others on meaningful traits, like competence, and that these cues are hard, if not impossible, to ignore.”
The finding suggests that people with low incomes may struggle to look as competent as those who can afford more expensive clothes.
Professor Eldar Shafir, study co-author, said:
“…people living in poverty face a persistent disregard and disrespect by the rest of society.
We found that such disrespect—clearly unfounded, since in these studies the identical face was seen as less competent when it appeared with poorer clothing—can have its beginnings in the first tenth of a second of an encounter.”
The conclusions are based on a study which used images of 50 faces, all wearing different clothes.
Across nine studies, participants were asked to rate the competence of the faces.
The results showed that even when people only saw a face for around one-tenth of a second, they were still biased by clothes: people wearing richer clothes were judged more competent.
The bias existed even when people were specifically told to ignore clothing.
The researchers write:
“To overcome a bias, one needs to not only be aware of it, but to have the time, attentional resources, and motivation to counteract the bias.
In our studies, we warned participants about the potential bias, presented them with varying lengths of exposure, gave them additional information about the targets, and offered financial incentives, all intended to alleviate the effect.
But none of these interventions were effective.”
Clearly overcoming the effects of first impressions is difficult.
Professor Shafir said:
“Knowing about a bias is often a good first step.
A potential, even if highly insufficient, interim solution may be to avoid exposure whenever possible.
Just like teachers sometimes grade blindly so as to avoid favoring some students, interviewers and employers may want to take what measures they can, when they can, to evaluate people, say, on paper so as to circumvent indefensible yet hard to avoid competency judgments.
Academic departments, for example, have long known that hiring without interviews can yield better scholars. It’s also an excellent argument for school uniforms.”
The study was published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour (Oh et al., 2020).
It sounds bizarre — how can lying make you seem more honest?
In our evolutionary past, beards could carry bugs, lice and ticks — indeed, they still might.
In our evolutionary past, beards could carry bugs, lice and ticks — indeed, they still might.
Women who are single and want to have children prefer a clean-shaven man, new research finds.
In fact, full beards appear to put off women considering both long- and short-term relationships.
The results come from a study that asked heterosexual women to rate the attractiveness of clean-shaven and bearded men.
Part of the reason some women avoid bearded men is down to hygiene.
In our evolutionary past, beards could carry bugs, lice and ticks — indeed, they still might.
Dr Barnaby Dixson, study co-author, explained:
“We found women’s disgust towards ectoparasites—such as fleas that live on the skin—negatively affects preferences for men with beards.
This could be due to the increased cultural trends for men and women to remove hair in more regions of the body including their faces, chests, arms, legs and pubic region.
This is the first study to provide evidence to support the ectoparasite avoidance hypothesis which argues that hairlessness evolved partly in response to parasite abundance to reduce the likelihood of hosting disease carrying parasites.”
The study included 919 women who rated pictures of men showing varying levels of facial hair from clean-shaven to full beard.
The preference for clean-shaven faces emerged among single women looking to have children.
Whether or not beards are attractive to women is a big area of controversy in beard-related psychological research.
Some studies find that bearded men are more attractive to women than the clean-shaven, especially for long-term relationships, other studies find they are not.
The most recent research goes against both beards and being clean-shaven and is starting to show the benefits of stubble.
But do women prefer light stubble or heavy stubble?
The jury is still out, with one study suggesting light stubble and another heavy stubble.
Naturally, beards have other functions than just attracting (or repelling) potential mates.
They make men look older, more angry and even of higher social status.
Because men with beards look older and of higher social status, they may be more likely to provide for their offspring.
That might be why some women think bearded men are good with babies.
The study was published in the journal Royal Society Open Science (Clarkson et al., 2020).
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