Keywords
ROTH
What is the causal effect of conformity on the performance and adaptability of groups? Despite the number of studies devoted to conformity since Asch’s (Although these theoretical predictions have received some support from empirical studies, they provide only tentative and partial support for their key propositions. Theoretically informed cultural-evolution studies have indeed suggested that conformity is an effective strategy for social learners in stable environments (Efferson et al., Drawing on this literature, we hypothesize that conformity improves group performance in a stable environment (H1) and decreases performance in a temporally variant environment (H2). Specifically, our second hypothesis states that conformity reduces group adaptability. We utilize an experience-based decision-making task (Erev & Roth, Our findings provide support for the hypothesis that conformity decreases group performance in a temporally variable environment (H2). Although high-conformity groups performed better than low-conformity groups in the stable stage of the game, this difference was statistically insignificant; thus our findings do not support the hypothesis that conformity increases group performance in stable conditions (H1). Intragroup individual-level analyses provide further insight into the mechanisms that account for the group-level results. In the altered environment, social information becomes less influential within low-conformity group members, whereas it retains a strong impact on high-conformity group members. These results imply that low conformity within groups facilitates greater adaptability in the use of social information. When social information is useful (in a stable environment), low-conformity groups allot only slightly less weight to social information than high-conformity groups. However, faced with indications of a change in the environment, low-conformity group members tend to reduce the weight they assign to social information, whereas high-conformity groups maintain (and even slightly increase) the level of decision weight for this information, despite its poor informative quality. In the following sections, we report the experimental study conducted to test these hypotheses.