Raanan Sulitzeanu-Kenan
human behavior
is an associate professor of political science and public policy in the Federmann School of Public Policy at Hebrew University. His studies address human behavior in the contexts of public organizations, politics, and law; he has published articles in the This research provides evidence regarding the causal effect of group conformity on task performance in stable and variable environments. Drawing on studies in cultural evolution, social learning, and social psychology, we experimentally tested the hypotheses that conformity improves group performance in a stable environment (H1) and decreases performance (by hindering adaptability) in a temporally variable environment (H2). We compare the performance of individuals, low conformity groups, and high conformity groups in a four-arm randomized lab experiment (