CONFORMITY IN THE ASCH TASK AS A FUNCTION OF AGE

The social conformity paradigm of Asch (1956) was replicated to invest igate the relationship between age and conformist behavior. One hundre d ten Australian school children and adolescents between 3 and 17 year s of age participated in the study. Each participant was placed in the position of being a minority of 1 against a wrong but unanimous major ity of 3. The results indicate that conformity decreases with age in p erceptually unambiguous tasks. Conflicting evidence from earlier studi es can be attributed to task ambiguity in those studies.