This may come as painful news to parents: toddlers are more likely to copy the actions of a crowd than those performed by one person, according to new research in Current Biology.

“When we think of peer pressure, we think of teenagers and the reasons they start smoking or drinking,” says Daniel Haun of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. “We don't necessarily think of two-year-olds as being under peer pressure. But it turns out they are.”

To investigate peer pressure's origins, Haun observed human toddlers and chimpanzees as they learned a simple task: placing a ball into one of three boxes. First the subjects watched other members of their species do it—both as one individual placed a ball three times into one box and as three individuals placed one ball each into a second box.

When it was the observer's turn, both humans and chimps tended to choose the box that was used by the majority. The chimps were even more prone than the children to copy the group. This tendency to conform might have provided an evolutionary benefit that helped humans learn new skills and avoid dangers. “If you know nothing, following the majority isn't a bad strategy,” Haun says.

Haun now wants to see if chimps and toddlers, when performing a familiar task, might switch their behavior to fit with the majority, even if they know that the group is wrong. Such behavior has been observed in older children, although whether it serves any evolutionary advantage is less obvious.

4 Comments

1. 1. sunnystrobe 09:00 AM 8/31/12

   Even social animals have to start from the beginning!
   This comes as no surprise to me at all, and I am often amused by the ' instant toddler rapport' when two prams are passing by chance.
   As to siding with the majority even if that is wrong:
   our human history is full of instances like this;
   Hitler Youth , and slogans like: You are NIL, your folk is ALL (Du bist nichts, dein Volk ist Alles) come to mind; it's a survival game after all.

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2. 2. marclevesque 11:51 AM 8/31/12

   "This tendency to conform might have provided an evolutionary benefit that helped humans learn new skills and avoid dangers."
   
   In my opinion the tendency to conform, as an evolutionary benefit, appeared way before primates did. Without it all animal behavior would not resemble what it is today.

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3. 3. TTLG 01:50 PM 8/31/12

   I disagree with this definition of peer pressure. It is not a matter of voluntarily going along with the what others do. Rather, it is giving in to coercing to do what a person does not want to do or thinks is wrong.

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4. 4. turtle2258 in reply to TTLG 10:27 PM 9/5/12

   I agree with TTLG. This certainly was true for me and those that I've talked with. Peer pressure is a matter of avoiding rejecting and hurtful consequences. Like when I was pressured into going to school when I knew it wasn't good for me. Or after being IN school, I was then pressured to do more entertaining things than learning; even in the classes I was interested in. Sometimes, even by my instructors who were pressured by their bosses to be covertly milatent until I comply. This didn't make me fully lose my thirst for understanding. Only for unmeaningful knowledge. Sometimes I would spend hours after school learning the things that had meaning to me at that age. Even now,I am excited about history and seek out it's knowledge; the subject that I got F's in be-fore I aquired a taste (ie: reason) for it. My own mother never forced me to eat or read anything I couldn't stomach. And those things she deemed good for me(also out of her own peer pressure or popular influance, she didn't motivate me out of fear, but desire and persuation. Con-sequently since she was my only parent(except for peer pressure), I deeply internalized this. Now I like almost every food -especially good ones and I'm interested in all knowledge and all people. Peer pressure is not an ideal evelutionary changer. It is fearful avoidance in adolecence. And peer influance (not really pressure usually) is an explanation for a toddlers need for social circles. Better to find more better circles than try and change what is natural.

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