Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology, University of St. Andrews, St. Andrews KY16 9JP, Scotland, UK.
Psychol Bull. 2012 Jan;138(1):126-45. doi: 10.1037/a0025868. Epub 2011 Nov 7.
Conformity--defined here by the fact that an individual displays a particular behavior because it is the most frequent the individual witnessed in others--has long been recognized by social psychologists as one of the main categories of social influence. Surprisingly, it is only recently that conformity has become an active topic in animal and comparative biology. As in any new and rapidly growing field, however, definitions, hypotheses, and protocols are diverse, not easy to organize in a coherent way, and sometimes seriously in conflict with one another. Here we pursue greater coherence by reviewing the newer literature on conformity in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology in light of the foundational work in social psychology. We suggest that the knowledge accumulated in social psychology can be exploited by behavioral ecologists and evolutionary biologists to bring conceptual clarity to the field, avoid some experimental pitfalls, and help design new and challenging experiments. In particular, we propose that the notions of informational and normative conformity that, until now, have been little recognized in recent literature can resolve some important controversies. In turn, research on animal culture should be of great interest to social scientists, because understanding human culture and human uniqueness requires an evolutionary analysis of our cognitive capacities and their evolutionary origins. Our review suggests excellent opportunities for social and natural scientists to join forces in building an interdisciplinary and integrative approach to the pervasive phenomenon of conformity.
从众——这里将其定义为个体表现出某种特定行为，是因为该行为是个体在他人身上观察到的最常见行为——一直以来都是社会心理学家所认可的主要社会影响类别之一。令人惊讶的是，从众最近才成为动物学和比较生物学中的一个热门话题。然而，如同任何一个新的、快速发展的领域一样，定义、假设和方案多种多样，不容易以一种连贯的方式组织起来，有时甚至严重相互冲突。在这里，我们通过将行为生态学和进化生物学中关于从众的较新文献与社会心理学的基础工作进行对照，来追求更大的一致性。我们认为，社会心理学中积累的知识可以被行为生态学家和进化生物学家利用，为该领域提供概念上的清晰性，避免一些实验上的陷阱，并帮助设计新的、具有挑战性的实验。特别是，我们提出，信息从众和规范从众的概念，迄今为止，在最近的文献中很少被认可，它们可以解决一些重要的争议。反过来，动物文化的研究应该引起社会科学家的极大兴趣，因为理解人类文化和人类的独特性需要对我们的认知能力及其进化起源进行进化分析。我们的综述表明，社会科学家和自然科学家有很好的机会联手，建立一种对从众这种普遍现象的跨学科和综合的研究方法。
