Differential Adoption of Norms by High-Status and Low-Status Members of Informal Groups

Abstract

Individuals who were high-status and low-status members of real-groups of teenaged males were placed in task situations with E's 4 collaborators who gave prescribed arbitrary ranges of estimates in autokinesis and numerosity-judgment tasks. Individuals who held high status responded to the social clues in the situations more efficiently. A new judgment situation, “the shotgun,” provides a numerosity-estimation task which is statistically comparable to the classic autokinetic situation and is ego-involving for American teenaged males.