Conformist Bias in an Information Seeking Situation: The Between-Participants Design Replication Study

Mako Fujikawa; Kunihiro Yokota; Daisuke Nakanishi

doi:10.5178/lebs.2024.118

Mako Fujikawa Hiroshima Shudo University https://orcid.org/0009-0005-7607-0990
Kunihiro Yokota Hiroshima Shudo University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1504-9945
Daisuke Nakanishi Hiroshima Shudo University https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5365-6957

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5178/lebs.2024.118

Keywords: conformist bias, conformity, nonconformist-bias

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether conformist bias can be observed in information-seeking situations. We replicated the experiment conducted by Fujikawa et al. (2024), in which conformist bias was observed, using a between-participants design. In Experiments 1 (N = 116) and 2 (N = 157), participants responded to “yes/no” questions in which the answer was objectively and not objectively fixed as correct or incorrect. After being shown one of four patterns of others’ responses (9, 6, 3, or 0 others answering “yes”), participants answered the same questions. The results of both Exp. 1 and Exp. 2 showed a conformist bias for the questions with objectively fixed answers, but not for the questions with non-objectively fixed answers. The differences between the results of Fujikawa et al. (2024) and our results were discussed.