{"id":34882,"date":"2016-06-01T01:00:53","date_gmt":"2016-06-01T05:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=34882"},"modified":"2016-05-22T09:53:40","modified_gmt":"2016-05-22T13:53:40","slug":"qotd-the-evolutionary-advantage-of-conformity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/06\/01\/qotd-the-evolutionary-advantage-of-conformity\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The evolutionary advantage of conformity"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>In the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) an individual could not survive outside the group of their birth and so conformity was a matter of life and death. Conform or be cast out. Conformity to arbitrary convention was not in fact arbitrary but signalled affiliation. Conformity banded groups together.<\/p>\n<p>Today, however, conformity is often counter-productive. Trying to enforce the arbitrary conventions of one\u2019s in-group impedes social cooperation on the scale that makes modernity possible. Conformity also slows the development of new ideas and new ways of doing things &mdash; the essence of growth and progress. Even though conformity is now counter-productive the desire to conform and to enforce conformity is buried deep\u2013the atavism of social justice.<\/p>\n<p>Individualism and liberalism are foundational ideas for modernity but these adult ideas battle the desire to conform in our childish hearts.<\/p>\n<p>Alex Tabarrok, <a href=\"http:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2016\/05\/developmental-roots-conformity-bias.html\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Developmental Roots of Conformity Bias&#8221;, <em>Marginal Revolution<\/em><\/a>, 2016-05-20.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (EEA) an individual could not survive outside the group of their birth and so conformity was a matter of life and death. Conform or be cast out. Conformity to arbitrary convention was not in fact arbitrary but signalled affiliation. Conformity banded groups together. Today, however, conformity is often counter-productive. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,41,16],"tags":[374,130,139],"class_list":["post-34882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-quotations","category-science","tag-children","tag-evolution","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-94C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34883,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34882\/revisions\/34883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}