Conformity: A Natural Response?

In modern times, many seem to struggle between finding the right sense of individuality and fitting into a group. But what if our brain is actually choosing for us?

A recent study conducted by the Donder’s Institute for Brain Cognition and Behaviour in the Netherlands showed that the activity in our brain has the tendency to tell us to “follow the crowd”. The leader of this study was Dr. Vasily Klucharev. He and the other researchers looked at how a conflict with group opinion could drive the brain to produce a “prediction error”.

A prediction error is what happens when your brain recognizes a difference between the expected outcome and the obtained outcome. This error is thought to be the signal that triggers the need for behavioural adjustment.

Participants of the test were asked to rate the facial attractiveness of a number of people. However, what they did not know was that many of the participants were actually actors working with the researchers. The actors gave their answers first, and the participant (who was having their brain scanned) gave their answer last. The study displayed that when a participant had a conflicting opinion with the group, it triggered a conforming adjustment of an individual’s opinion. Eliciting a neurol response in the nuceleus accumbus, which processes rewards and contributes to social learning, and the rostral cingulate zone, which is in charge of monitoring the behavioural outcomes.

A similar experiment was also conducted at Emory University in Atlanta lead by Dr. Gregory Berns. This time, one participant was put with a group of three actors and they were asked to look at two three-dimensional shapes, and then mentally rotate them to determine if they were different or the same. As with the other study the actors were hired to give fake answers, some intentionally wrong and some intentionally right. After hearing the answers of the group, the actual participant then had to make their own individual decisions.

The study showed that on average, the individual went along with the group when they selected wrong answers 41% of the time.

The brain scanner showed that during this process there was no response in the conscious decision making. Since no conscious decision making was apparent, this study shows the underlying brain activity that drives one to socially conform. When selecting the wrong answer with the group, responses were seen in the intraparietal sulcus, part of the brain that controls spatial awareness.

This poses the question: Can other people's views affect how one perceives the external world?

When making decisions that went against the group’s judgement, the right amygdala and right caudate were activated. These are the parts that are linked with emotional salience.

Dr Klucharev said "The present study explains why we often automatically adjust our opinion in line with the majority opinion. Our results also show that social conformity is based on mechanisms that comply with reinforcement learning and is reinforced by the neural error-monitoring activity which signals what is probably the most fundamental social mistake—that of being too different from others."

Sources

If you resist Conformity
Science Daily
Why So Many Minds Think Alike