A Review of Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Social Conformity
Abstract
In groups, individuals often adjust their behavior to the majority’s. Here, we provide a brief introduction into the research on social conformity and review the first, very recent investigations elucidating the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms. Multiple studies suggest that conformity is a behavioral adjustment based on reinforcement-learning mechanisms in posterior medial frontal cortex and ventral striatum. It has also been suggested that the detection of cognitive inconsistency and the modulation of basic encoding processes are involved. Together, recent findings provide valuable insight into the neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying social conformity and clearly point up the need for further studies in this field.
References*
(2013). Determined to conform: Disbelief in free will increases conformity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49, 80–86.
(1940). Studies in the principles of judgments and attitudes: II. Determination of judgments by group and ego standards. Journal of Social Psychology, 12, 433–465.
(1951). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. In , Groups, leadership and men (pp. 177–190). Oxford, UK: Carnegie Press.
(1955). Opinions and social pressure. Scientific American, 193, 31–35.
(1956). Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs, 70, 1–70.
(2008). Associative learning of social value. Nature, 456, 245–249.
(2009). Computational models for the combination of advice and individual learning. Cognitive Science, 33, 206–242.
(2011). The neural basis of following advice. PLoS Biology, 9, e1001089.
* (2010). Neural mechanisms of the influence of popularity on adolescent ratings of music. NeuroImage, 49, 2687–2696.
(2006). Neurobiological substrates of dread. Science, 312, 754–758.
* (2005). Neurobiological correlates of social conformity and independence during mental rotation. Biological Psychiatry, 58, 245–253.
* (2010). How the opinion of others affects our valuation of objects. Current Biology, 20, 1165–1170.
* (2012). Structure of orbitofrontal cortex predicts social influence. Current Biology, 22, R123–R124.
* (2012). Modulation of social influence by methylphenidate. Neuropsychopharmacology, 37, 1517–1525.
* (2012). ERP correlates of social conformity in a line judgment task. BMC Neuroscience, 13, 43.
(2004). Social influence: Compliance and conformity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 591–621.
(1998). Social influence: Social norms, conformity and compliance. In , The handbook of social psychology (4 ed.). (pp. 151–192). New York, NY, US: McGraw-Hill.
(1972). Informational social influence and product evaluation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 56, 54–59.
(1955). Conformity and character. American Psychologist, 10, 191.
* (2013). Playing nice: A multi-methodological study on the effects of social conformity on memory. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 79.
(1955). A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51, 629–636.
* (2011). Following the crowd: Brain substrates of long-term memory conformity. Science, 333, 108–111.
(2011). Emotional processing in anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15, 85–93.
(1966). Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, 195–202.
(1990). A puzzling misinterpretation of the Asch “conformity” study. European Journal of Social Psychology, 20, 29–44.
(2012). Follow the crowd in a new direction: When conformity pressure facilitates group creativity (and when it does not). Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 118, 14–23.
(2012). Co-witness confidence, conformity, and eyewitness memory: An examination of normative and informational social influences. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 27, 91–100.
(1997). Attitude change during college: Normative or informational social influence? Social Psychology of Education, 2, 237–261.
(2012). Contesting the “nature” of conformity: What Milgram and Zimbardo’s studies really show. PLoS Biology, 10, e1001426.
(2002). The neural basis of human error processing: Reinforcement learning, dopamine, and the error-related negativity. Psychological Review, 109, 679–709.
(2013). The neural basis of social influence and attitude change. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 23, 456–462.
* (2013). Social manipulation of preference in the human brain. Neuron, 78, 563–573.
(2010). Neural correlates of cognitive dissonance and choice-induced preference change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107, 22014–22019.
* (2012). Social deviance activates the brain’s error-monitoring system. Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 12, 65–73.
* (2013). Outcome evaluations in group decision making using the majority rule: An electrophysiological study. Psychophysiology, 50, 848–857.
(1972). Age, sex, and task difficulty as predictors of social conformity. Journal of Gerontology, 27, 229–236.
* (2009). Reinforcement learning signal predicts social conformity. Neuron, 61, 140–151.
* (2011). Downregulation of the posterior medial frontal cortex prevents social conformity. Journal of Neuroscience, 31, 11934–11940.
(2007). Splitting the difference: How does the brain code reward episodes? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1104, 54–69.
(2004). The functional neuroanatomy of the human orbitofrontal cortex: Evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychology. Progress in Neurobiology, 72, 341–372.
(1989). Reaction to opinion deviance in small groups. In , Psychology of group influence (2nd ed.). (pp. 187–231). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
* (2009). Neural mechanisms of social influence. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 110, 152–159.
(2003). Temporal prediction errors in a passive learning task activate human striatum. Neuron, 38, 339–346.
(1997). Event-related brain potentials following incorrect feedback in a time-estimation task: Evidence for a “generic” neural system for error detection. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9, 788–798.
(2008). COMT genetic variation affects fear processing: Psychophysiological evidence. Behavioral Neuroscience, 122, 901–909.
(1921). The comparative influence of majority and expert opinion. American Journal of Psychology, 32, 1620.
(2013). Social influence bias: A randomized experiment. Science, 341, 647–651.
(1990). From private attitude to public opinion: A dynamic theory of social impact. Psychological Review, 97, 362.
(2001). The emergence of social cognitive neuroscience. American Psychologist, 56, 717.
(2003). Neuroimaging studies of attention: From modulation of sensory processing to top-down control. Journal of Neuroscience, 23, 3990–3998.
(2004). The role of the medial frontal cortex in cognitive control. Science, 306, 443–447.
(2012). Conformity on the internet – the role of task difficulty and gender differences. Computers in Human Behavior, 28, 1587–1595.
(1992). An attributional analysis of resistance to group pressure regarding illicit drug and alcohol consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 19, 1–13.
(2006). Behavioral theories and the neurophysiology of reward. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 87–115.
(2000). Neuronal coding of prediction errors. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 23, 473–500.
(1936). The psychology of social norms. New York, NY: Harper.
* (2013). Electrophysiological precursors of social conformity. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8, 756–763.
(2006). Reward timing in the primary visual cortex. Science, 311, 1606–1609.
* (2012). The herding hormone: Oxytocin stimulates in-group conformity. Psychological Science, 23, 1288–1292.
* (2013). Peer influence: Neural mechanisms underlying in-group conformity. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 50.
(2009). Expectation (and attention) in visual cognition. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13, 403–409.
* (2013). The neural substrates of social influence on decision making. PLoS One, 8, e52630.
* (2013). EEG reveals an early influence of social conformity on visual processing in group pressure situations. Social Neuroscience, 8, 75–89.
(2012). Animal culture: Chimpanzee conformity? Current Biology, 22, R402–R404.
(2012). Are valence and social avoidance associated with the memory conformity effect? Acta Psychologica, 141, 78–85.
(2006). Communication and normative influence: An introduction to the special issue. Communication Theory, 16, 1–6.
* (2013). To conform or not to conform: Spontaneous conformity diminishes the sensitivity to monetary outcomes. PLoS One, 8, e64530.
* (2011). Social influence modulates the neural computation of value. Psychological Science, 22, 894–900.
