Bayes Optimal Integration of Social and Endogenous Uncertainty in Numerosity Estimation.

One of the most prominent social influences on human decision making is conformity, which is even more prominent when the perceptual information is ambiguous. The Bayes optimal solution to this problem entails weighting the relative reliability of cognitive information and perceptual signals in constructing the percept from self-sourced/endogenous and social sources, respectively. The current study investigated whether humans integrate the statistics (i.e., mean and variance) of endogenous perceptual and social information in a Bayes optimal way while estimating numerosities. Our results demonstrated adjustment of initial estimations toward group means only when group estimations were more reliable (or "certain"), compared to participants' endogenous metric uncertainty. Our results support Bayes optimal social conformity while also pointing to an implicit form of metacognition.

Between conformity and individuality: Psychologists in Czechoslovakia during normalization (1968-1989).

The study examines the development of psychology in former Czechoslovakia during the period of "normalization" (1968-1989) and the challenges it faced under the communist regime. The restricted connection to Western psychology and the regime's control over all aspects of human activity negatively influenced the continuity of development in psychology. The regime demanded conformity, leaving individuals, including psychologists, in recurring states of internal conflict and intellectual discomfort when deciding how much to compromise in their personal and professional lives. The study identifies three groups of psychologists based on their adaptability to regime demands. The first group consists of those who aligned themselves with the regime, allowing them to hold positions of leadership and shape the conceptualization of the field. The second group comprises individuals who actively opposed the regime, facing significant limitations in their educational and career opportunities, and mostly being forced to leave the profession. The third group of psychologists belongs to the apolitical gray zone. A significant portion of individuals in this largest group passively complied with established norms and constraints, accepting the restrictions imposed on the development of Czechoslovak psychology. Fortunately, thanks to the persistent efforts of the proactive members of the gray zone and their willingness to endure significant discomfort, an even deeper decline of psychology during the normalization period was prevented. The study provides insights into the topics of education, research, Western influences, and adaptation to the communist regime within Czechoslovak psychology, illuminating the intricacies of living in that historical period. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Moral conformity in a digital world: Human and nonhuman agents as a source of social pressure for judgments of moral character.

Could judgments about others' moral character be changed under group pressure produced by human and virtual agents? In Study 1 (N = 103), participants first judged targets' moral character privately and two weeks later in the presence of real humans. Analysis of how many times participants changed their private moral judgments under group pressure showed that moral conformity occurred, on average, 43% of the time. In Study 2 (N = 138), we extended this using Virtual Reality, where group pressure was produced either by avatars allegedly controlled by humans or AI. While replicating the effect of moral conformity (at 28% of the time), we find that the moral conformity for the human and AI-controlled avatars did not differ. Our results suggest that human and nonhuman groups shape moral character judgments in both the physical and virtual worlds, shedding new light on the potential social consequences of moral conformity in the modern digital world.

Adult age-related differences in susceptibility to social conformity pressures in self-control over daily desires.

Developmental literature suggests that susceptibility to social conformity pressure peaks in adolescence and disappears with maturity into early adulthood. Predictions about these behaviors are less clear for middle-aged and older adults. On the one hand, while age-related increases in prioritization of socioemotional goals might predict greater susceptibility to social conformity pressures, aging is also associated with enhanced emotion regulation that could support resistance to conformity pressures. In this exploratory research study, we used mobile experience sampling surveys to naturalistically track how 157 healthy adults between the ages of 18 and 80 practice self-control over spontaneous desires in daily life. Many of these desires were experienced in the presence of others enacting that desire. Results showed that middle-aged and older adults were better at controlling their desires than younger adults when desires were experienced in the presence of others enacting that desire. Consistent with the literature on improved emotion regulation with age, these results provide evidence that the ability to resist social conformity pressure is enhanced across the adult life span. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Why adolescents conform to high-status peers: Associations among conformity, identity alignment, and self-esteem.

This study examined whether conformity to high- but not low-status e-confederates was associated with increases in identification with popular peers and subsequent increases in self-esteem. A sample of 250 adolescents (55.1% male; Mage = 12.70 years; 40.3% White, 28.2% Black, 23.4% Hispanic/Latino, and 7.7% multiracial/other) participated in a well-established experimental chat room paradigm where they were exposed to norms communicated by high- and low-status e-confederates. Results revealed that for boys in the high-status condition only, but not girls, the positive relation between conformity and self-esteem was mediated by greater response alignment with popular peers. These findings bolster prior research by suggesting that conformity to popular peers may be partly motivated by drives for self-esteem and alignment with a valued reference group.

Adaptive adjustment after conflict with group opinion: evidence from neural electrophysiology.

Individuals inherently seek social consensus when making decisions or judgments. Previous studies have consistently indicated that dissenting group opinions are perceived as social conflict that demands attitude adjustment. However, the neurocognitive processes of attitude adjustment are unclear. In this electrophysiological study, participants were recruited to perform a face attractiveness judgment task. After forming their own judgment of a face, participants were informed of a purported group judgment (either consistent or inconsistent with their judgment), and then, critically, the same face was presented again. The neural responses to the second presented faces were measured. The second presented faces evoked a larger late positive potential after conflict with group opinions than those that did not conflict, suggesting that more motivated attention was allocated to stimulus. Moreover, faces elicited greater midfrontal theta (4-7 Hz) power after conflict with group opinions than after consistency with group opinions, suggesting that cognitive control was initiated to support attitude adjustment. Furthermore, the mixed-effects model revealed that single-trial theta power predicted behavioral change in the Conflict condition, but not in the No-Conflict condition. These findings provide novel insights into the neurocognitive processes underlying attitude adjustment, which is crucial to behavioral change during conformity.

The power of social influence: A replication and extension of the Asch experiment.

In this paper, we pursue four goals: First, we replicate the original Asch experiment with five confederates and one naïve subject in each group (N = 210). Second, in a randomized trial we incentivize the decisions in the line experiment and demonstrate that monetary incentives lower the error rate, but that social influence is still at work. Third, we confront subjects with different political statements and show that the power of social influence can be generalized to matters of political opinion. Finally, we investigate whether intelligence, self-esteem, the need for social approval, and the Big Five are related to the susceptibility to provide conforming answers. We find an error rate of 33% for the standard length-of-line experiment which replicates the original findings by Asch (1951, 1955, 1956). Furthermore, in the incentivized condition the error rate decreases to 25%. For political opinions we find a conformity rate of 38%. However, besides openness, none of the investigated personality traits are convincingly related to the susceptibility of group pressure.

Conformity and Group Performance.

This research provides evidence regarding the causal effect of group conformity on task performance in stable and variable environments. Drawing on studies in cultural evolution, social learning, and social psychology, we experimentally tested the hypotheses that conformity improves group performance in a stable environment (H1) and decreases performance (by hindering adaptability) in a temporally variable environment (H2). We compare the performance of individuals, low conformity groups, and high conformity groups in a four-arm randomized lab experiment (N = 240). High conformity was manipulated by rewarding agreement with the group's majority and imposing a cost on disagreement. The monetary implications of conformity impaired performance in a variable environment but did not have a significant effect on performance in the stable environment. Intragroup individual-level analyses provide insights into the mechanisms that account for the group-level results by showing that lower conformity in groups facilitates efficient adaptability in the use of social information.

A large scale randomized controlled trial on herding in peer-review discussions.

Peer review is the backbone of academia and humans constitute a cornerstone of this process, being responsible for reviewing submissions and making the final acceptance/rejection decisions. Given that human decision-making is known to be susceptible to various cognitive biases, it is important to understand which (if any) biases are present in the peer-review process, and design the pipeline such that the impact of these biases is minimized. In this work, we focus on the dynamics of discussions between reviewers and investigate the presence of herding behaviour therein. Specifically, we aim to understand whether reviewers and discussion chairs get disproportionately influenced by the first argument presented in the discussion when (in case of reviewers) they form an independent opinion about the paper before discussing it with others. In conjunction with the review process of a large, top tier machine learning conference, we design and execute a randomized controlled trial that involves 1,544 papers and 2,797 reviewers with the goal of testing for the conditional causal effect of the discussion initiator's opinion on the outcome of a paper. Our experiment reveals no evidence of herding in peer-review discussions. This observation is in contrast with past work that has documented an undue influence of the first piece of information on the final decision (e.g., anchoring effect) and analyzed herding behaviour in other applications (e.g., financial markets). Regarding policy implications, the absence of the herding effect suggests that the current status quo of the absence of a unified policy towards discussion initiation does not result in an increased arbitrariness of the resulting decisions.

The impact of threshold decision mechanisms of collective behavior on disease spread.

Humans are a hyper-social species, which greatly impacts the spread of infectious diseases. How do social dynamics impact epidemiology and what are the implications for public health policy? Here, we develop a model of disease transmission that incorporates social dynamics and a behavior that reduces the spread of disease, a voluntary nonpharmaceutical intervention (NPI). We use a "tipping-point" dynamic, previously used in the sociological literature, where individuals adopt a behavior given a sufficient prevalence of the behavior in the population. The thresholds at which individuals adopt the NPI behavior are modulated by the perceived risk of infection, i.e., the disease prevalence and transmission rate, costs to adopt the NPI behavior, and the behavior of others. Social conformity creates a type of "stickiness" whereby individuals are resistant to changing their behavior due to the population's inertia. In this model, we observe a nonmonotonicity in the attack rate as a function of various biological and social parameters such as the transmission rate, efficacy of the NPI, costs of the NPI, weight of social consequences of shirking the social norm, and the degree of heterogeneity in the population. We also observe that the attack rate can be highly sensitive to these parameters due to abrupt shifts in the collective behavior of the population. These results highlight the complex interplay between the dynamics of epidemics and norm-driven collective behaviors.

Conformity to masculine norms, interoceptive dysfunction, and changes in muscle dysmorphia symptoms.

Muscle dysmorphia (MD) is a psychiatric illness characterized by preoccupation and compulsive behaviors to increase muscle size/definition. Despite its severity, few risk factors/mechanisms for MD have been identified. Conformity to masculine norms may be a MD risk factor. Furthermore, interoceptive dysfunction may facilitate MD. symptoms, as well as underlie relationships between conformity to masculine norms and MD symptoms. However, research has yet to test the mediating role of interoceptive dysfunction for said relationships. The current study tested if interoceptive dysfunction underlies relationships between conformity to masculine norms and MD symptoms among 269 US men who completed three surveys separated by one month that contained measures of focal constructs. Our sample was majority White, heterosexual, and non-Hispanic. A three-wave autoregressive mediation model was tested in which conformity to masculine norms predicted interoceptive dysfunction, which then predicted MD symptoms. Results indicated that conformity to specific masculine norms predicted both interoceptive dysfunction and MD symptoms over time. Furthermore, our hypothesized mediation pathways were not discovered. Conformity to masculine norms appears to be a risk factor for MD symptoms and interoceptive dysfunction. If clinicians can reduce rigid adherence to masculine stereotypes, this may increase connection with one's body and reduce subsequent MD symptoms.

The relationship between women's breastfeeding empowerment and conformity to feminine norms.

BACKGROUND: Women empowerment is effective in successful breastfeeding. Hence,identifying the relationship between psychosocial factors, such as acceptance of feminine norms, and empowerment can be beneficial in designing interventions.. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the relationship between breastfeeding empowerment and conformity to feminine norms. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 288 primiparous mothers in the postpartum period using validated questionnaires of conformity to gender norms and breastfeeding empowerment in the following domains: "sufficient knowledge and skills for breastfeeding," "a sense of breastfeeding competence," "conscious belief in the value of breastfeeding," "overcoming breastfeeding problems," "negotiation and obtaining family support" and "self-efficacy in breastfeeding" which were completed through the self-report method. Data were analyzed using the multivariate linear regression test. RESULTS: The mean score of 'conformity to feminine norms' and 'breastfeeding empowerment' were 142.39 and 144.14, respectively. The score of breastfeeding empowerment was positively related to conformity to feminine norms (p = 0.003). Among the dimensions of breastfeeding empowerment, 'mothers' adequate knowledge and skills for breastfeeding' (p = 0.001), 'belief in the value of breastfeeding' (p = 0.008), and 'negotiation and obtaining family support' (p = 0.01) were positively related to conformity to feminine norms. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate a positive relationship between the level of conformity to feminine norms and breastfeeding empowerment. Accordingly, it is recommended that supporting breastfeeding as a valuable role of women be considered in programs designed to improve breastfeeding empowerment.

Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria: Parent Reports on 1655 Possible Cases.

During the past decade there has been a dramatic increase in adolescents and young adults (AYA) complaining of gender dysphoria. One influential if controversial explanation is that the increase reflects a socially contagious syndrome: Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD). We report results from a survey of parents who contacted the website ParentsofROGDKids.com because they believed their AYA children had ROGD. Results focused on 1655 AYA children whose gender dysphoria reportedly began between ages 11 and 21 years, inclusive. These youths were disproportionately (75%) natal female. Natal males had later onset (by 1.9 years) than females, and they were much less likely to have taken steps toward social gender transition (65.7% for females versus 28.6% for males). Pre-existing mental health issues were common, and youths with these issues were more likely than those without them to have socially and medically transitioned. Parents reported that they had often felt pressured by clinicians to affirm their AYA child's new gender and support their transition. According to the parents, AYA children's mental health deteriorated considerably after social transition. We discuss potential biases of survey responses from this sample and conclude that there is presently no reason to believe that reports of parents who support gender transition are more accurate than those who oppose transition. To resolve controversies regarding ROGD, it is desirable that future research includes data provided by both pro- and anti-transition parents, as well as their gender dysphoric AYA children.

Social conformity is associated with inter-trial electroencephalogram variability.

Human society encompasses diverse social influences, and people experience events differently and may behave differently under such influence, including in forming an impression of others. However, little is known about the underlying neural relevance of individual differences in following others' opinions or social norms. In the present study, we designed a series of tasks centered on social influence to investigate the underlying relevance between an individual's degree of social conformity and their neural variability. We found that individual differences under the social influence are associated with the amount of inter-trial electroencephalogram (EEG) variability over multiple stages in a conformity task (making face judgments and receiving social influence). This association was robust in the alpha band over the frontal and occipital electrodes for negative social influence. We also found that inter-trial EEG variability is a very stable, participant-driven internal state measurement and could be interpreted as mindset instability. Overall, these findings support the hypothesis that higher inter-trial EEG variability may be related to higher mindset instability, which makes participants more vulnerable to exposed external social influence. The present study provides a novel approach that considers the stability of one's endogenous neural signal during tasks and links it to human social behaviors.

Awe and social conformity: Awe promotes the endorsement of social norms and conformity to the majority opinion.

Given that awe experiences promote collective identity and decrease self-importance, we reasoned that they should lead individuals to be more prone to cherish social conformity value and to adopt conformity behaviors. In two online experiments (N = 593), compared to neutral and amusement emotional states, awe was found to drive individuals to value the respect of social norms in a greater extent (Experiment 1), and to lead individuals to conform to the majority opinion on an evaluative judgment task (Experiment 2). The present research provides the first empirical evidence of awe as leading to conformity and, although more research is needed, it offers important theoretical implications about the social function of awe as well as, more generally, the importance of emotions in social influence situations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Conformity and anti-conformity in a finite population.

Conformist and anti-conformist cultural transmission have been studied both empirically, in several species, and theoretically, with population genetic models. Building upon standard, infinite-population models (IPMs) of conformity, we introduce finite-population models (FPMs) and study them via simulation and a diffusion approximation. In previous IPMs of conformity, offspring observe the variants of n adult role models, where n is often three. Numerical simulations show that while the short-term behavior of the FPM with n=3 role models is well approximated by the IPM, stable polymorphic equilibria of the IPM become effective equilibria of the FPM at which the variation persists prior to fixation or loss, and which produce plateaus in curves for fixation probabilities and expected times to absorption. In the FPM with n=5 role models, the population may switch between two effective equilibria, which is not possible in the IPM, or may cycle between frequencies that are not effective equilibria, which is possible in the IPM. In all observed cases of 'equilibrium switching' and 'cycling' in the FPM, model parameters exceed O(1/N), required for the diffusion approximation, resulting in an over-estimation of the actual times to absorption. However, in those cases with n=5 role models that have one effective equilibrium and stable fixation states, even if conformity coefficients exceed O(1/N), the diffusion approximation matches closely the numerical simulations of the FPM. This suggests that the robustness of the diffusion approximation depends not only on the magnitudes of coefficients, but also on the qualitative behavior of the conformity model.

Brain Systems Underlying Fundamental Motivations of Human Social Conformity.

From birth to adulthood, we often align our behaviors, attitudes, and opinions with a majority, a phenomenon known as social conformity. A seminal framework has proposed that conformity behaviors are mainly driven by three fundamental motives: a desire to gain more information to be accurate, to obtain social approval from others, and to maintain a favorable self-concept. Despite extensive interest in neuroimaging investigation of social conformity, the relationship between brain systems and these fundamental motivations has yet to be established. Here, we reviewed brain imaging findings of social conformity with a componential framework, aiming to reveal the neuropsychological substrates underlying different conformity motivations. First, information-seeking engages the evaluation of social information, information integration, and modification of task-related activity, corresponding to brain networks implicated in reward, cognitive control, and tasks at hand. Second, social acceptance involves the anticipation of social acceptance or rejection and mental state attribution, mediated by networks of reward, punishment, and mentalizing. Third, self-enhancement entails the excessive representation of positive self-related information and suppression of negative self-related information, ingroup favoritism and/or outgroup derogation, and elaborated mentalizing processes to the ingroup, supported by brain systems of reward, punishment, and mentalizing. Therefore, recent brain imaging studies have provided important insights into the fundamental motivations of social conformity in terms of component processes and brain mechanisms.

Inferential power in identifying frequency-dependent social learning strengthened by increasing behavioural options.

Two-option choice experimental designs are the most commonly employed framework for identifying evidence of social learning or social learning strategies in captive and wild populations. In nature, however, animals often choose from more than two behaviours, and multiple innovations may arise simultaneously. Studies of animal social learning are often constrained by small sample sizes, which limit researchers' ability to convincingly identify the proposed social learning strategy responsible for behavioural choice. In this study, I examine whether expanding behavioural options from k = 2 to k > 2 and increasing sample size affects inferential power in identifying social learning strategies. I focus on three frequency-dependent learning strategies: conformist transmission, unbiased transmission and anti-conformist transmission. I simulate 100 datasets for 72 parameter combinations, yielding 7200 simulations. I evaluate number of options (k = 2, 3, 4, 5), population size (n = 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 250) and the logarithmic strength of frequency dependence (log(f) = log(1∕3), log(1), log(3)). I then fit a Bayesian social learning model to simulated data to evaluate the percent of the posterior consistent with type of frequency dependence, posterior standard deviations, highest posterior density intervals and posterior medians relative to the true simulated value of log(f). I show that increasing the number of options an animal can choose from increases the accuracy and certainty of identifying the type and magnitude of frequency-dependent social learning. These effects are particularly pronounced at small to intermediate sample sizes, which are common in empirical studies of animal social learning. These findings suggest that knowing what an animal did not choose is equally important as knowing what an animal did choose when identifying social learning strategies. By strategically increasing the number of behaviours from which an animal can choose, researchers can increase inferential power in identifying social learning strategies without increasing sample size, that is, adding additional animals or collecting more data.

Brief Report: Links Between Nonconformity to Gender Norms, Autistic Features, and Internalizing Symptoms in a Non-clinical College Sample.

Research shows elevated gender variance among autistic people and more autistic traits among gender diverse people, each of which is related to mental health concerns. Little work has explored broad features of these presentations in a non-clinical sample. College students (n = 174) ages 18-22 years completed questionnaires assessing the broader autism phenotype (BAP), autistic features, nonconformity to gender norms, and internalizing symptoms. Those with more BAP features or autistic communication reported more nonconformity to gender norms. Higher levels of internalizing symptoms were related to more gender nonconformity, BAP, and autistic features. Gender nonconformity marginally moderated the effect of BAP on depression but not anxiety. The BAP, autistic features, and gender nonconformity are important in understanding mental well-being.

Brain Systems Underlying Fundamental Motivations of Human Social Conformity / 神经科学通报·英文版

From birth to adulthood, we often align our behaviors, attitudes, and opinions with a majority, a phenomenon known as social conformity. A seminal framework has proposed that conformity behaviors are mainly driven by three fundamental motives: a desire to gain more information to be accurate, to obtain social approval from others, and to maintain a favorable self-concept. Despite extensive interest in neuroimaging investigation of social conformity, the relationship between brain systems and these fundamental motivations has yet to be established. Here, we reviewed brain imaging findings of social conformity with a componential framework, aiming to reveal the neuropsychological substrates underlying different conformity motivations. First, information-seeking engages the evaluation of social information, information integration, and modification of task-related activity, corresponding to brain networks implicated in reward, cognitive control, and tasks at hand. Second, social acceptance involves the anticipation of social acceptance or rejection and mental state attribution, mediated by networks of reward, punishment, and mentalizing. Third, self-enhancement entails the excessive representation of positive self-related information and suppression of negative self-related information, ingroup favoritism and/or outgroup derogation, and elaborated mentalizing processes to the ingroup, supported by brain systems of reward, punishment, and mentalizing. Therefore, recent brain imaging studies have provided important insights into the fundamental motivations of social conformity in terms of component processes and brain mechanisms.