Big Brother in our brain: a neurobiological mechanism of conformity

Humans often change their beliefs or behavior due to the behavior or opinions of others. We explored, with the use of various neuroimaging methods (fMRI, TMS, ERPs), whether social conformity is an automatic process that is based on a general performance-monitoring mechanism (Klucharev et al., 2009; Klucharev et al., 2011; Shestakova et al., 2013). We hypothesized that conflicts with normative group opinion modulates activity of the dopaminergic regions often associated with performance monitoring and subsequent adjustment of behavior. Using fMRI we showed that conflicts with group opinion modulated neuronal activity in the posterior medial frontal cortex and the ventral striatum. We also demonstrated that the transient downregulation of the posterior medial frontal cortex reduced conformity. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that some forms of social influence are mediated by activity of the general performance-monitoring circuitry. Furthermore, our results suggest that social conformity is underlined by the neural error-monitoring activity which signals probably the most fundamental social mistake that of being “too different” from others.

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• A, Rieskamp J, Tugin S, Ossadtchi A, Krutitskaya J, Klucharev V (2013) Electrophysiological precursors of social conformity. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci.