Conformity in virtual environments: a hybrid neurophysiological and psychosocial approach
📝 Abstract
The main aim of our study was to analyse the effects of a virtual environment on social conformity, with particular attention to the effects of different types of task and psychological variables on social influence, on one side, and to the neural correlates related to conformity, measured by means of an Emotiv EPOC device on the other. For our purpose, we replicated the famous Asch’s visual task and created two new tasks of increasing ambiguity, assessed through the calculation of the item’s entropy. We also administered five scales in order to assess different psychological traits. From the experiment, conducted on 181 university students, emerged that conformity grows according to the ambiguity of the task, but normative influence is significantly weaker in virtual environments, if compared to face-to-face experiments. The analysed psycho-logical traits, however, result not to be relatable to conformity, and they only affect the subjects’ response times. From the ERP (Event-related potentials) analysis, we detected N200 and P300 components comparing the plots of conformist and non-conformist subjects, alongside with the detection of their Late Positive Potential, Readiness Potential, and Error-Related Negativity, which appear consistently different for the two typologies.
💡 Analysis
The main aim of our study was to analyse the effects of a virtual environment on social conformity, with particular attention to the effects of different types of task and psychological variables on social influence, on one side, and to the neural correlates related to conformity, measured by means of an Emotiv EPOC device on the other. For our purpose, we replicated the famous Asch’s visual task and created two new tasks of increasing ambiguity, assessed through the calculation of the item’s entropy. We also administered five scales in order to assess different psychological traits. From the experiment, conducted on 181 university students, emerged that conformity grows according to the ambiguity of the task, but normative influence is significantly weaker in virtual environments, if compared to face-to-face experiments. The analysed psycho-logical traits, however, result not to be relatable to conformity, and they only affect the subjects’ response times. From the ERP (Event-related potentials) analysis, we detected N200 and P300 components comparing the plots of conformist and non-conformist subjects, alongside with the detection of their Late Positive Potential, Readiness Potential, and Error-Related Negativity, which appear consistently different for the two typologies.
📄 Content
Conformity in virtual environments: a hybrid neurophysiological and psychosocial approach Serena Coppolino Perfumi1, Chiara Cardelli1, Franco Bagnoli3 4, Andrea Guazzini2 3
1 Neurofarba Department (Neuroscience, Psychology, Pharmacology and Children’s Health), University of Florence, Italy 2 Department of Educational Sciences and Psychology, University of Florence, Italy 3 Centre for the Study of Complex Dynamics, University of Florence, Florence, Italy 4 Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Florence, Florence, Italy Abstract. The main aim of our study was to analyze the effects of a virtual en- vironment on social conformity, with particular attention to the effects of dif- ferent types of task and psychological variables on social influence, on one side, and to the neural correlates related to conformity, measured by means of an Emotiv EPOC device on the other. For our purpose, we replicated the famous Asch’s visual task and created two new tasks of increasing ambiguity, assessed through the calculation of the item’s entropy. We also administered five scales in order to assess different psychological traits. From the experiment, conducted on 181 university students, emerged that conformity grows according to the ambiguity of the task, but normative influence is significantly weaker in virtual environments, if compared to face-to-face experiments. The analyzed psycho- logical traits, however, result not to be relatable to conformity, and they only af- fect the subjects’ response times. From the ERP (Event-related potentials) anal- ysis, we detected N200 and P300 components comparing the plots of conform- ist and non-conformist subjects, alongside with the detection of their Late Posi- tive Potential, Readiness Potential, and Error-Related Negativity, which appear consistently different for the two typologies. Keywords. Social conformity, social influence, ERP, group pressure, in-group dynamics 1 Introduction Conformity has been widely analyzed by social psychology starting from the pioneer- istic works of Sherif and Asch [1]. These experiments showed to what extent majority pressure can be powerful, even when the majority is giving a clearly incorrect answer. However, from an evolutionary point of view, these results are not shocking, since conformity turns out to be an adaptive behavior that presents many benefits concern- ing human beings’ fitness, reproduction and survival [2]. Recent cultural studies on conformity, analyzed its connection with protection and showed how the inhabitants of areas that historically had higher prevalence of disease tend to be more conformist, and this outcome is explained by the fact that conformity is a strong protective factor against the risk of contracting illness [3]. Among the different benefits, conformity can work as a protective shield against threats linked to group exclusion: infact human beings developed heuristics and neu- rally evolved with the ability to select similar individuals to bond with and to distin- guish in-group members from out-group members. From this point of view, conform- ist behaviors like mimicry can be helpful in creating group membership [4]. The context plays a crucial role in fostering this type of behavior but the majority of the studies on conformity focused on face-to-face interaction. However, considering the widespread of social networks and computer-mediated communication nowadays, it is necessary to shed light on how social influence works in a context characterized by anonymity. Contrasting theoretical frameworks focused on the effects of anonymity on human interaction: on one side anonymity seems to be able to give individuals a feeling of protection that leads them to feel more free to speak their minds [5], but on the other side, the Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects (SIDE) perspective shows how anonymity can lead to deindividuation, and this factor, making less salient indi- vidual traits, can lead to a stronger tendency to conform to social norms [6]. From the very few studies on conformity in virtual environments emerged that social influence can occur also in virtual environments but with some differences according to the type of influence elicited. A replication of Asch’s experiment, showed no conformity in anonymous condition [7]. Asch’s task, which consisted in confronting a reference bar with three options of different lengths, among which was present only one twin bar, is an example of nor- mative influence, namely the tendency to conform in order not to appear as an outsid- er when confronting a group [8]. Asch’s experimental organization consisted in a group of seven people among which only the person in sixth answer position was the experimental subject. In some trials, the majority was asked to provide unanimously the same incorrect answer, and the tendency to conform of the experimental subject was analyzed. Averagely, 32% of the e
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