Abstract
The main aim of our study was to analyze 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 analyzed psychological 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.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Asch, S.E.: Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. In: Guetzkow, H.S. (ed.) Groups, Leadership and Men, pp. 177–190. Carnegie Press, Pittsburgh (1951)
Morgan, T.J.H., Laland, K.N.: The biological bases of conformity. Front. Neurosci. 6(87), 1–7 (2012). doi:10.3389/fnins.2012.00087
Murray, D.R., Trudeau, R., Schaller, M.: On the origins of cultural differences in conformity: four tests of the pathogen prevalence hypothesis. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Bull. 37(3), 318–329 (2011)
Neuberg, S. L., Kenrick, D. T., Schaller, M.: Evolutionary Social Psychology. Handbook of Social Psychology (2010)
Kiesler, S., Siegel, J., McGuire, T.W.: Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication. Am. Psychol. 39(10), 1123–1134 (1984)
Spears, R., Postmes, T., Lea, M., Wolbert, A.: When are net effects gross products? Commun. J. Soc. Issues 58(1), 91–107 (2002)
Laporte, L., van Nimwegen, C., Uyttendaele, A.J.: Do people say what they think: Social conformity behavior in varying degrees of online social presence. In: Proceedings of the 6th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Extending Boundaries, pp. 305–314. ACM, October 2010
Deutsch, M., Gerard, H.B.: A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment. J. Abnorm. Soc. Psychol. 51(3), 629–636 (1955)
Chen, J., Wu, Y., Tong, G., Guan, X., Zhou, X.: ERP correlates of social conformity in a line judgment task. BMC Neurosci. 13(1), 43–53 (2012)
Kim, B.R., Liss, A., Rao, M., Singer, Z., Compton, R.J.: Social deviance activates the brain’s error-monitoring system. Cogn. Affect. Behav. Neurosci. 12(1), 65–73 (2012)
Shestakova, A., Rieskamp, J., Tugin, S., Ossadtchi, A., Krutitskaya, J., Klucharev, V.: Electrophysiological precursors of social conformity. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 8(7), 756–763 (2013)
Rosander, M., Eriksson, O.: Conformity on the internet-the role of task difficulty and gender differences. Comput. Hum. Behav. 28(5), 1587–1595 (2012)
Dennis, T.A., Hajcak, G.: The late positive potential: a neurophysiological marker for emotion regulation in children. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 50(11), 1373–1383 (2009)
Libet, B., Gleason, C.A., Wright, E.W., Pearl, D.K.: Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). Brain 106(3), 623–642 (1983)
Klein, T.A., Endrass, T., Kathmann, N., Neumann, J., von Cramon, D.Y., Ullsperger, M.: Neural correlates of error awareness. Neuroimage 34(4), 1774–1781 (2007)
Giannini, M., Pannocchia, L., Lauro-Grotto, R., Gori, A. (n.d.): A measure for counseling: the five factor adjective short test (5-fast). Unpublished manuscript, Department of Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
Spielberger, C.D., Gorsuch, R.L.: State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Adults: Sampler Set: Manual, Tekst Booklet and Scoring Key. Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto (1983)
Prezza, M., Pacilli, M.G., Barbaranelli, C., Zampatti, E.: The MTSOCS: A multidimensional sense of community scale for local communities. J. Community Psychol. 37(3), 305–326 (2009)
Rosenberg, M.: Conceiving the self. In: Ciarrochi, J., Bilich, L.: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Measures Package. University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia (2007). (Unpublished manuscript)
Sibilia, L., Schwarzer, R., Jerusalem, M.: Italian adaptation of the general self-efficacy scale. Resource document. Ralf Schwarzer web site (1995)
Crutchfield, R.S.: Conformity and character. Am. Psychol. 10(5), 191 (1955)
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by EU Commission (FP7-ICT-2013-10) Proposal No. 611299 SciCafe 2.0.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Coppolino Perfumi, S., Cardelli, C., Bagnoli, F., Guazzini, A. (2016). Conformity in Virtual Environments: A Hybrid Neurophysiological and Psychosocial Approach. In: Bagnoli, F., et al. Internet Science. INSCI 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9934. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45982-0_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45982-0_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-45981-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-45982-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)