An fMRI study on the neural correlates of social conformity to a sexual minority

M T Liuzza,V Lingiardi,P A Chiesa,E Macaluso,S M Aglioti

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-40447-3

Abstract

Social conformity refers to the tendency to align one’s own behaviors, beliefs and values to those of others. Little is known about social influence coming from a minority group. To test whether social pressure from sexual minorities triggers avoidance-motivated behaviors, we explored how being influenced by the preferences of gay peers modifies the behavioral and neural reactivity of individuals defined as in- vs. out- groups on the basis of sexual orientation. To this aim, we combined fMRI with a social conformity paradigm in which heterosexual and gay/bisexual (hereafter non-exclusively heterosexual, NEH) individuals provided with male body attractiveness ratings by a fictitious group of gay students may or may not alter their previous rating and may or may not conform to the mean. Behaviorally, conformity to the minority preference was found in in-group NEH more than in out-group heterosexuals. Analysis of BOLD signal showed that social pressure brought about increased brain activity in frontal and parietal regions associated with the detection of social conflict. These results show that members of a sexual majority group display a smaller level of conformity when a sexual minority group exerts social influence. However, the neural correlates of this modulation are yet to be clarified.

Highlights

Social Conformity refers to the act of changing one’s own thoughts, feelings, and behavior to match the responses of a given group[1], even when such responses appear blatantly wrong[2]
While a number of psychological studies have been conducted on conformity, only recently has this topic attracted the interest of social neuroscience[4] and the picture emerging from the few fMRI studies on the neural correlates of social conformity is largely incomplete
Previous studies have shown that conformity effects might be due to regression to the mean (RTM)[34,35], which occurs when a first extreme value is followed by a value that approaches the mean

Summary

Introduction

Social Conformity refers to the act of changing one’s own thoughts, feelings, and behavior to match the responses of a given group[1], even when such responses appear blatantly wrong[2]. In order to assess the extent to which the hypothesized non-conformity behavior could be linked to anti-gay prejudice, we collected explicit measures of modern homophobia (i.e., the modern homophobia scale (MHS)[8] and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA9) that are consistently associated to sexual prejudice towards lesbians and gay men[10,11]. Because these measures are intimately related to social conformity[12], we expected them to be negatively related to conformance with gay men ratings of body attractiveness. This result would support the notion that exposure to out-groups[17] and sexual minorities[18] triggers avoidance motivated behaviors

Methods

Results

Conclusion