Reciprocity of social influence

Ali Mahmoodi,Bahador Bahrami,Carsten Mehring

doi:10.1038/s41467-018-04925-y

Abstract

Humans seek advice, via social interaction, to improve their decisions. While social interaction is often reciprocal, the role of reciprocity in social influence is unknown. Here, we tested the hypothesis that our influence on others affects how much we are influenced by them. Participants first made a visual perceptual estimate and then shared their estimate with an alleged partner. Then, in alternating trials, the participant either revised their decisions or observed how the partner revised theirs. We systematically manipulated the partner’s susceptibility to influence from the participant. We show that participants reciprocated influence with their partner by gravitating toward the susceptible (but not insusceptible) partner’s opinion. In further experiments, we showed that reciprocity is both a dynamic process and is abolished when people believed that they interacted with a computer. Reciprocal social influence is a signaling medium for human-to-human communication that goes beyond aggregation of evidence for decision improvement.

Highlights

Humans seek advice, via social interaction, to improve their decisions
Social influence can lead to catastrophic outcomes
Humans tend to reciprocate in social interaction[23,24]

Summary

Introduction

Via social interaction, to improve their decisions. While social interaction is often reciprocal, the role of reciprocity in social influence is unknown. Other studies have shown that in a different set of experimental conditions, people show an egocentric bias by relying on their own individual information more than they should[38,39] These findings suggest that normative concerns such as equality and maintaining a good self-image may play an important role in interactive decision-making. These factors are not consistent with the Bayesian theory of social information aggregation[30,32,33], which requires that the influence that people take from others should not depend on norms and conventions. An empirical observation of reciprocity in advice-taking would be inconsistent with the Bayesian theory of social influence[30,32,33]

Methods

Results

Conclusion