Abstract
The influences of expertise and group size on an individual’s tendency to align with a majority opinion have been attributed to informational and normative conformity, respectively: Whereas the former refers to the treatment of others’ decisions as proxies for outcomes, the latter involves positive affect elicited by group membership. In this study, using a social gambling task, we pitted alignment with a high- vs. low-expertise majority against a hypothetical monetary reward, thus relating conformity to a broader literature on valuation and choice, and probed the countering influence of a high-expertise minority opinion. We found that the expertise of a countering minority group significantly modulated alignment with a low-expertise majority, but only if such alignment did not come at a cost. Conversely, participants’ knowledge of payoff probabilities predicted the degree of majority alignment only when a high-expertise majority endorsed a more costly option. Implications for the relative influences of expertise and stakes on conformity are discussed.
Highlights
The influences of expertise and group size on an individual’s tendency to align with a majority opinion have been attributed to informational and normative conformity, respectively: Whereas the former refers to the treatment of others’ decisions as proxies for outcomes, the latter involves positive affect elicited by group membership
Much of this work has focused on dissociating informational and normative conformity—while the former involves viewing others’ decisions as evidence, the latter is based on a desire to belong2— with respect to the relative influences of majority size and expertise[3,4,5,6,7]
A substantial literature has addressed the relationship between perceived self-competence, group expertise and conformity[5,6,7]
Summary
The influences of expertise and group size on an individual’s tendency to align with a majority opinion have been attributed to informational and normative conformity, respectively: Whereas the former refers to the treatment of others’ decisions as proxies for outcomes, the latter involves positive affect elicited by group membership. In this study, using a social gambling task, we pitted alignment with a high- vs low-expertise majority against a hypothetical monetary reward, relating conformity to a broader literature on valuation and choice, and probed the countering influence of a high-expertise minority opinion. We used a social gambling task to pit alignment with a high- vs low-expertise majority against hypothetical monetary gain, and against the countering opinion of a high-expertise minority. In a study assessing the perceived nutritional value of fictitious dietary products, Lascu et al.[6] found that participants’ self-assessed task competence modulated the influence of ostensible group expertise on conformity. We expected that an individual’s objective competency—operationalized as the accuracy of reward probability estimates—would predict the tendency to align with high, but not with low, expertise
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