The Expression and Transfer of Valence Associated with Social Conformity

Prachi Mistry,Mimi Liljeholm

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-38560-4

Abstract

Consensus seeking – abandoning one’s own judgment to align with a group majority – is a fundamental feature of human social interaction. Notably, such striving for majority affiliation often occurs in the absence of any apparent economic or social gain, suggesting that achieving consensus might have intrinsic value. Here, using a simple gambling task, in which the decisions of ostensible previous gamblers were indicated below available options on each trial, we examined the affective properties of agreeing with a group majority by assessing the trade-off between social and non-social currencies, and the transfer of social valence to concomitant stimuli. In spite of demonstrating near-perfect knowledge of objective reward probabilities, participant’s choices and evaluative judgments reflected a reliable preference for conformity, consistent with the hypothesized value of social alignment.

Highlights

In spite of ample evidence of apparently inconsequential conformity, it is problematic to conclude that conforming decisions are rewarding because such decisions are made
Participants chose between gambling options that differed in terms of the probability of a fictitious monetary reward, given an ostensible majority endorsement by previous gamblers of the option associated with either a smaller or larger pay-off
We confirmed that participants were incentivized by the hypothetical monetary payoffs: Collapsing across social and pay-off conditions, whenever payoffs differed across available slot options, participants chose the option with a greater payoff 75% of the time, significantly more often than chance, p < 0.0001

Summary

Introduction

In spite of ample evidence of apparently inconsequential conformity, it is problematic to conclude that conforming decisions are rewarding because such decisions are made. Matz and Wood[15] used an emotion measure to assess dissonance discomfort, negative self-evaluation and positive feelings associated with agreeing or disagreeing with a group of ostensible peers They found that participants who disagreed with the group experienced significantly greater dissonance discomfort than those who agreed, especially if they believed that they would be required to discuss their opinions or reach consensus with other group members. While no such effects were found for measures of negative self-evaluation and positive feelings, in a subsequent study, positive feelings increased and negative self-evaluation decreased when participants were given the opportunity to achieve consensus by persuading others or joining a more congenial group. Participants chose between gambling options that differed in terms of the probability of a fictitious monetary reward ( the “pay-off ”), given an ostensible majority endorsement by previous gamblers of the option associated with either a smaller or larger pay-off

Methods

Results

Conclusion