Neurobiology: Our minds distinguish between various social influences
Date:
March 7, 2022
Source:
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universita"t Mu"nchen
Summary:
Researchers show what happens in the human brain when we try
to influence other people or when we ourselves are influenced
by others.
FULL STORY ==========================================================================
When people change their opinion after they have received additional information from another person, this is an example of informational
social influence. But when people revise their views because they
want to be socially accepted, researchers refer to normative social
influences. Previously, it was uncertain which neural mechanisms underlie
these two situations.
========================================================================== "This question is all the more relevant in today's world of social media
and the manipulation of opinions, as many people rely on the opinions
of others to form their own view," says Dr. Bahador Bahrami from the
LMU Department of Psychology.
Together with Dr. Ali Mahmoodi from the University of Oxford and other researchers, he characterized brain activities that occur if people
are socially influenced to change their opinion. The study has now
been published in PLOS Biology. "We were able to show that our brain
solves social conflicts - - that is, differences of opinion -- via the
same neural machinery that it uses to solve its own internal, subjective conflicts," summarizes Bahrami. "A specific region of the brain takes two factors into account: how confident we are in our opinion and how polite
we are obliged to be toward others." Study uses computer-based game and functional magnetic resonance imaging In their study, the researchers
used a computer-based game. Participants in the experiment had to try
and remember the position of a dot displayed on a screen.
They gave confidence values for their answers. However, they were allowed
to revise their guesses after they had seen the answer of a computer
or of a virtual 'partner' to whom they had been introduced before the experiment. In reality, all answers were provided by computers.
Bahrami's team tracked the brain activity of all test subjects during
the game using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This
non-invasive method allows areas of the brain with high activity --
that is to say, with high oxygen consumption -- to be displayed with
high spatial resolution.
The study showed: People tended to adjust their answers when their
confidence was low, irrespective of whether they thought their partner
was human or not.
This informational influence was controlled by activity in the dorsal
anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) of the brain, a region of the cerebral
cortex.
Test subjects also exhibited more conformity toward other opinions
if they received confirmation from their communication partner. This
normative influence arose only when they believed that their partners
were human, as did the correlation with dACC activity. Moreover, the
normative influence was associated with stronger functional connections
between the dACC and other social processing regions of the brain. This
was not the case for the informational influence.
As part of the study, Bahrami and his colleagues also wanted to know what
their results meant for AI applications, which are increasingly being
used in all kinds of areas. "We established that the human brain only
feels the need for politeness when it's interacting with other people
and not with a purportedly artificial (albeit intelligent) agent,"
says the LMU researcher. In view of the burgeoning use of artificial intelligence in a wide variety of fields, Bahrami concludes, this is an important topic for further projects.
========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universita"t_Mu"nchen. Note: Content may be edited
for style and length.
========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Ali Mahmoodi, Hamed Nili, Dan Bang, Carsten Mehring, Bahador
Bahrami.
Distinct neurocomputational mechanisms support informational
and socially normative conformity. PLOS Biology, 2022; 20 (3):
e3001565 DOI: 10.1371/ journal.pbio.3001565 ==========================================================================
Link to news story:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220307113050.htm
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