Neurobiological Correlates of Social Conformity and Independence During Mental Rotation

Social conformity is due to biased stimulus processing: electrophysiological and diffusion analyses

“…whether a negative group judgment led participants to selectively focus on unattractive aspects of a face). Berns et al (2005) found that social conformity in a mental rotation task was associated with increased activity in task specific brain areas (i.e. the occipital-parietal network).…”

Cells, circuits, and choices: Social influences on perceptual decision making

“…Put differently, going along with the group increased activity particularly in the neural network that normally is involved in mental rotation. Berns et al (2005) concluded from these results that participants seemed to see the wrong answer under social pressure. In contrast, participants who did not conform with the others showed increased amygdala and caudate activity, possibly signifying an emotional toll for standing up for one's belief.…”

“…Unfortunately, the question of which brain mechanisms are at work when we integrate others' opinions during decision making has largely escaped the attention of neuroscientists. To the best of our knowledge, only one fMRI study has examined the neural correlates of social influence during decision making (Berns et al, 2005). Instead of having participants decide between different line lengths, as in Asch (1952Asch ( , 1956), Berns et al asked participants to mentally rotate 2-D line drawings of 3-D objects to decide whether two objects were the "same" or "different" (Shepard & Metzler, 1971).…”

Analyzing the Bio-cognitive Substrates of Social-Identity Formation in Islamic Extremists

“…Masternarrative analysis calls this process coercive cohesion. [22] In this regard, Islamic MNs will only be successful if they can perform a vital de-tormenting psychosocial task for European Muslims whose internal, evolutionarily inherited cognitive ambiguity is intensified by an external environment of competing social identities and group loyalties. European Muslims today typically find themselves caught within a field of competing social identities and group loyalties.…”