Social influence and the brain: persuasion, susceptibility to influence and retransmission

Abstract

Social influence is an important topic of research, with a particularly long history in the social sciences. Recently, social influence has also become a topic of interest among neuroscientists. The aim of this review is to highlight current research that has examined neural systems associated with social influence, from the perspective of being influenced as well as influencing others, and highlight studies that link neural mechanisms with real-world behavior change beyond the laboratory. Although many of the studies reviewed focus on localizing brain regions implicated in influence within the lab, we argue that approaches that account for networks of brain regions and that integrate neural data with data beyond the laboratory are likely to be most fruitful in understanding influence. AbstractSocial influence is an important topic of research, with a particularly long history in the social sciences. Recently, social influence has also become a topic of interest among neuroscientists.The aim of this review is to highlight current research that has examined neural systems associated with social influence, from the perspective of being influenced as well as influencing others, and highlight studies that link neural mechanisms with real-world behavior change beyond the laboratory. Although many of the studies reviewed focus on localizing brain regions implicated in influence within the lab, we argue that approaches that account for networks of brain regions and that integrate neural data with data beyond the laboratory are likely to be most fruitful in understanding influence.

Distinct neurocomputational mechanisms support informational and normative conformity

“…Consistent with previous studies 33 , activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) at the time of making the second estimate (t5) was positively modulated by the amount of influence that participants took from their partners ( Figure 3D peak coordinates [-10 44 -10], k = 26, t(19) = 5.49, p = .04). Notably, activity of vmPFC was only correlated with the influence that participants took from their partners but not the replay of confidence.…”

Social proof in the human brain: Electrophysiological signatures of agreement and disagreement with the majority

“…This pattern nicely parallels the principles of reinforcement learning, according to which the valence (and predictability) of behavioral outcomes are coded for in a circuit of functionally and morphologically connected structures in the orbitofrontal cortex, ventral striatum, and anterior cingulate cortex, which are linked via dopaminergic midbrain neurons (Schultz, ; Schultz & Dickinson, ). In a nutshell, adjustment to the majority is reinforced via reward responses to agreement with others and error or even punishment responses to disagreement with others (Cascio, Scholz, & Falk, ; Falk et al, ).…”

Searching with and against each other: Spatiotemporal coordination of visual search behavior in collaborative and competitive settings

“…However, this approach ignores the fact that humans spend significant parts of their day in interaction with others. Everyday interactions in such social settings involve many of the cognitive processes that these single-participant lab tasks purport to study, such as language processing (Pickering & Garrod, 2004) and decision-making (Campbell-Meiklejohn, Bach, Roepstorff, Dolan, & Frith, 2010;Cascio, Scholz, & Falk, 2015). Indeed, there is a growing body of research showing that performing basic lab tasks, such as antisaccades (Oliva, Niehorster, Jarodzka, & Holmqvist, 2017), inhibition of return paradigms (Skarratt, Cole, & Kuhn, 2012;Welsh et al, 2005), memory recall (Weldon & Bellinger, 1997) and go/no-go tasks (Dolk, Hommel, Prinz, & Liepelt, 2013) in the presence of others can yield results that differ substantially from those found when participants perform the task when alone in the experiment room.…”