Conformity in virtual environments: a hybrid neurophysiological and psychosocial approach

TL;DR

This study investigates social conformity in virtual environments using neurophysiological measures and psychological assessments, revealing that conformity increases with task ambiguity but is weaker than face-to-face, with neural correlates identified.

Contribution

It combines neurophysiological data with psychosocial analysis to explore conformity in virtual settings, introducing new tasks and neural markers for conformity.

Findings

Conformity increases with task ambiguity.

Normative influence is weaker in virtual environments.

Neural markers differ between conformist and non-conformist individuals.

Abstract

The main aim of our study was to analyse the effects of a virtual environment on social conformity, with particular attention to the effects of different types of task and psychological variables on social influence, on one side, and to the neural correlates related to conformity, measured by means of an Emotiv EPOC device on the other. For our purpose, we replicated the famous Asch's visual task and created two new tasks of increasing ambiguity, assessed through the calculation of the item's entropy. We also administered five scales in order to assess different psychological traits. From the experiment, conducted on 181 university students, emerged that conformity grows according to the ambiguity of the task, but normative influence is significantly weaker in virtual environments, if compared to face-to-face experiments. The analysed psycho-logical traits, however, result not to be relatable to conformity, and they only affect the subjects' response times. From the ERP (Event-related potentials) analysis, we detected N200 and P300 components comparing the plots of conformist and non-conformist subjects, alongside with the detection of their Late Positive Potential, Readiness Potential, and Error-Related Negativity, which appear consistently different for the two typologies.