A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Many times in my life I’ve found myself out of sync with my friends, companions, family members, coworkers, or what have you.  Some times, I just shrug and let it go because it isn’t that important to me.  Other times, I’ll stick to my point — mostly I’ll stand pat if the issue is one that I feel strongly about — usually social or moral issues.  Other times I maintain my opinion but keep it to myself in order to avoid confrontations — I haven’t changed my mind I just don’t advertise my beliefs.

Well it seems from a CNN article Why so many minds think alike that our brains might be wired to bring us into conformity with our social groups.  The study in the journal Neuron, Reinforcement Learning Signal Predicts Social Conformity was performed by Vasily Klucharev, Kaisa Hytönen, Mark Rijpkema, Ale Smidts, and Guillén Fernáandez. (The study itself is not available unless you either have access to Neuron or purchase it.) The study summary says:

We often change our decisions and judgments to conform with normative group behavior. However, the neural mechanisms of social conformity remain unclear. Here we show, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, that conformity is based on mechanisms that comply with principles of reinforcement learning. We found that individual judgments of facial attractiveness are adjusted in line with group opinion. Conflict with group opinion triggered a neuronal response in the rostral cingulate zone and the ventral striatum similar to the prediction error signal suggested by neuroscientific models of reinforcement learning. The amplitude of the conflict-related signal predicted subsequent conforming behavioral adjustments. Furthermore, the individual amplitude of the conflict-related signal in the ventral striatum correlated with differences in conforming behavior across subjects. These findings provide evidence that social group norms evoke conformity via learning mechanisms reflected in the activity of the rostral cingulate zone and ventral striatum.

That phrase “prediction error” is explained by Dr. Klucharev as:

A prediction error, first identified in reinforcement learning models, is a difference between expected and obtained outcomes that is thought to signal the need for a behavioral adjustment.

Back in my psychology courses it was referred to as “cognitive dissonance”:

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which refers to the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation. It therefore occurs when there is a need to accommodate new ideas, and it may be necessary for it to develop so that we become “open” to them.

Hmmm.  It seems that, as humans, we don’t like to be outside the group comfort zone.  We want the others to like us and, sadly, we’re basically so insecure in our own opinions if they differ too much from those of the group that we’ll change our opinion to match the group.  So, to put it clearly — yes, if everyone else is jumping off a cliff, we’ll probably do it too.  Now parents have the answer to that age old question.

In this study, using magnetic resonance imaging to examine brain activity of their subjects, they could actually see the brain trying to cope with being out of conformity with their study peers in their grading of the attractiveness of people in photos.  When the subject’s judgment was out of line with the group’s they changed their scoring on a subsequent judgment of the same photo.

Summing up:

“The present study explains why we often automatically adjust our opinion in line with the majority opinion,” says Dr. Klucharev. “Our results also show that social conformity is based on mechanisms that comply with reinforcement learning and is reinforced by the neural error-monitoring activity which signals what is probably the most fundamental social mistake—that of being too different from others.”

We just might have a few problems with the way we do things.  For example, our justice system requires that juries be unanimous in their verdict.  What this study says is that even if a minority of people don’t think the majority is correct in their decisions, they’ll change their mind in order to conform with the community of jurors of which they are a part.  They’ll want to fit in.  Maybe we should have a system more along the lines of the Supreme Court where there is a majority and a minority report turned in to the judge.  Sometimes, there really isn’t enough information to make a determination but if the majority goes one way the minority will feel obligated to agree — might explain why some innocent people have been convicted of crimes they didn’t commit.

In my life, I have at times held true to my principles and been sneered at and later in time proved to have been right all along.  Of course, the flip side is that I’ve also been proved to be wrong some of the time also.  However, I’m willing to admit that I was wrong.  I’m also willing to change my mind when more facts show up that give me more data points to make up my mind on an issue. Some people, on the other hand, make up their minds and all the facts in the world can’t make a dent in their belief in their rightness.

However, conformity with the community has survival benefits.  If you fit in with your community they rally around you when you need help, they join together to assist in tasks too big for one person, and they support and protect each other.  Thus changing opinions to match the majority makes sense for survival and thus it seems it’s built in to us.

The problem is that change, growth, and innovation seems to come from those who think outside the box or move to the sound of a different drummer (notice that this week I’m really into these homilies).  So, maybe finding ways to accommodate those who have different views or who see the world differently — who don’t agree with the majority — should not be ostracized just out of hand.  Maybe these nonconformists should be looked at to see if their views are indeed “wrong” or “not like the others” or maybe these ideas/beliefs/judgments are valid in their own right but not necessarily the way we’d have processed that information ourselves.

This study has lots of implications — many of which could help to assist innovation and creativity, others to aid in adding fairness to our judicial and political system.  But more studies need to be done.  For example, I want to know if these same results would be seen when testing a similar group of men (in case you haven’t checked the original articles, the above case was performed solely on women).  Women have culturally been lead to accommodate others, to get along, to fit in and not make waves.  Would a similar study of men have the same finding?  I don’t know and until more studies are done with men and mixed gender groups there can be no plans for developing how to cope with this new information in order to increase the “good” of the community.