When making decisions, people may change their behavior, sometimes against their personal preference, according to the opinions of peers. However, the effect of social influence on trust is still unknown. In our study, we used the event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate brain activity in social influence during a trust game. The behavioral results revealed that people tend to conform to others’
opinions and behaviors in a trust game. Decreased activations were observed in superior temporal gyrus during processing of social influences. Moreover, brain regions supporting value processing and reward learning were activated when subjects decided to follow the majority. These regions include the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum, and parahippocampal gyrus.
Finally, our exploratory analysis revealed an increase in functional connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and the ventral striatum during conformity in trusting behavior. These findings indicate that the neural basis of social influence in trusting behavior are similar to the mechanisms implicated in reward learning. The brain regions involved in reward learning might reflect the reward value of agreeing with others in our study.
Our opinions and behaviors are often affected by the majority (Asch, 1956; Turner, 1991). People tend to change their opinions and behaviors in order to follow with social norms, even if the majority decision is against their personal preference (Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004; Morgan and Laland, 2012; Haun et al., 2013).
Psychologists defined this phenomenon as “social conformity.” It refers to individuals’ action of adopting the opinions, behaviors, and judgments of others (Turner, 1991). Asch (1951) used a simple line judgment task to investigate social conformity. Since then social psychologists began to explore the causes of social conformity. Based on previous study, there are three types of intrinsic motivations underlying social conformity: a desire to obtain social approval of others, a desire to make a correct choice, and a desire to keep a positive self-concept (Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004).
