The FRN Signal and Social Conformity as Related to Self-esteem

Abstract

A large body of research has shown that the brain elicits a specific signal (the error-related negativity, or ERN) when a person realizes that he or she has made an objective error (on a task where there is a clear right or wrong answer). We sought to investigate the nature of this error detection signal and to discover if it could be elicited by a social, subjective error. Our task studied error between one's own rating and a group rating of facial attractiveness, a judgment that has been shown to be both socially significant and generally agreed upon. Since we know from previous literature that this signal leads to error correction on subsequent trials, we measured the amount of error correction as conformity to a group opinion. We also attempted to use what we know about the ways that self-esteem interacts with conformity to help explain the results that we hoped for; however, we did not find any results that related conformity, the FRN, and self-esteem. However, our results have shown that the brain responds to social error with an ERN signal.