The Connection Between the Neural Mechanism of Social Conformity and Explicit Motivation

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2011
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Haverford College. Department of Psychology
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eng
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Haverford users only
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Abstract
The main hypothesis tested the effect of explicit motivation on an errors monitoring system, specifically on a feedback-related EEG peak (FRN). The FRN has been shown to occur in instances of socially deviant behavior, but it is unclear what specifically motivates this response. One possible motivation is explicit goals. A non-naive group was manipulated to resist conformity and compared to a naive group expected to conform. All subjects completed a face attractiveness task in which subjects rated faces both before and after viewing "average" ratings. Non-naïve subjects were told these averages were fictitious, naïve subjects were told the averages represented the opinions of their peers. We predicted that non-naïve subjects would show decreased conformity as measured by the change in ratings between rating sessions. With respect to the FRN, we predicted an FRN reduction in the non-naïve group, indicating that the FRN is dependent on internal goals. However, if no reduction was found, this would show an independence of error-monitoring from explicit goals. Unfortunately, the manipulation did not reduce non-naïve subjects' conformity behavior nor did it affect the FRN, so the main hypothesis could not be tested. This may be due to the minor methodological modifications made to this manipulation, though it may indicate that conformity behavior is incredibly resilient and difficult to suppress.
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