Institute of Education London

Social conformity: why do humans and monkeys make weak decisions under social influence?

Summary
The opinions of others can affect our behaviour and thinking profoundly. For example, social psychology has shown that the opinions of others can alter the decisions we make, even when these opinions are blatantly wrong. By combining neurophysiological, social psychological and developmental research approaches, we aim to elucidate the mechanisms of social influence on decision-making.

Methods
We will modify a simple perceptual decision-making task so that decisions are made under the influence of judgments made by others, and we will use this task with monkeys, human adults, typically developing children and children with autism. In so doing, we will address the following aims: (1) To pinpoint which stage(s) of brain processing are altered by social influence; (2) To elucidate the mechanisms by which social influence alters decisions; and (3) To examine the mechanisms of social influence through the lens of both typical and atypical development.