Pech Guillaume P, Caspar Emilie A
Center for Research in Cognition and Neuroscience, Université libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, 1050 Belgium.
Moral & Social Brain Lab, Department of Experimental Psychology, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Ghent University, Ghent, 9000 Belgium.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2025 May 22;20(1). doi: 10.1093/scan/nsaf038.
The study investigated the influence of conformity and obedience on intentions to help a child whose relative had caused harm to the participant's family during historical events of violence. Participants from Belgium, Cambodia, and Rwanda faced different social scenarios with two types of social influence and had to choose whether to respond helpfully. A multi-method and cross-cultural approach combining self-reports, behaviours, decision times (DTs), and electroencephalography (EEG) data was used. Participants explicitly reported being more influenced by authority (obedience) than by a group (conformity), a finding supported by faster DTs when following authority recommendations compared to either a group or an individual alone (compliance). However, behavioural and neural data showed no distinction between obedience and conformity. Behaviourally, authority and group influences exceeded individual influence but did not differ significantly. EEG results revealed higher mid-frontal theta (FMθ) activity for both the authority and the group indicating stronger inhibition of alternative choices compared to individual compliance. These results suggest that the type of measurement impacts the observed influence of authority and conformity, thus posing interesting questions regarding what may influence real behaviours. Variations were observed between countries, highlighting the importance of accounting for cross-cultural differences and avoiding generalization from a single population sample.
该研究调查了在暴力历史事件中，从众和服从对帮助一个其亲属曾对参与者家庭造成伤害的孩子的意愿的影响。来自比利时、柬埔寨和卢旺达的参与者面临两种不同社会影响的不同社会场景，并且必须选择是否做出有益的回应。研究采用了一种多方法、跨文化的方法，结合了自我报告、行为、决策时间（DTs）和脑电图（EEG）数据。参与者明确报告称，与群体（从众）相比，他们受权威（服从）的影响更大，这一发现得到了如下结果的支持：与单独听从群体或个人（依从）的建议相比，听从权威建议时的决策时间更快。然而，行为和神经数据显示，服从和从众之间并无区别。在行为上，权威和群体的影响超过了个人影响，但二者之间没有显著差异。脑电图结果显示，权威和群体的额中θ波（FMθ）活动均较高，这表明与个人依从相比，对其他选择的抑制更强。这些结果表明，测量方式会影响观察到的权威和从众的影响，因此就可能影响实际行为的因素提出了有趣的问题。各国之间观察到了差异，凸显了考虑跨文化差异以及避免从单一人群样本进行推断的重要性。
