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Virtually simulated social pressure influences early visual processing more in low compared to high autonomous participants
Author(s) -
TrautmannLengsfeld Sina Alexa,
Herrmann Christoph Siegfried
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/psyp.12161
Subject(s) - psychology , perception , context (archaeology) , visual field , autonomy , social pressure , task (project management) , audiology , visual perception , cognitive psychology , social psychology , medicine , paleontology , management , neuroscience , political science , law , economics , biology
In a previous study, we showed that virtually simulated social group pressure could influence early stages of perception after only 100 ms. In the present EEG study, we investigated the influence of social pressure on visual perception in participants with high ( HA ) and low ( LA ) levels of autonomy. Ten HA and ten LA individuals were asked to accomplish a visual discrimination task in an adapted paradigm of S olomon A sch. Results indicate that LA participants adapted to the incorrect group opinion more often than HA participants (42% vs. 30% of the trials, respectively). LA participants showed a larger posterior P 1 component contralateral to targets presented in the right visual field when conforming to the correct compared to conforming to the incorrect group decision. In conclusion, our ERP data suggest that the group context can have early effects on our perception rather than on conscious decision processes in LA , but not HA participants.