Brain May Be Wired for Social Conformity

Study says 'error-monitoring' signals keep us from being too different from others

(HealthDay News) -- Your brain may be wired to go along with popular opinion in social situations, a new study suggests.

Scans done with functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) showed that people whose opinion differed with that of a group of people experienced a neuronal response in the brain's rostral cingulate zone (RCZ) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) -- areas that seem to help monitor behavioral outcomes and anticipate and process rewards as well as social learning, respectively.

This signal appears to tell the brain a "prediction error" has occurred, which seems to cause an adjustment in the long-term to an individual's own opinion. The magnitude of the signal appears to correlate with differences in conforming behavior across subjects, the study said.

The findings were published in the Jan. 15 issue of Neuron.

http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/01/14/brain-may-be-wired-for-social-conformity.html