ArticleHuman brain mapping2021
Testing the reinforcement learning hypothesis of social conformity.
Article in Human brain mapping, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Learning under social versus nonsocial uncertainty: A meta-analytic approach.Human brain mapping · 2022Pooled it
- Reward and Imitation in Social Conformity.Brain and behavior · 2026Article
- Informational and Normative Influence on Conformity in Autism.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2026Article
- Social learning and exploration-exploitation dilemma in decision-making.Frontiers in neural circuits · 2026Review
- Decomposing Cognitive Processes in the mPFC during Self-Thinking.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- The 7 Muses of Neuro-Creative Cycle: How some patients with Parkinson's disease can unleash latent creativity.AIMS neuroscience · 2025Article
- Motivated with joy or anxiety: Does approach-avoidance goal framing elicit differential reward-network activation in the brain?Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2024Article
- Away from the herd: loneliness as a dysfunction of social alignment.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2024Article
- Patterns of brain activity associated with nostalgia: a social-cognitive neuroscience perspective.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2022Article
- Enhanced endogenous oxytocin signaling in the brain modulates neural responses to social misalignment and promotes conformity in humans: A multi-locus genetic profile approach.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2022Article
- Characterization of the Core Determinants of Social Influence From a Computational and Cognitive Perspective.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Review
- Testing the reinforcement learning hypothesis of social conformity.Human brain mapping · 2021Article
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4 authors.
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Abstract
Our preferences are influenced by the opinions of others. The past human neuroimaging studies on social conformity have identified a network of brain regions related to social conformity that includes the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC), anterior insula, and striatum. Since these brain regions are also known to play important roles in reinforcement learning (i.e., processing prediction error), it was previously hypothesized that social conformity and reinforcement learning have a common neural mechanism. However, although this view is currently widely accepted, these two processes have never been directly compared; therefore, the extent to which they shared a common neural mechanism had remained unclear. This study aimed to formally test the hypothesis. The same group of participants (n = 25) performed social conformity and reinforcement learning tasks inside a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. Univariate fMRI data analyses revealed activation overlaps in the pMFC and bilateral insula between social conflict and unsigned prediction error and in the striatum between social conflict and signed prediction error. We further conducted multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) for more direct evidence of a shared neural mechanism. MVPA did not reveal any evidence to support the hypothesis in any of these regions but found that activation patterns between social conflict and prediction error in these regions were largely distinct. Taken together, the present study provides no clear evidence of a common neural mechanism between social conformity and reinforcement learning.
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