Personal judgments swayed by group
opinion, but only for three days
We
all want to feel like we're free-thinking individuals, but there's nothing like
the power of social pressure to sway an opinion.
New research suggests that
people do change their own personal judgments so that they fall in line with
the group norm, but the change only seems to last about 3 days.
The research is
published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association
for Psychological Science.
"Our
findings suggest that exposure to others' opinions does indeed change our own
private opinions -- but it doesn't change them forever," says
psychological scientist and study author Rongjun Yu of South China Normal
University. "Just like working memory can hold about 7 items and a drug
can be effective for certain amount of time, social influence seems to have a
limited time window for effectiveness."
But
it's unclear whether oft-observed social conformity reflects public compliance,
motivated by a desire to fit in with the group and avoid social rejection, or
private acceptance, which leads to a genuine change in personal opinion that
persists even when social influence is removed.
Yu
and colleagues Yi Huang and Keith Kendrick decided to investigate this question
in the lab. They recruited Chinese college students to participate in a study
exploring how "people perceive facial attractiveness." The students
looked at 280 digital photographs of young adult Chinese women and were asked
to rate the attractiveness of each face on an 8-point scale.
After
rating a face, they saw the purported average of 200 other students' ratings
for that face. Importantly, the group average matched the participant's rating
only 25% of the time. The rest of the time, the group average fell 1, 2, or 3 points
above or below the participant's rating.
The
students were brought back to the lab to rate the faces again after either 1
day, 3 days, 7 days, or 3 months has passed.
The
data showed that the group norm seemed to sway participant's own judgments when
they re-rated the photos 1 and 3 days after the initial session.
There
was, however, no evidence for a social-conformity effect when the intervening
period was longer (either 7 days or 3 months after the first session).
According
to the researchers, the fact that participants' opinions were swayed for up to
3 days suggests more than a superficial lab-based effect -- rather, group norms
seem to have had a genuine, albeit brief, impact on participants' privately
held opinions.
These
studies are notable, says Yu, because they were able to control for
methodological issues that often arise in studies that use a test-retest
format, such as the natural human tendencies to regress to the mean and to
behave consistently over time.
The
one question that Yu and colleagues still don't know the answer to is why the
effect lasts for 3 days. They plan on investigating whether there might be a
neurological reason for the duration of the effect, and whether the effect can
be manipulated to last for shorter or longer durations.
Story Source:
The
above story is based on materials provided by Association for
Psychological Science. Note: Materials may be edited for
content and length.
Journal Reference:
1.
Y. Huang, K. M.
Kendrick, R. Yu. Conformity to the Opinions of Other People Lasts for
No More Than 3 Days. Psychological Science, 2014; DOI:10.1177/0956797614532104
Cite This Page:
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Association for Psychological Science. "Personal judgments
swayed by group opinion, but only for three days." Science
Daily, 23 May 2014.
<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140523145421.htm>.