The Role of Oxytocin and Empathy in Social Conformity: Investigating Influencing Factors on Conformity while Controlling for Regression to the Mean

Aligning one’s behavior with others with the goal of fitting in or gaining accurate information, often in contrast to one’s own beliefs, is called social conformity. Social conformity has been a topic of research in the literature, however conditions and factors which influence conformity are still under investigation. This study investigates the hormone Oxytocin and the trait empathic perspective-taking as potential influences on conformity- processes. Oxytocin may enhance conformity-processes based on the literature. A hallmark of the study is that we correct for regression-to-the-mean, to which paradigms measuring participants exactly twice may be vulnerable. As part of a larger project, 80 healthy male participants rated the trustworthiness of faces. After rating each face, participants were displayed an imaginary group-rating of the average European student. After a distraction-task and being administered either Oxytocin or a placebo, they had to re-rate the faces without being...Show moreAligning one’s behavior with others with the goal of fitting in or gaining accurate information, often in contrast to one’s own beliefs, is called social conformity. Social conformity has been a topic of research in the literature, however conditions and factors which influence conformity are still under investigation. This study investigates the hormone Oxytocin and the trait empathic perspective-taking as potential influences on conformity- processes. Oxytocin may enhance conformity-processes based on the literature. A hallmark of the study is that we correct for regression-to-the-mean, to which paradigms measuring participants exactly twice may be vulnerable. As part of a larger project, 80 healthy male participants rated the trustworthiness of faces. After rating each face, participants were displayed an imaginary group-rating of the average European student. After a distraction-task and being administered either Oxytocin or a placebo, they had to re-rate the faces without being displayed the group-rating. Conformity was inferred when participants altered their ratings after being presented with the group-rating. To control for regression-to-the-mean, a control-group of 30 healthy males underwent the same experiment, without being presented with the group-rating or being administered Oxytocin. Results showed a statistically significant effect for group-rating, suggesting that participants altered their rating after seeing the group-rating. No interactions between group-ratings and either Oxytocin or empathic perspective-taking were found. After controlling for regression-to-the-mean, the effect-size of group-rating was substantially reduced, suggesting an influence of regression-to-the-mean on uncontrolled results. Further, the study makes recommendations for future research with regard to investigating conformity-processes in similar paradigms.Show less

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The Role of Oxytocin and Empathy in Social Conformity: Investigating Influencing Factors on Conformity while Controlling for Regression to the Mean