When Others Agree More Closely: Judgment Similarity Influences Conformity

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Behavioral Economics

Background:

• Prior research on conformity often uses discrete choices, defining consensus by majority size.
• Real-world judgments vary continuously, making similarity a potential consensus cue.
• The role of judgment similarity in continuous estimation tasks remains underexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if similarity in others' judgments influences conformity.
• To explore how perceived source (human vs. computer) affects this similarity-dependent conformity.
• To model the cognitive mechanisms underlying conformity to social information.

Main Methods:

• Two perceptual estimation experiments involving target location estimation.
• Participants revised estimates after viewing two partners' responses.
• Computational modeling using a Bayesian belief-updating framework.

Main Results:

• Participants showed greater conformity when partners' estimates were highly similar (Experiment 1).
• Computational models indicated similarity increased the weight of social information.
• The similarity effect was reduced when responses were attributed to computers, not humans (Experiment 2).

Conclusions:

• Conformity in continuous judgment is influenced by the similarity of social information.
• Individuals assess both the content and source of social evidence.
• Judgment similarity acts as a cue for integrating social information, modulated by source attribution.