People are conformists by nature | Vasily Klucharev | TEDxSadovoeRing

Vasily Klucharev talks about what is going on in the brains of those opposing the opinion of the majority. How does it feel to go against the mob? What drives gregariousness?

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

(Applause)

I would like to start our talk,

our discussion,

with the film based
on Alberto Moravia's novel

“Il conformista” 1951 / “Conformist”.

Bernardo Bertolucci created
a wonderful, touching,

interesting story of the conflict,
personal conflict

between the main character
Marcello Clerici and the state.

As a result of this conflict,
the main character

lost his loved one.

Many of us in this room

are ready to confront the state,
the opinion of others or the crowd.

Actually, in our laboratory,
we are trying

to understand why we are strongly
inclined to be conformists,

how much we can understand the hidden
the cerebral mechanisms of conformism.

While preparing our talk,

I tried to find out where
my interest in this subject stemmed from.

I remembered a few interesting facts.

I have made my dissertation

under the supervision
of Natalia Behtereva --

granddaughter of the great Russian
physiologist and psychiatrist

Vladimir Bekhterev.

Vladimir Bekhterev’s interest
was in social influence.

If you look at this book

“Suggestion and its role
in public life”,

you will find a number
of very interesting chapters.

For example, the chapter
on clonic effects,

epidemics of witchcraft and demonomania.

Incredibly interesting stories

about how epidemics
of religious ecstasies and convulsions

spread with incredible speed
in groups of people.

Actually, Behterev’s curiosity,

went on to his granddaughter,
and then to me as her student.

At that time I was studying brain

and we absolutely did not
understand how we can study

“Neurobiology of social influence”.

Many of you are familiar

with the excellent research
in social psychology.

As a post-graduate student,
I became increasingly interested

in social psychology.

With excitement, I read books
by social psychologists,

the books of Cialdini, Zimbardo, Arnsen.

I read all these
fantastic experiments which show

how people are influencing us.

I read and, frankly, realized that

as a neuroscientist,
I will never learn it, never...

Many of you might remember
wonderful experiments of Solomon Asch.

He asked his subjects
to do a very simple task.

They saw on a screen

three lines
“А”, “В” and “С”.

And the question was very simple:

which of these lines
has the same length as line “X”?

The answer is obvious:

line “B” is equal to line “X”.

But imagine for a minute
that in a room,

there are 6 decoy subjects besides you

and all of them are giving a wrong answer.

Solomon Asch showed
that in this situation,

less than a third of people
give the correct answer,

the rest will show conformism,

they'll give the wrong answer,
just not to be different from others.

Social psychology through hundreds
of great experiments showed

the power of the people around you,
the power of the crowd.

We are afraid to be different,

we change our opinion
to follow the crowd.

For example,
social psychology revealed that

it is the behavior of others,
not our own opinion,

that determines the amount
of adultery, crime,

amount of dishonest taxpayers.

Social influence and the behavior
of others determine our behavior.

But I was a neurophysiologist,
I knew that

I would never explore
all these interesting processes.

In my academic career,
along my academic path,

the change happened very unexpectedly.

I understood that I would have
no chance to study

all the processes of social influence,

when we realize with horror

how our opinion differs from
the opinion of the majority.

But one day,

when I was
on an internship in Helsinki,

in a university, I parked my car

near this building.

The building was created

by a magnificent Scandinavian architect

Alvar Aalto.

I stopped my car
and leaned towards the radio receiver.

Somebody was talking
about a new science,

about neuroeconomics.

The new discipline appeared
at that very moment

as economists and neuroscientists
discovered each other.

It turned out that
for hundreds of years,

economists and neuroscientists
had been studying the same thing.

They studied decision-making process.

The economists were interested
in exploring complex solutions:

why we pay this amount of money
for these goods and not a different one,

why we invest money
or do not invest money,

why we save money

for pensions, or not.

Biologists were interested
in simpler questions:

why we pursue the fat rabbit,
or not

or why we run away from a scary lion,
or not.

In fact, for hundreds of years
the two disciplines had been studying

the same thing, the same question:

how do we make decisions?

And here the new discipline appeared:
neuroeconomics.

This discipline tries to find out

how our brain
is programming our decisions

in various complex
economic and social contexts.

For me it was a turning point!

We were able to formalize the hypothesis,

the hypothesis of brain mechanisms
of conformism.

For us, conformism --
or social influence --

is a phenomenon of people nearby

manipulating our brain,

manipulating the activity
of certain brain areas

involved in the decision-making process.

Which areas of the brain
and which processes

are exploited by people around us,

forcing us to change our opinion?

To answer this question,

we can put our subjects in the scanner,

try to influence their opinion

and register that activity of the brain,

which is connected
to social influence.

But we need a hypothesis.

In fact, we are interested

in the following situation.

This is a famous German photo,

you see a man with crossed hands

amidst the crowd giving the Nazi salute.

Probably this person

has a different opinion.

What is going on
in this man's head?

We hypothesized

that our biology, our evolution

designed the brain in such a way

that the brain at this point tells him:

“You're wrong!

You should not be different
from others!”

Indeed, it is dangerous
to differ from the people around.

Let’s imagine
an FC “Spartak” Moscow t-shirt

at the fan sector of Petrovsky stadium
[home stadium of a rival team]

in St. Petersburg.

It can be very dangerous
to differ from others!

Therefore we hypothesized

that the brain signals us danger:

“You are different, it is dangerous,

change your opinion
to agree with the majority!”

How to identify
this signal of danger?

Here we can refer

to a formal representation
of this mechanism,

formulated by a remarkable neuroeconomist,
mathematician Read Montague.

He expressed this hypothesis
quite abstractly.

Imagine that the brain
perceives the behavior of others --

this is a green line,
green curve,

this is how our brain
perceives the norm.

The red line indicates

how our brain perceives
our own behavior.

This is an abstract curve.

The difference between them
is a mathematical error.

This mathematical error

forces us to change our opinion

to agree with the opinions
of people nearby.

Many will say: “What a strange

simplified mechanism,

which is not clear enough.”

Why do they say that
about this mathematical error?

It is because we then translate

the whole problem of social influence

into the language of neuroeconomics.

For neuroeconomics, for biology,

error is the key point.

For neurobiology

error -- or the awareness of error --

is the moment when we change.

If we do not realize it,

and make a mistake,
we learn almost nothing,

we stick to the same opinion,
the same behavior.

If we are wrong and notice the mistake,

we change, we learn.

Therefore, we hypothesized
that at the moment

when our opinion differs
from the opinion of others,

our brain screams: “You're wrong!”

The brain signals us an error

and this signal forces us

to automatically change our opinion
to agree with the opinion of others.

How to find this error signal
in a human brain?

A huge body of neurobiological research

shows that there is

a distributed network in our brain

which monitors our mistakes.

It warns us about our mistakes and,

first of all,
it is the cingulate cortex,

marked here by a yellow circle.

If you mentally cut our brain
like apple, between the hemispheres,

then the cingulate cortex
will be located

on the inner surface
of the cerebral hemispheres.

This area signals us our mistakes,

this area triggers internal changes.

Therefore, if our hypothesis is correct,

if for our brain

differing from others is an error,

we should detect this activity,

when our opinion
differs from the opinion of others.

We thought a lot about
how to explore conformism,

how to trigger conformism many times,
and at the same time

not stress our subjects too much.

At that time, I was working
in the Netherlands.

My professor, Hyenas Fernandez
suggested:

“Let’s study conformism

as a change of opinion
about the attractiveness of faces.”

I like this

digital masterpiece,

you see beautiful faces
of different races

and carefully crafted
transient versions.

All these people are beautiful.

Indeed, there is something
universal in beauty

and psychology says
that beauty is universal.

But at the same time
there is something special

in the faces of people
of different cultures,

that we do not fully understand.

These faces are beautiful
for a given culture,

but we cannot grasp this beauty.

We decided to study how our opinion

changes

under the influence
of the opinion of others.

We created a very simple test.

We put our subjects into a scanner
and asked them

to assess the attractiveness
of people's faces.

They saw a face on the screen

and had to assess it

from not attractive -- 1,

to very attractive -- 8

The subject evaluates the face,

see their assessment on the screen,

but every time they did so,

every time they assessed the face,

we presented them the opinion

of more than one hundred students
from the same university.

Sometimes this opinion differed
from the subject's opinion,

sometimes it matched.

We were interested in
what is happening at the moment,

when our opinion differs

from the opinion of others.

Whether the cingulate cortex activates,

whether it tells us about the error...

Our research has shown that indeed,

you see it in yellow,
the cingulate cortex activates,

as soon as our opinion differs
from the opinion of others.

For our brain, the difference

from others in our behavior,
in our opinion --

is an error!

How quickly does the brain
tell us about this error?

To investigate this,

we used a different method --

magnetic encephalography.

With this method,
we can surround your head

with lots of hypersensitive sensors

which are able to catch a small signal

produced by the cingulate cortex.

And by using this method,

we saw this peak of activity
240 milliseconds later,

a quarter of a second later

our brain tells us:
“You differ from others!

Change your opinion!”

If such a signal
really exists in the brain,

can we suppress it by modern methods?

Yes, we can!

We can use
transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Using a focused magnetic field,

we can temporarily suppress,

reduce the activity
of the cingulate cortex,

which tells us about this error.

We can expose our subject

to a transcranial magnetic stimulation.

For 20-30 minutes, their cingulate cortex

will produce much fewer signals.

We did this with our subjects,

asked them to do the same task.

The results show that our subjects

change their opinion only half as much

after their cingulate cortex

was temporarily blocked

with magnetic field.

That is, the brain
automatically informs us:

“We differ from others.”

This signal appears
in a quarter of a second.

Modern methods allow us

to suppress this signal

and make people less conformists.

My colleagues in various laboratories

studied how the cingulate cortex responds

to the opinion of the group of people
that we love,

and to the opinion of the group
that we hate,

how it reacts when our opinion differs
from the opinion of experts.

My colleagues in Denmark

used chemical substances

that change a certain amount

of neurotransmitters
in the cingulate cortex

and temporarily made people
more conformists.

That is, we are increasingly aware

of what happens
in the brain of a conformist.

We all seem to be prone

to automatically change our opinion

to agree with the opinion of others.

All this research has shown
that for our brain,

our difference from others is an error

and it showed that the brain tends

to automatically change our opinion
to agree with the opinion of others.

Why did we become such conformists?

Why are we inclined to conformism?

We can cite here
a few theories.

One theory -- “wisdom of the crowds” --
says that the crowd

is a more accurate device
to evaluate the reality.

There are many opinions in the crowd.

It leads to the crowd more accurately

assessing the situation,
evaluating information,

so you should follow the crowd.

Another theory is --
evolutionary theory --

tells us about evolutionarily stable
strategies of behavior.

It says that for millions of years

evolution has been testing us.

All wrong decisions,
suboptimal solutions,

are immediately punished
by natural selection.

We become somebody's food,
we do not leave posterity,

we die from hunger.

Therefore, if a group, a flock,

learns the same behavior,
the same opinion...

It can happen only

if this opinion, this behavior,
is better than the alternative.

Because the alternative was punished
for millions of years.

From the point of view of evolution,
we must follow the flock.

Their opinion is checked
by natural selection.

But we are living
in a rapidly changing world,

where the opinion of the majority

may slow down progress, for example.

The majority can suppress
the creative minority opinion,

it can suppress changes.

Therefore we have to remember

about this internal
tendency to conformism,

we tend to change our opinion
to agree with the opinion of others.

We should remember this when we see
the number of likes on the Internet,

when we read surveys,

when we listen to TED talks.

If we go back to the main question
of our conversation:

what was going on
in the head of Marcello Clerici

during his conflict with the state?

Probably his brain signaled him

about, possibly,
the most important mistake:

his opinion differs
from the opinion of the state,

his opinion differs
from the opinion of others.

And we should remember that.

Perhaps not everyone in this room
will be able to overcome...

Because when we go

against the state, against others,
against the opinion of the crowd,

we go, in some sense,
against our own brain.

Perhaps at this point,
I should conclude my presentation.

And finally,
I want to thank all my colleagues,

who helped me carry out

all these quite difficult experiments

and you for your patience and attention.

Thank You!
(Applause)