Individual vs. Group: Why do we change due to influences?

When an individual relates to a group of people, he usually feels that he is part of a group that exceeds him, and this feeling can lead to detach him from his ethical values and to direct his decisions and actions in a direction that he would never have imagined as an independent individual.

That is what many historical events have been able to verify over the centuries.

Individual and group: investigating the influence of the collective on the subject

An investigation carried out by Carnegie Mellon University was recently published, which has delved into this phenomenon of social psychology to try to unravel how is it possible that people with moral values ​​can commit perverse acts when they are protected or legitimized by a group, ignoring their ethical principles.

The researchers compared people's brain function when they were alone and when they were in the company of a group of people.

The study arose from the inspiration that caused one of the main researchers an experience during a soccer game. Her husband went to a soccer game dressed in the cap of one of the teams that played the match, but he had bad luck sitting in a town surrounded by supporters of the opposing team, for which he had to receive countless insults and expletives The researcher, who was accompanying her husband in the field in the next town, thought that if she she put on the cap, followers would moderate her insults (or even stop) out of respect for a woman.

However, that was not what ended up happening. In that instant, the psychologist wondered if there might be some neurological reason for this group behavior.

When enmities go from interindividual to intergroup

Essentially, there are two basic reasons why individuals change their behavior when they are part of (or feel like they are part of) a group. These reasons are:

Basically, there are two fundamental reasons why people behave differently when they are part of a group, these are:

1. Perception of anonymity

2. Perception of less risk of being punished for their misconduct

However, in this investigation the intention was to inquire about the ethical conflict that happens to the individual when he is part of a group, and see to what extent the group could have an inhibiting effect on individual moral principles.

In the experiment, the participants were asked to answer some questions that showed a insight about their ethical principles. In this way, the researchers modeled some individualized statements, such as: “I have stolen food from a common fridge”, or “I always apologize when I bump into someone”.

Next, the subjects were invited to participate in a game in which they had to reflect on some of the aforementioned phrases, and while they played, their brains were observed through scanner. In order to discriminate neurological effects, some participants played alone, while others played as part of a group.

Results

People who played without any company and therefore reflected alone on their moral judgments, showed an increase in brain activity in the region of the brain. medial prefrontal cortex, which is the area where thinking about oneself operates. People completely identified with the phrases that were presented to them, so it was not surprising to find these results.

Less expected was that when the subjects who played in a group reflected on these ethical statements, their response was less intense. This suggests that the level of identification of the sentences was weaker with respect to their own moral beliefs.

the diffusion of the self

The scholars concluded that our judgments about ethics become more flexible when we are part of a community, because we feel that the group has a value that tends to attenuate our personality and beliefs. In the context of belonging to a group, we become anonymous subjects since our priorities and beliefs mutate when we change from the identity of "I" to "we".

Consequently, we tend to reconfigure our beliefs and values ​​to those of the group, which is detectable even at the brain level. This metamorphosis can have a perverse effect, since if we stop recognizing and identifying with certain moral values, we are more likely not to experience rejection or remorse in the face of certain actions or attitudes, and in this way we become benevolent in the face of spurious, violent or wicked.

Bibliographic references:

• Cikara, M. et. Al. (2014) Reduced self-referential neural response during intergroup competition predicts competitor harm. NeuroImage; 96(1): 36-43.