Even if you realize that you are being manipulated, you unknowingly obey

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Neurobiologist Vasily Klyucharev, head of the Department of Psychology at the Higher School of Economics, conducted an experiment showing the effect of neurotransmitters on a person's ability to agree with the majority. The scientist told T&P about the evolutionary meaning of conformity, the issue of mindfulness, and how antidepressants can make us more obedient.

- What is the purpose of your research?

- I am engaged in neuroeconomics - I study the influence of processes occurring in the brain on decision-making. And my experiment was about the neurobiology of conformism: what processes in the brain make a person accept the point of view of the group.

We pondered for a long time what situation to put our participants in, especially since we had to repeat the experiment many times in order to record the brain activity. This is the limitation of our methods - we cannot register changes only once, we need to repeat the experiment dozens of times in order to “pull out” signals of brain activity. This means that it is necessary many times in a row to place a person in a situation where his opinion will differ from the opinion of others.

Dopamine (or dopamine) is a neurotransmitter produced in the brains of humans and animals. It serves as an important part of the brain's "reward system" as it induces feelings of pleasure, thereby influencing the processes of motivation and learning. Dopamine is released during positive experiences such as sex, eating tasty foods, pleasurable bodily sensations, and drugs associated with them.

In the end, we decided that we would ask the participants to rate the attractiveness of other people. This is an interesting topic - after all, ideas about beauty evolve and differ from person to person, despite the dominant concept of modern psychology that beauty is biologically determined, that all races have the same innate understanding of its canons. We decided to take advantage of these features of perception - because the attractiveness of other people strongly affects us and this is a good channel for manipulation.

We had a very simple experiment: a participant sees a woman's face, and must determine its attractiveness on a certain scale. In this case, his brain is scanned using an MRI. First, the participant gives his grade, and then he sees the grade allegedly given by the group. And there is a conflict between these two assessments: “I think that the woman is not very beautiful, and the guys think that she is damn beautiful. What to do? We are interested in what is happening in his head at this moment - whether the person will change his mind, will not change, whether it is possible to predict what reactions this will cause in the brain.

- And then you asked the same question again?

- The results showed that if the respondent found out that the group expresses a more positive opinion, after an hour he usually changes his rating to a higher one. If the group believes that the woman is less beautiful than the subject estimates her, he also changes his opinion towards the views of the group. Moreover, we repeated this study a month later - and the "suggested" opinion remained. And if a participant's gaze initially coincided with the group's assessment, his opinion then practically did not change.

- And what processes in the brain caused such a change?

“We saw that when a person realizes that he is different from others, the error recognition center in his brain is activated, and the pleasure center is deactivated. Moreover, the more this happens, the more likely a person will change their mind. This is our basic hypothesis. In addition, we had a special method that made it possible to measure the level of brain activity of the participants even before we started asking them questions, and, as it turned out, according to the indicators of brain activity, it was already possible to predict whether a person would succumb to the influence of the group or not. People who showed themselves to be more conformable during the experiment came with already activated zones in their heads.

“Let's say you came to your favorite cafe and ordered your favorite coffee. If it is as you expected, your brain will not react at all. And if suddenly the coffee is terrible or incredibly tasty, the level of dopamine will jump noticeably."

We also tried to conduct an experiment with magnetic irradiation. For this there is a special device - it is a coil of wires through which current is quickly driven, and as a result, a narrowly directed beam of a magnetic field is obtained, which is sent to the brain. With the help of a certain sequence of impulses, one or another zone can be deactivated - it is enough to irradiate it for 40 seconds, and within an hour the brain will work in a freelance mode. So, when we suppress this area, the frequency of change of opinions in comparison with the control group is reduced by 40%. And we believe that the work of these areas of the brain is associated with dopamine. Dopamine is involved in the learning process, the expectation of reward - this has already been proven in the experiments of other scientists.

- The happiness button?

- Yes, there was such an experiment: a button that is connected to electrodes that directly stimulate the areas of the brain associated with the release of dopamine. The mouse connected to the happiness button stimulates itself endlessly until the device is turned off - it does not eat, drink or sleep.

- But later experiments seem to have confirmed that the creatures connected to the "happiness button" did not experience actual satisfaction - only the obsessive sense of expectation of a reward.

- If you go all the way, to the most modern ideas about dopamine, this neurotransmitter is associated with expectations in general. And our concept is based exactly on this idea. You expect your opinion to be similar to that of the group, and this is a reward for you. But if you suddenly find out that you are different from the rest, dopamine signals you: stop, something went wrong, let's change the strategy. Non-conformism is a disaster for our brain. In general, dopamine encodes any waiting error - both plus and minus. Let's say you came to your favorite cafe and ordered your favorite coffee. If it is as you expected, your brain will not react at all. And if suddenly the coffee is terrible or, conversely, incredibly tasty, the level of dopamine will jump noticeably. In our project, we focused on two areas where dopamine is high. One of them - a kind of error center - signals you when your brain senses that you are doing something wrong. And there is a pleasure center, it beeps when everything is good.

- Did you base your research on the experience of your predecessors?

- We took an example from Asch's classic experiment. It is very simple - the participants are asked to compare several lines and find two identical ones. Actually, the correct answer is obvious. But you are placed in a room where six people in front of you - "decoy ducks" - call completely different lines the same. Of course, this is a shock: the person sees the error perfectly, but three quarters of the subjects at least once agreed with the opinion of the majority and gave the wrong answer.

There is another example - scientists have studied the attitude towards ecology. They found that neither income nor educational level influences this: the only indicator that predicts how responsibly people will be about saving energy is the behavior of their neighbors. But when the people themselves were asked why they were doing this, they gave any reasons other than this one.

Another study was done in Holland. Scientists stuck stickers on bicycles in a parking lot and calculated how often people throw stickers out on the street or take them to the trash can. The experiment was played in two situations. In one, on a clean fence, there was an inscription: "It is forbidden to paint the walls." In the second, the wall has already been painted by the experimenters.

- And thereby people were deliberately provoked to be careless?

- Yes. Accordingly, the result was evident. In the second case, people littered twice as often just because they saw how other people also did not comply with the norm. Or, for example, I have some good photos that I recently took in Venice. There were two restaurants nearby - one was completely packed, and the other was completely empty. I stood and thought: where will I go? It is clear that it is not empty.

- And what is the meaning of this mechanism from the point of view of survival?

- There is such a concept - "the genius of the crowd." English psychologist Francis Galton decided to do a little experiment: he went to a farmers' festival and asked the audience to determine the weight of a bull by eye. And the collective decision of the crowd of farmers turned out to be more correct than the assessment made by the experts. The cumulative opinion of a large number of people turns out to be correct if the set of people is random and they do not have common systematic biases. And from the point of view of evolution, the opinion of the majority is better than the individual opinion. When a species has many individuals, each tries to exercise its own strategy - and any attempt is rewarded or punished by natural selection. So most learn the same strategy only if it's better than others.

- It turns out that non-conformists are an experimental field of evolution?

- Yes, because the old strategies only work in a stable environment. Even if we turn to history, in the same nineties the decisions of the majority did not bring any benefit, because the situation changed dramatically. And, since the generally correct tendency to pay attention to the opinion of the majority does not adapt to changing conditions, a certain variety of opinions is needed by humanity. Someone has to look for new ways.

- Is there a way to biologically influence the production of dopamine? If, say, some Orwellian character wants to raise an obedient generation?

- Yesterday I had a conversation with Pavel Lobkov. And he asked me: since many people are taking antidepressants, and they increase the production of dopamine, does this mean that we are already being made more conformable? This is an interesting idea. Maybe this gives some room for manipulation. You can use this natural mechanism in specific situations: for example, display information in a context that increases dopamine levels. But you can hardly just catch the right person and inject him with a dose of a neurotransmitter, and then force him to make the right decision.

“Scientists have studied people's attitudes towards the environment and have found that neither income nor educational level affects this: the only indicator that predicts how responsible people will be about saving energy is the behavior of their neighbors. But when the people themselves were asked why they were doing this, they gave any reasons other than this one”.

Moreover, any hypothesis should be treated carefully - including ours. While it works, there may still be clarifications and interpretations. In addition, dopamine is involved in many processes in the body, and changes in its level can affect anything - and this is a big risk.

- There is a stereotypical point of view that the more intelligent and educated a person is, the less inclined he is to the “herd instinct”.

- Nobody has yet studied the regularities between IQ level and conformity. But one smart girl came to my research and in the process guessed: "Yeah, you are trying to control my opinion." I excluded her result from the study - but looked at her data and it turned out that she changed her mind no less than others. Neuroeconomics provides strange examples of the dissonance between consciousness and behavior: even if you realize that they are trying to manipulate you, you unconsciously obey.

Moreover, when we believe that we are in complete control of ourselves, we do not realize that the environment makes the decision for us. There was also such a study: the participant was asked to choose one photo out of two, and then the experimenter imperceptibly replaced the selected card with another. And he asked the person to explain the choice. Only 26% of the participants noticed at all that the photo was changed. The rest began to justify a choice that was not actually made by them - “I like these girls,” “she looks like my sister,” and so on.

- Will you separately study people inclined to non-conformism?

- We are thinking about it - to gather conformists and non-conformists into polar groups. In general, I would like to double-check the results of our experiment in real conditions. Otherwise, we still put people in the pipe and ask them strange questions - you must admit, not the most natural situation.

- In your opinion, how do we make decisions - consciously or impulsively?

- To be honest, I'm a skeptic. It seems to me that consciousness is mainly responsible for the harmonious perception of the world - it tries to calm down, looks for convincing motives for our unconscious actions. But many of our "conscious" decisions are an illusion, and no one knows what actually happens.