As of 2019, nearly 20% of American adults say that social media is their primary source for political news (Mitchell, 2020). For the adults between the ages of 18 and 29, those who make up the next prominent generation, this figure increases to 48% (Mitchell, 2020). As such, social media plays, and will continue to play, a significant role in the process of political socialization. Given that the study of conformity has historically been a significant part of social psychological pursuits and that political socialization, as the name suggests, is a social process, it is reasonable to predict a relationship between the two phenomena. Conformity pressures during the political socialization process could lead to a large-scale groupthink. Thus, it is important to determine whether conformity pressures exist on social media. And, if so, do these pressures play a role in political behavior?
It is important to begin with an understanding conformity and its influence on behavior within a group setting. Solomon Asch conducted the seminal study on conformity in 1952. For the study, students were recruited in groups of 8 to 10: only 1 student was a real participant, the rest were confederates. The group was shown a line, the "stimulus line," and 3 other lines labeled A, B and C. They were each asked to determine which one of lines A, B and C matched up with the stimulus line in length. The correct answer was made obvious and the confederates all gave an incorrect answer. Asch found that 75% of participants gave the wrong answer and thus, conformed, "at least once." Fewer than 1% of participants gave the wrong answer in the control group, where there was no pressure from confederates. Thus, Asch concluded that there is a strong pressure to conform to a majority, even if it is wrong (Asch, 1951). Given that Asch only recruited male college students for the study, however, it is difficult to generalize the findings to the larger population. Nevertheless, other subsequent experiments have found evidence of conformity across countries and cultures (Ciccarelli & White, 2017).
Having established conformity within a face-to-face group setting, it is important to establish that the phenomenon extends to social media group settings. There are two steps in doing so: i) establishing that conformity pressures can exist in the absence of face-to-face interaction; and ii) establishing that being liked, the basis for conformity, has the same impact on the brain when perceived in a general social setting and a social media setting.
i) Recent research demonstrates that significant conformity pressures can exist in the absence of a face-to-face interaction. In a study by Cinnirella & Green (2007), participants from individualistic and collectivist cultures were brought together with confederates and assigned to either face-to-face (f-t-f) or computer-mediated communication (CMC) groups. The researchers then replicated Asch's line-length task for both sets of groups. The results revealed that conformity to confederate majority judgements was observed in both f-t-f and CMC groups and that there was no significant difference in the levels of this conformity in both types of groups. A trend observed in f-t-f groups was that individualistic participants were less likely to conform than collectivist ones. Importantly, these cultural differences were absent in CMC groups (Cinnirella & Gree, 2007). This suggests that CMC might exert stronger pressures to conform on a wider variety of cultures than f-t-f. Nevertheless, there is certainly evidence that conformity pressures exist even in the absence of f-t-f interaction and that.
ii) A significant motivation for conformity is rooted in the desire to "be liked and accepted by others" (Ciccarelli & White, 2017). A study concluded that being liked activates the primary reward system. In this study, participants "were led to believe that other participants had formed an opinion on their likability." When they were shown pictures of these other participants, fMRI scanning revealed the activation of the ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens, brain regions associated with the primary reward system (Davey, Allen, Harrison, Dwyer & Yücel, 2010). Another more recent study revealed that the perception of being liked on social media also activates the primary reward system. Participants were given tasks to complete on a platform that mimicked the social media site, Instagram, while being monitored via an fMRI machine. After receiving "likes" from other participants on the platform, like the previous study, activity in the ventral tegmental area and nucleus accumbens was recorded. Importantly, this study also revealed that the reward system continued to be activated by positive responses to risky behaviors, like smoking and drinking (Sherman, Hernandez, Greenfield & Dapretto, 2018). This suggests the possibility of conforming to even undesirable behaviors if they are accepted and approved by others on social media. Nevertheless, both studies work together to suggest that the brain's response to being liked, a driving force for conformity, is very similar to its response to the perception of being liked on social media.
Having established that conformity pressures exist on social media, it is clear that there is a basis to explore the connection between conformity and political activity on social media. The bulk of this activity revolves around people sharing their political opinions. According to a study conducted by Dennison, Qaisar, Sapper, Selvaggi & Tobala, (2023), social media users are inclined to conform to avoid negative feedback and also limit their self-expression. The researchers inferred that participants created "curated" online identities. In other words, in order to manage impressions, they suppressed their dissenting opinions in favor of portraying what they assumed others would view as an idealized identity, even within "trusted circles." Only 22% of participants were willing to share opinions that challenged the majority. This number dropped further when the subject was "controversial" (e.g. LGBTQ+ rights). Drawing from dramaturgical theory, the researchers suggested that participants might be showing the world a "front stage" personality and hiding their genuine "backstage" selves. In spite of these results, 66% of participants indicated a desire to be authentic. They appeared to be held back by the desire to not be labelled an outsider: 81% of participants reported an emotional response to this label. The sensitivity to this label was higher for participants who reported excessive internet use. Another important finding from the study was that most participants preferred to stay neutral in discussions. They avoided the labels of "leader" and "follower," owing to the negative connotations they perceived to be associated with these terms (Dennison, et al., 2023). The sample size for this study was small and relatively homogenous, so it's difficult to generalize the results. However, they certainly shed light on a potentially general discrepancy between the authentic and idealized sense of self on social media, as a result of the pressure to conform.
The above phenomenon can have a multitude of more specific effects. One such effect, as demonstrated by Coliander (2019), is that social media users are more likely to react positively to and share posts containing fake news if other users have reacted positively to these posts. Coliander presented a randomized sample of participants with the same post containing a real fake news story. The independent variable was the comments section--there were five variations across two experiments.The first variation (I) was a control, with no comments, the second (II) had positive comments, the third (III) had comments identifying the post as fake, the fourth (IV) had the same identifying comments along with negative comments about the source and the fifth (V) had a disclaimer from the platform that the post was fake along with positive comments. Overall, Coliander concluded that participants' attitudes towards the fake news were almost entirely dependent on others' reactions. When the post was accompanied with positive comments, despite the disclaimer in variation V, participants were more likely to approve of and share the fake news. Importantly participants were only more likely to call out the post for containing fake news in variation IV, where comments criticized the source of the post. Thus, Coliander concluded that the pressure to conform to majority opinions exists even in cases of fake news. Social media users tend to conform to the majority opinion (Coliander, 2019).
Another specific impact of the phenomenon described in the political opinions study is that a pressure to conform can encourage real-life political behavior. Bond, Fariss, Jones, Kramer, Marlow, Settle & Fowler (2012) found that online political mobilization, by creating conformity pressures, can influence actual voting behavior. During a previous election, participants were presented with either i) an informational message about voting; ii) no message at all; or iii) a message encouraging them to vote along with a link to an "I Voted" button which also displayed how many people had voted and which of their friends had voted. Researchers found that the social message in iii) influenced not only recipients, but also their friends and acquaintances to vote. In contrast, scenarios i) and ii) had a much less significant impact. Researchers estimated that the pressure to conform created by the social message convinced about 340,000 participants to vote. An important finding was that, the closer a participant was to the person they received a social message from, the more likely they were to vote (Bond, et al., 2012). This speaks to the possibility that the pressure to conform increases within groups that share strong relationships. Nevertheless, as this study demonstrates, a pressure to conform on social media can facilitate political activity in the real world.
Given that political socialization is the issue of interest in this literature review, it would be fitting to investigate the ability of the aforementioned effects to facilitate opinion change. In other words, once again referring to dramaturgical theory, to what extent can the aforementioned effects bring about the replacement of "backstage" personalities by "front stage" ones? Unfortunately, given the fact that political discussion on social media is fairly new and that its nature is rapidly evolving, there isn't much research into the potential for social media have this effect. There is, however, evidence that pressures to conform can facilitate opinion change in a face-to-face setting. Newcomb (1943) conducted a study which revealed that initially conservative students became more liberal during their time at Bennington College. Newcomb's reflections reveal that he attributed this change to the prestige and recognition associated with a liberal outlook at the College. Follow up studies revealed that 73% of the same students voted for the liberal candidate in elections nearly 50 years after the initial study (Newcomb, 1943). A more recent study by Mallinson & Hatemi (2018) revealed that the social delivery of political information, within face-to-face discussion groups, had a significant impact on opinion change. 33% of participants changed their opinions on a political issue owing to pressure from the other participants. The researchers also suggested that participants with initially conservative opinions were most likely to change their opinions (Mallinson & Hatemi, 2018). The findings of these studies indicate the potential for a similar phenomenon to be observed, over time, as a result of political interactions on social media.
To answer the questions posed in the introduction to this literature review, conformity pressures certainly exist on social media. Moreover, in prompting users to present an idealized self rather than their genuine selves, these pressures do play a role in political behavior on social media. For example, conformity pressures dictate users' responses to fake news and, conformity pressures can mobilize voters during elections. These findings demonstrate the potential value of future long-term studies of conformity on social media and its impact on political socialization. Such studies will likely provide important insights that could inform policy decisions as to the acceptable role of social media in political discussion, education and activities.
References:
Mitchell, A. (2020). Americans who mainly get their news on social media are less engaged, less knowledgeable.
Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2020/07/30/americans-who-mainly-get-their-news-on-social-media-are-less-engaged-less knowledgeable/#:~:text=The%20rise%20of%20social%20media,adults%20%20get%20their%20political%20news.
Ciccarelli, S. K. & White, J. N. (2017). Psychology, 5.
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Davey, C. G., Allen, N. B., Harrison, B. J., Dwyer, D. B., & Yücel, M. (2010). Being liked activates primary reward and midline self-related brain regions. Human brain mapping, 31(4), 660–668.
Sherman, L. E., Hernandez, L. M., Greenfield, P. M., & Dapretto, M. (2018). What the brain 'Likes': neural correlates of providing feedback on social media. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 13(7), 699–707.
Dennison, R., Qaisar, Y., Sapper, L., Selvaggi, M., & Tobala, S. (2023). “Am I a Leader or a Follower?”: Examining Social Media Use Through the Lens of Social Conformity and Individuality. McMaster Undergraduate Journal of Social Psychology, 4(1), 12-53.
Coliander, J. (2019). “This is fake news”: Investigating the role of conformity to other users’ views when commenting on and spreading disinformation in social media. Computers in Human Behavior, 97, 202-215.
Bond, R. M., Fariss, C. J., Jones, J. J., Kramer, A. D. I., Marlow, C., Settle, J. E., & Fowler, J. H. (2012). A
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Newcomb, T. M. (1943). Personality and social change; attitude formation in a student community. Dryden Press.
Mallinson, D. J., & Hatemi, P. K. (2018). The effects of information and social conformity on opinion change. PloS one, 13(5), e0196600.
