Neurophysiological correlates of interpersonal discrepancy and social adjustment in an interactive decision-making task in dyads

Unai Vicente; Alberto Ara; María Palacín-Lois; Josep Marco-Pallarés

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1272841

Neurophysiological correlates of interpersonal discrepancy and social adjustment in an interactive decision-making task in dyads

Front Psychol. 2024 Feb 14:15:1272841. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1272841. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Unai Vicente^{1

2

3}, Alberto Ara^{4

5}, María Palacín-Lois², Josep Marco-Pallarés^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology, Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
² Department of Social and Quantitative Psychology, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
³ Cognition and Brain Plasticity Unit, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute, Barcelona, Spain.
⁴ Cognitive Neuroscience Unit, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
⁵ BRAMS: International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound Research, Montreal, QC, Canada.

Abstract

Introduction: The pursuit of convergence and the social behavioral adjustment of conformity are fundamental cooperative behaviors that help people adjust their mental frameworks to reach a common goal. However, while social psychology has extensively studied conformity by its influence context, there is still plenty to investigate about the neural cognitive mechanisms involved in this behavior.

Methods: We proposed a paradigm with two phases, a pre-activation phase to enhance cooperative tendencies and, later, a social decision-making phase in which dyads had to make a perceptual estimation in three consecutive trials and could converge in their decisions without an explicit request or reward to do so. In Study 1, 80 participants were divided in two conditions. In one condition participants did the pre-activation phase alone, while in the other condition the two participants did it with their partners and could interact freely. In Study 2, we registered the electroencephalographical (EEG) activity of 36 participants in the social decision-making phase.

Results: Study 1 showed behavioral evidence of higher spontaneous convergence in participants who interacted in the pre-activation phase. Event related Potentials (ERP) recorded in Study 2 revealed signal differences in response divergence in different time intervals. Time-frequency analysis showed theta, alpha, and beta evidence related to cognitive control, attention, and reward processing associated with social convergence.

Discussion: Current results support the spontaneous convergence of behavior in dyads, with increased behavioral adjustment in those participants who have previously cooperated. In addition, neurophysiological components were associated with discrepancy levels between participants, and supported the validity of the experimental paradigm to study spontaneous social behavioral adaptation in experimental settings.

Keywords: EEG; ERPs; adjustment; dyadic decision-making; social cognition.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The present project has been funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (PGC2018-098032-B-I00 and PID2021-126477NB-I00 to JM-P) and the Government of Catalonia (2021 SGR 00352). ICREA partially supports JM-P under the ICREA Academia program.