Social norms shape visual appearance: Taking a closer look at the link between social norm learning and perceptual decision-making

Markus Germar; Vinzenz H Duderstadt; Andreas Mojzisch

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105611

Social norms shape visual appearance: Taking a closer look at the link between social norm learning and perceptual decision-making

Cognition. 2023 Dec:241:105611. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105611. Epub 2023 Sep 6.

Authors

Markus Germar¹, Vinzenz H Duderstadt², Andreas Mojzisch³

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Psychology, University of Hildesheim, Universitätsplatz 1, 31141 Hildesheim, Germany. Electronic address: germar@uni-hildesheim.de.
² Georg-Elias-Müller Institute for Psychology, University of Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany.
³ Institute of Psychology, University of Hildesheim, Universitätsplatz 1, 31141 Hildesheim, Germany.

PMID: 37678084
DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105611

Abstract

One of the most fundamental questions in social psychology is whether norms can change individuals' minds by shaping the visual appearance of stimuli. This question was first raised by Muzafer Sherif (1935). Drawing on the extended social reinforcement account (Germar and Mojzisch, 2019), we aimed to provide a rigorous test of the hypothesis that norm learning leads to a persistent perceptual bias and, hence, to a change in the visual appearance of stimuli. From a methodological perspective, we used both a diffusion model approach and the method of adjustment, a well-established technique from psychophysics and vision research. The results of Experiments 1-3 show that norm effects on perceptual decision-making are robustly replicable, and are due to genuine social influence, that is, they cannot be explained by non-social priming, contingency learning effects (Experiments 1 and 2) or anchoring effects (Experiment 3). Most importantly, by using a psychophysical approach, Experiment 4 shows, for the first time, that social norm learning alters individuals' point of subjective equality and, hence, the visual appearance of stimuli.

Keywords: Diffusion model; Point of subjective equality; Social influence; Social norms; Visual appearance.