A Cross-Cultural EEG Study of How Obedience and Conformity Influence Reconciliation Intentions

Abstract The study investigated the influence of conformity and obedience on intentions to help a child whose relative had caused harm to the participant’s family during historical events of violence. Participants from Belgium, Cambodia, and Rwanda faced different social scenarios with two types of social influence and had to choose whether to respond helpfully. A multi-method and cross-cultural approach combining self-reports, behaviours, decision times (DTs), and electroencephalography (EEG) data was used. Participants explicitly reported being more influenced by authority (obedience) than by a group (conformity), a finding supported by faster DTs when following authority recommendations compared to either a group or an individual alone (compliance). However, behavioural and neural data showed no distinction between obedience and conformity. Behaviourally, authority and group influences exceeded individual influence but did not differ significantly. EEG results revealed higher mid-frontal theta (FMθ) activity for both the authority and the group indicating stronger inhibition of alternative choices compared to individual compliance. These results suggest that the type of measurement impacts the observed influence of authority and conformity, thus posing interesting questions regarding what may influence real behaviours. Variations were observed between countries, highlighting the importance of accounting for cross-cultural differences and avoiding generalization from a single population sample.