Moral Conformity and Cognitive Reflection
https://doi.org/10.25205/2658-4506-2024-17-1-109-124
Abstract
The relevance of studying moral conformity in a virtual environment is due to the specifics of modern life, a significant part of which takes place in virtual reality. Of particular importance is the study of the factors underlying conformity. One of these factors may be the ability to cognitive reflection as a tendency to more rational and precise consideration of a problem or situation. We assumed that higher rates of cognitive reflection would be associated with lower rates of conformity. The study sample consisted of 80 subjects, 47 women and 33 men, aged 18 to 25 (M = 19.5, Sd = 1.69). The following measures were used: Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) (Rodina, Prutkov, 2019), Mehrabian and Stelf conformity scale, vm-conformity scale, a set of 20 dilemmas, including situations of moral conflict in a virtual environment. The results of the study showed that the CRT scores were negatively correlated to the conformity scores. Men in our study demonstrated higher cognitive reflection scores, and women demonstrated higher virtual moral conformity scores. Thus, cognitive reflection may be a factor underlying conformity behavior, including moral conformity. Further research directions may include not only self-report measures of conformity, but also experimental studies.
About the Author
M. V. ZlobinaRussian Federation
Marina V. Zlobina, PhD,Senior Lecturer of the Section of Personality Psychology at the V. Zelman Department of the Medicine and Psychology, Researcher of the Laboratory of Moral Behavior
RSCI Author ID 959328
Novosibirsk
References
1. Baldi P. L., Iannello P., Riva S., Antoniettia I. (2013). Cognitive reflection and socially biased decisions. Studia Psychologica. 55(4), 265–271. https://doi.org/10.21909/sp.2013.04.641
2. Bocian, K., Gonidis, L., & Everett, J. A. C. (2024). Moral conformity in a digital world: Human and nonhuman agents as a source of social pressure for judgments of moral character. PLOS ONE, 19(2), e0298293. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298293
3. Bostyn, D. H., & Roets, A. (2017). An Asymmetric Moral Conformity Effect: Subjects Conform to Deontological But Not Consequentialist Majorities. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(3), 323–330. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550616671999
4. DeYoung, C. G., Peterson, J. B., & Higgins, D. M. (2002). Higher-order factors of the Big Five predict conformity: Are there neuroses of health? Personality and Individual Differences, 33(4), 533–552. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191- 8869(01)00171-4
5. Evans, J. St. B. T. (2008). Dual-Processing Accounts of Reasoning, Judgment, and Social Cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59(1), 255–278. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.59.103006.093629
6. Fedorov A. A. (2024). Eksperimental’nyi analiz moral’noi konformnosti v situatsii passivnogo sotsial’nogo davleniya [An Experimental Analysis of Moral Conformity in a Situation of Passive Social Pressure] / Psikhologiya. Zhurnal Vysshei shkoly ekonomiki (Psychology. Journal of Higher School of Economics), 21(2), 277–305. https://doi.org/10.17323/1813-8918-2024-2-277-305.
7. Fedorov A. A. (2024). Shkala moral’noi konformnosti v virtual’nom prostranstve: razrabotka i validizatsiia [Scale of Moral Conformity in a Virtual Environment: Development and Validation]. In Anan’evskie chteniia – 2024. Materialy mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii, posviashchennoi 80-letiiu obshchei psikhologii v Sankt-Peterburgskom gosudarstvennom universitete (p. 563). Nizhnii Novgorod.
8. Fedorov A. A., Rakhmanov A. Sh. (2024). Moral’naya konformnost’ pri raznykh formakh virtual’nogo davleniya [Moral Conformity under Different Forms of Virtual Pressure / Eksperimental’naya psikhologiya (Experimental Psychology), 17(1), 118–130 https://doi.org/10.17759/exppsy.2024170108
9. Franzen A., & Mader S. (2023). The power of social influence: A replication and extension of the Asch experiment. PLOS ONE, 18(11), e0294325. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0294325
10. Frederick S. (2005). Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(4), 25–42. https://doi.org/10.1257/089533005775196732
11. Kahneman D, Frederick S. 2002. Representativeness revisited: attribute substitution in intuitive judgement. In Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, ed. T Gilovich, D Griffin, D Kahneman, 49–81. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press
12. Kelly M., Ngo L., Chituc V., Huettel S., & Sinnott-Armstrong W. (2017). Moral conformity in online interactions: Rational justifications increase influence of peer opinions on moral judgments. Social Influence, 12(2–3), 57–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/15534510.2017.1323007
13. Keshmirian A., Deroy O., & Bahrami B. (2022). Many heads are more utilitarian than one. Cognition, 220, 104965. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104965
14. Kundu P., & Cummins D. D. (2013). Morality and conformity: The Asch paradigm applied to moral decisions. Social Influence, 8(4), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.1080/15534510.2012.727767
15. Lisciandra C., Postma-Nilsenová M., & Colombo M. (2013). Conformorality. A Study on Group Conditioning of Normative Judgment. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 4(4), 751–764. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-013-0161-4
16. Lowry P. B., Roberts T. L., Romano N. C., Cheney P. D., & Hightower R. T. (2006). The Impact of Group Size and Social Presence on Small-Group Communication: Does Computer-Mediated Communication Make a Difference? Small Group Research, 37(6), 631–661. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496406294322
17. Marton-Alper I. Z., Sobeh A., & Shamay-Tsoory S. G. (2022). The effects of individual moral inclinations on group moral conformity. Current Research in Behavioral Sciences, 3, 100078. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crbeha.2022.100078
18. Oechssler J., Roider A., & Schmitz P. W. (2009). Cognitive abilities and behavioral biases. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 72(1), 147–152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2009.04.018
19. Pennycook G., Cheyne J. A., Seli P., Koehler D. J., & Fugelsang J. A. (2012). Analytic cognitive style predicts religious and paranormal belief. Cognition, 123(3), 335–346. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2012.03.003
20. Pennycook G., Ross R. M., Koehler D. J., & Fugelsang J. A. (2016). Atheists and Agnostics Are More Reflective than Religious Believers: Four Empirical Studies and a Meta-Analysis. PLOS ONE, 11(4), e0153039. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0153039
21. Rodina O. N., Prudkov P. N. (2019) Aprobatsiya russkoyazychnykh versii testa kognitivnoi refleksii [Testing of a russian-language version of a test on cognitive reflection] / Voprosy psikhologii. 4, 155–162
22. Rosander M., & Eriksson O. (2012). Conformity on the Internet – The role of task difficulty and gender differences. Computers in Human Behavior, 28(5), 1587–1595. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.03.023
23. Stagnaro M. N., Ross R. M., Pennycook G., & Rand D. G. (2019). Cross-cultural support for a link between analytic thinking and disbelief in God: Evidence from India and the United Kingdom. Judgment and Decision Making, 14(2), 179–186. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1930297500003417
24. Toplak M. E., West R. F., & Stanovich K. E. (2011). The Cognitive Reflection Test as a predictor of performance on heuristics-and-biases tasks. Memory & Cognition, 39(7), 1275–1289. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-011-0104-1
25. Wijenayake S., Van Berkel N., Kostakos V., & Goncalves J. (2020). Impact of contextual and personal determinants on online social conformity. Computers in Human Behavior, 108, 106302. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106302
26. Yelbuz B. E., Madan E., & Alper S. (2022). Reflective thinking predicts lower conspiracy beliefs: A meta-analysis. Judgment and Decision Making, 17(4), 720– 744. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1930297500008913
27. Zlobina M. V. (2023) Otsenka psikhometricheskikh kharakteristik shkaly konformnosti A. Megrabyana i K. A. Stelf [Psychometric properties of the Conformity Scale (A. Mehrabian and C. Stelf)] / Reflexio. 2023. T. 16. № 2. In Press (in Russ)
28. Zlobina M. V., & Fedorov A. A. (2023). Moral Conformity through the Lens of Bibliometric and Content Analysis. RUDN Journal of Psychology and Pedagogics. 20(4), 713–729.
Review
For citations:
Zlobina M.V. Moral Conformity and Cognitive Reflection. Reflexio. 2024;17(1):109-124. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.25205/2658-4506-2024-17-1-109-124






















