Conformity behavior in group decisions with mixed groups of human and computational agents

Idea

Conformity is a concept from social psychology and was coined by Asch. It refers to the phenomenon that individuals tend to forgo their personal strategy (e.g., opinion, preference) and adopt the conflicting majority opinion, preference, strategy, etc. Only a few studies have investigated people’s conformity behavior in mixed groups of human and nonhuman agents. Early research suggests different levels of conformity depending on the specific group composition and the task type. The goal of this project is to investigate this phenomenon in more detail.

Relevant references:

• Christine Bauer & Bruce Ferwerda (2020). Conformity behavior in group playlist creation. Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ‘20), LBW 114, Honolulu, HI, USA, 25-30 April. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.3382942
• Bruce Ferwerda & Christine Bauer (2022). To flip or not to flip: conformity effect across cultures. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI EA ‘22). New Orleans, LA, USA, 29 April - 5 May, Art no. 370, pp 1-7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3519662
• Nicholas Hertz, Tyler Shaw, Ewart J. de Visser, & Eva Wiese (2019). Mixing It Up: How Mixed Groups of Humans and Machines Modulate Conformity. Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making 13, 4 (Aug. 2019), 242–257. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1555343419869465
• Senuri Wijenayake, Danula Hettiachchi, Simo Hosio, Vassilis Kostakos, & Jorge Goncalves (2021). Effect of Conformity on Perceived Trustworthiness of News in Social Media. IEEE Internet Computing 25, 1 (Jan. 2021), 12–19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/mic.2020.3032410