Distinct neurocomputational mechanisms support informational and normative conformity

A change of mind in response to social influence could be driven by informational conformity to increase accuracy, or by normative conformity to comply with social norms such as reciprocity. Disentangling the behavioural, cognitive and neurobiological underpinnings of informational and normative conformity have proven elusive. Here, participants underwent fMRI while performing a perceptual task that involved both advice-taking and advice-giving to human and computer partners. The concurrent inclusion of two different social roles and two different social partners revealed distinct behavioural and neural markers for informational and normative conformity. dACC BOLD response tracked informational conformity towards both human and computer but tracked normative conformity only when interacting with human. A network of brain areas (dmPFC and TPJ) that tracked normative conformity increased their functional coupling with the dACC when interacting with humans. These findings enable differentiating the neural mechanisms by which different types of conformity shape social changes of mind.