That Neuroscience Guy - The Neuroscience of Peer Pressure

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

Often in our lives, we face pressure from our peers to do things we probably shouldn't do. Why do we succumb to that pressure even when we know it's wrong? Today's episode of That Neuroscience Guy discusses the neuroscience behind peer pressure. 

Hi, my name is Olof Kregolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to the podcast. We've all experienced peer pressure, that feeling that we need to conform, we need to do things to be a part of the group. I'm guilty of it myself. But why is that? What's going on in our brains and what is the neuroscience behind peer pressure? Well, as you might imagine, it's a fairly complex story. Probably the first thing to discuss is the notion of social acceptance. The way that

our brains are wired, we want to be seen in a positive manner. We want to be part of a group. Now, there's a small subset of the population that can function fine completely independently from the group as a whole, but most of us want to be a part of a group. And this is wired into us, like in mid-brain structures and at the deepest, deepest levels. An example of this would be that when our peers applaud us, say we do something to conform and so we give in to peer pressure, typically we're rewarded for that. And that reward might just be a pat on the back or a well done. It might just be being able to join the group. Well, when that happens, we experience a positive prediction error.

Things are better than expected. We did something. It might even be something we shouldn't have done. But we got this reward. And that, as you know from our many talks about learning and prediction errors, results in a release of dopamine, that positive feedback you get from the group. And what does that positive feedback do? Well, it actually strengthens those neural pathways, the ones that tell you, well, hey, doing this was a good idea. And that makes us more susceptible or more likely to do that again.

So when peer pressure is applied and we do something, we're actually given a reward and those neural pathways are strengthened. The other part of the social acceptance side of this is we have a positive emotional response. We've talked about the amygdala a lot, and I want to be clear, it's not the only emotional part of the brain. There's also the insular cortex, for instance.

But our emotional system within the brain has a positive emotional response because we're fitting in. Typically, when we give into peer pressure, that brings us further into the group, and there is our emotional system responding to being a part into the group. And there is our emotional system responding to being a part of a group. It's better to be a part of a bad group, for instance, than to not be a part of a

group at all. So we've got that positive emotional response combined with these positive prediction errors within the dopamine system. Now, the second piece of the puzzle for understanding peer pressure from a neuroscience perspective is the concept of loneliness. Again, most of us are wired with a desire to not be alone. And we did an episode on loneliness, so I don't want to get into it too much. But again, you have these positive emotional responses when you're not alone. And when you're alone, these positive emotional responses when you're not alone. And when you're alone, there's a lot of negative self-talk. Your emotional system is firing, all right?

You know, your midbrain systems are firing. So when we join a group because we give into peer pressure, we get that another form of positive emotional response, and that's the one tied to not being alone any longer or avoiding loneliness. There's another piece to the puzzle as well. And that is self-image. If you remember, we talked about the notion of self-image. Basically, our left prefrontal cortex constructs a worldview and it's trying to maintain that worldview. And the right prefrontal cortex is basically responsible for updating that worldview as needed. And this is part of how our concept of self-image is brought about. The left prefrontal cortex basically

saying this is the way the world works and this is where I fit into the world. Well, if you succumb to peer pressure and you join a group, all right, you conform to the group. Well, the third piece that you have going on is this self-image changes. You see yourself as a part of a group, which is a better thing than not being a part of a group. So then that right prefrontal system updates your worldview where, hey, you're now part of this group. And even if you had to do something that you didn't want to do, that's the peer pressure. You know, I really don't want to do this. But it becomes okay because you've got those responses I talked about. You've also got the right prefrontal cortex updating your worldview

where now this is okay. So the three key pieces to the peer pressure story are social acceptance, and that's where we get these positive prediction errors from the dopamine system because we get feedback when we join the group. We also have that positive emotional response. There's the loneliness piece where most of us are hardwired to not be alone. And again, when we join a group or we give into peer pressure, well, that emotional response from the amygdala and the insular cortex is reinforcing that as well. And then there's last piece is this

self-image piece where our left frontal cortex has a worldview where we're you know we don't fit in or we're not a part of something and then you do something and the right prefrontal cortex basically updates your worldview and now the new norm is you're part of something which again fits in with the first two points of social acceptance and loneliness. For the parents out there, even the teenagers, what's interesting is that recent research has actually shown that adolescents, so people in their teen years, actually have a neurobiological susceptibility to peer influence. All right. So people in that age range are more likely to do this. All right. Now this is a pretty complex story. It involves hormones. It involves neurotransmitter. It involves all of the parts

of the brain that we've talked about so far when talking about peer pressure. But what's interesting is that for adolescents, not all of them, but for most adolescents, they have this natural predisposition to succumb to peer pressure. And they do. All right. That becomes the, you know, something that's socially acceptable. So when a teenager does something really dumb, um, and I'm thinking about this right now, because my own son, uh, recently did something that wasn't so smart. But the reason he succumbed to peer pressure and the reason that other people succumb to peer pressure when they're in their teenage years is they're actually wired in a way where they're more likely to do so. Okay, a little bit shorter than usual, but that is the neuroscience of peer pressure. It's a really

important topic, so I wanted to say something about it. So I did a bit of research and a bit of reading. Just remember, social acceptance, positive prediction errors, that's a dopamine system, positive emotional response. There's the loneliness angle. Most of us are wired with the desire to not be alone. So again, we have these positive emotional responses when we succumb to peer pressure for that reason.

There's this idea of self-image, where our self-image needs to be updated. But once it is, we're a part of a group and that's good. And the last bit I talked about was this idea of adolescence, right? And the fact that within adolescence, for any number of neurobiological reasons, they're actually more likely to succumb to peer pressure because that's just literally the way they're built. And of course, the idea is as the brain matures, for instance, probably the thing I'd mention here is that when I talk about the brain developing, I usually say something along the lines of

the simple version is it develops from the inside out and back to front. So the last thing to come online before an adult is the prefrontal cortex. And this is an interesting thing because again, if you think of this peer pressure story and why people might do some dumb things when they're being forced by peer pressure, especially in adolescence because of the development issue, well, what's happening there is you've literally got a brain where the emotional system is running wild because of hormones. So the amygdala and the insular cortex, someone, you know, the proverbial bad idea, you should jump off the roof of your

house, right? Well, your emotional system is running wild going, oh, I'm so happy I've got friends. This is a smart thing to do. And of course the prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed. friends, this is a smart thing to do. And of course, the prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed. So that logical analytical system that, you know, it's supposed to say, hey, don't do this, right? And make you stand apart from the peer pressure to do something, that part of the brain just isn't there yet. And just a bit of trivia there, if you want to know why teenage boys tend to do more dumb things than teenage girls, from a neurobiological perspective, the prefrontal cortex is fully developed at an earlier age in females than males. So that's why females seem to smarten up, in quotes,

at an earlier age than males, whereas males continue going on and doing stupid things. Now, bear in mind, you can still do this as an adult. We talked about this on the alcohol podcast, but just as a reminder, one of the things that alcohol does to the brain is it sort of turns off the prefrontal cortex and it ramps up the emotional system.

So again, if you've had a couple of beers or a glass of wine or two and done something that wasn't so smart, well, that's because you've literally put your brain in an adolescent state where you're more likely to do these things. So peer pressure in the brain, and then a bit about the prefrontal cortex and development and how it plays in that role. And that's the podcast for this week. Remember that neuroscienceguy.com, links to our Etsy store and Patreon. I say this every episode, but thank you so much for the people that support

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