( CNN ) -- You 're in a room with 10 other people who seem to agree on something , but you hold the opposite view . Do you say something ? Or do you just go along with the others ? Imaging techniques help scientists look at the basis for principles of social psychology in the brain . Decades of research show people tend to go along with the majority view , even if that view is objectively incorrect . Now , scientists are supporting those theories with brain images . A new study in the journal Neuron shows when people hold an opinion differing from others in a group , their brains produce an error signal . A zone of the brain popularly called the `` oops area '' becomes extra active , while the `` reward area '' slows down , making us think we are too different . `` We show that a deviation from the group opinion is regarded by the brain as a punishment , '' said Vasily Klucharev , postdoctoral fellow at the F.C . Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and lead author of the study . Watch to learn more about the study » . Participants , all female , had to rate 222 faces based on physical beauty on a scale from 1 to 8 . Afterwards , researchers told each participant either that the average score was higher or that it was lower than her rating . Some participants were told the average rating was equal to her rating . The researchers then chatted with the participant before suddenly asking the participant to do the rating again . Most subjects changed their opinion toward the average . The two leading theories of conformity are that people look to the group because they 're unsure of what to do , and that people go along with the norm because they are afraid of being different , said Dr. Gregory Berns , professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta , Georgia . Berns ' research , which he describes in the book `` Iconoclast : A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently , '' found that brain mechanisms associated with fear and anxiety do play a part in situations where a person feels his or her opinion goes against the grain . Participants looked at projections of three-dimensional objects , and had to identify which shapes were similar . As with the new study in Neuron , participants tended to shift their opinion to the majority view , although in this case the problems had objectively correct answers . The effect was also more potent in this experiment because actors were in the room to simulate a group with a shared opinion , he said . But brain images revealed participants were not lying just to fit in . Changes in the activation of the visual part of the brain suggest the group opinion actually changed participants ' perceptions of what they saw . One reason behind conformity is that , in terms of human evolution , going against the group is not beneficial to survival , Berns said . There is a tremendous survival advantage to being in a community , he said . `` Our brains are exquisitely tuned to what other people think about us , aligning our judgments to fit in with the group , '' Berns said . The most famous experiments in the field were conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s . He found that many people gave incorrect answers about matching lines printed on cards , echoing the incorrect answers of the actors in the room . But unlike Berns ' finding that fear and anxiety relate to this effect , Asch saw conformity studies reflections of people 's reliance on one another for knowledge of the world , experts say . The darker side of conformity relates to Stanley Milgram 's experiments of the 1960s and 1970s , in which most people obeyed orders to deliver electric shocks to an innocent person in the next room . As in these studies , subjects caved into social pressure , presumably going against their own previous moral convictions . Read more about the Milgram study . The research calls into question decision-making bodies that operate by consensus , Berns said . For example , in the U.S. legal system , many cases are decided by the unanimous judgment of the members of a jury . `` You ca n't separate those judgments from the fact that you have 12 people who have to come to a unanimous decision , and have to conform their opinion to each other , so of course it will distort how they view evidence , '' he said . `` Any type of group decision-making process that does not require unanimous decisions is likely to make a better one , '' Berns said . `` That applies to committees in particular . '' What does it take to break the conformity effect ? Asch talked about the power of the `` minority of one . '' When a unanimous group pressures the individual , that group is weakened as soon as one person breaks off . `` Anyone inclined to draw too pessimistic conclusions from this report would do well to remind himself that the capacities for independence are not to be underestimated , '' Asch wrote in a 1955 `` Scientific American '' article describing his research . `` He may also draw some consolation from a further observation : Those who participated in this challenging experiment agreed nearly without exception that independence was preferable to conformity . ''
New study looks at how people change opinions of the beauty of images . Brain imaging shows group opinion actually shifts perception in the brain . Solomon Asch studied conformity in famous experiment in 1950s . Researcher : Rethink committees that decide by unanimous consent .