A study published in the journal PLOS One examines this phenomenon and shows that our moral judgements are far less rigid than we might imagine.

The authors of this research wanted to determine the extent to which individual moral judgments could be influenced by groups, whether real or virtual.

After all, people’s thoughts and actions are far more subject to the approval of the world around them than they might imagine. That’s why they tend to surround themselves with like-minded people, both in the real world and online.

The academics set out to measure the weight of conformity by conducting an experiment with around a hundred volunteers. They were asked to give an opinion on potentially morally reprehensible behaviour, such as a mother punishing her son for poor grades at school, or a man making a phone call in the middle of a movie.

The participants were then asked to judge the same situations in the company of two other people who disagreed with them.

It turns out that, in 43% of cases, the volunteers adjusted their judgment after discussing the situation with their group members. “However, they did it less often when the judgments concerned situations in which other people were harmed,” said study co-author, Dr Konrad Bocian, quoted in a news release.

In a second phase, Dr Konrad Bocian and colleagues conducted a similar experiment with a further 138 participants. But unlike the first time, the volunteers were immersed in a virtual environment in which they interacted with avatars. Some of these were supposedly controlled by human beings, others by artificial intelligence.

It appears that participants altered their judgments to match those of avatars under human control in 30% of cases, and in 26% of cases when they were controlled by AI.

This suggests that social pressure can guide a person’s moral opinions, even in a virtual environment.

“Today, social influence is increasingly as potent in the digital world as in the real world. Therefore, it is necessary to determine how our judgments are shaped in the digital reality, where interactions take place online and some participants are avatars, not real humans,” said Dr Bocian, in the same press release.

This research improves people’s understanding of social pressure, which is not a purely theoretical concept, but a reality experienced by everyone.

However, this subject needs to be studied further to better anticipate “the potential social consequences of moral conformity in the modern digital world,” as the researchers write.