The Effect of Social Conformity on Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty among University Students

Studies in the context of social impact on decision-making and cognitive biases are very limited and rare, especially in our academic research. The group effect, the peer effect, and awareness of the choice of others on the Internet are rarely considered. Is awareness of the previous group majority of individuals making the will change the participants' responses? Can such changes relate to the decision-making of others? the research population was all student of universities of Tehran, and the sample was 180 student with convenience sampling. The social effect deduced from the changes in decisions before and after subjects' awareness of the most popular choices of previous participants. Although the subjects can maintain their choices. The non-normal distribution of data made us use non-parametric tests like Chi-Square, Wilcoxon, and Mann Whitney. The effect of the decision-making was significant (more in favor of irrational economic decision-making). People faced to conformity booster problems change four problems on average, and in conformity reducer problems changed 3 answers on average (significantly 7 out of 31 problems). Participants just by observing a sign changed their overall 23 percent of all questions in line with the related kind of conformity (p <0.05). Women showed more intense tendency to conform, and "risk aversion" and "ambiguity" in general were more prone to it (p <0.05). Based on the findings of this research, social conformity was effective in changing cognitive biases and heuristics in economic decision-making, especially when increases those biases.