When someone violates a social norm, others may think that some sanction would be appropriate. We examine how the experience of emotions like anger and disgust relate to the judged appropriateness of sanctions, in a pre-registered analysis of data from a large-scale study in 56 societies. Across the world, we find that individuals who experience anger and disgust over a norm violation are more likely to endorse confrontation, ostracism and, to a smaller extent, gossip. Moreover, we find that the experience of anger is consistently the strongest predictor of judgments of confrontation, compared to other emotions. Although the link between state-based emotions and judgments may seem universal, its strength varies across countries. Aligned with theoretical predictions, this link is stronger in societies, and among individuals, that place higher value on individual autonomy. Thus, autonomy values may increase the role that emotions play in guiding judgments of social sanctions.
We study how communication affects cooperation in an experimental public goods environment with punishment and counter-punishment opportunities. Participants interacted over 30 rounds in fixed groups with fixed identifiers that allowed them to trace other group members' behavior over time. The two dimensions of communication we study are asking for a specific contribution level and having to express oneself when choosing to counter-punish. We conduct four experimental treatments, all involving a contribution stage, a punishment stage, and a counter-punishment stage in each round. In the first treatment communication is not possible at any of the stages. The second treatment allows participants to ask for a contribution level at the punishment stage and in the third treatment participants are required to send a message if they decide to counter-punish. The fourth combines the two communication channels of the second and third treatments. We find that the three treatments involving communication at any of the two relevant stages lead to significantly higher contributions than the baseline treatment. We find no difference between the three treatments with communication. We also relate our results to previous results from treatments without counter-punishment opportunities and do not find that the presence of counter-punishment leads to lower cooperation level. The overall pattern of results shows that given fixed identifiers the key factor is the presence of communication. Whenever communication is possible contributions and earnings are higher than when it is not, regardless of counter-punishment opportunities.
Recent research at the cross between cognitive and social sciences is investigating the cognitive mechanisms behind cooperative decisions. One debated question is whether cooperative decisions are made faster than non-cooperative ones. Yet empirical evidence is still mixed. In this paper we explore the implications of individual heterogeneity in social value orientation for the effect of response time on cooperation. We conduct a meta-analysis of available experimental studies (n=8; treatments=16; 5,232 subjects). We report two main results: (i) the relation between response time and cooperation is moderated by social value orientation, such that it is positive for individualist subjects and negative for prosocial subjects; (ii) the relation between response time and cooperation is partly mediated by extremity of choice. These results suggest that highly prosocial subjects are fast to cooperate, highly individualist subjects are fast to defect, and subjects with weaker preferences make slower and less extreme decisions. We explain these results in terms of decision-conflict theory.
We conduct laboratory experiments to study peer effects on compliance with extortive requests. To this aim, we use an “extortion game” with multiple victims. In agreement with our hypothesis, our results show that when the information on peers’ behavior is available, compliance with appropriative requests is triggered by conformism among victims rather than by punishment. Moreover, we find that extorted sums are rather small, requests are proportional to the victim’s earnings, similar across victims, and are significantly lower when the extorter self-selects into this role. Punishment is rare, but effective. Finally, our results indicate that fairness concerns matter even in a context of extra-legal taxation, shaping both extorters’ requests and victims’ compliance.
Three main motivations can explain compliance with social norms: fear of peer punishment, the desire for others' esteem and the desire to meet others' expectations. Though all play a role, only the desire to meet others' expectations can sustain compliance when neither public nor private monitoring is possible. Theoretical models have shown that such desire can indeed sustain social norms, but empirical evidence is lacking. Moreover it is unclear whether this desire ranges over others' “empirical” or “normative” expectations. We propose a new experimental design to isolate this motivation and to investigate what kind of expectations people are inclined to meet. Results indicate that, when nobody can assign either material or immaterial sanctions, the perceived legitimacy of others' normative expectations can motivate a significant number of people to comply with costly social norms.
Social norms have been investigated across many disciplines for many years, but until recently, studies mainly provided indirect, implicit and correlational support for the role of social norms in driving behaviour. To understand how social norms, and in particular social norm change, can generate a large-scale behavioural change to deal with some of the most pressing challenges of our current societies, such as climate change and vaccine hesitancy, we discuss and review several recent advances in social norm research that enable a more precise underpinning of the role of social norms: how to identify their existence, how to establish their causal effect on behaviour and when norm change may pass tipping points. We advocate future research on social norms to study norm change through a mechanism-based approach that integrates experimental and computational methods in theory-driven, empirically calibrated agent-based models. As such, social norm research may move beyond unequivocal praising of social norms as the missing link between self-interested behaviour and observed cooperation or as the explanation for (the lack of) social tipping. It provides the toolkit to understand explicitly where, when and how social norms can be a solution to solve large-scale problems, but also to recognize their limits.This article is part of the theme issue 'Emergent phenomena in complex physical and socio-technical systems: from cells to societies'.
This study examines cultural differences in ordinary dishonesty between Italy and Sweden, two countries with different reputations for trustworthiness and probity. Exploiting a set of cross-cultural tax compliance experiments, we find that the average level of tax evasion (as a measure of ordinary dishonesty) does not differ significantly between Swedes and Italians. However, we also uncover differences in national “styles” of dishonesty. Specifically, while Swedes are more likely to be either completely honest or completely dishonest in their fiscal declarations, Italians are more prone to fudging (i.e., cheating by a small amount). We discuss the implications of these findings for the evolution and enforcement of honesty norms.
Objectives We test the effects of four policy scenarios on recruitment into organized crime. The policy scenarios target (i) organized crime leaders and (ii) facilitators for imprisonment, (iii) provide educational and welfare support to children and their mothers while separating them from organized-crime fathers, and (iv) increase educational and social support to at-risk schoolchildren. Methods We developed a novel agent-based model drawing on theories of peer effects (differential association, social learning), social embeddedness of organized crime, and the general theory of crime. Agents are simultaneously embedded in multiple social networks (household, kinship, school, work, friends, and co-offending) and possess heterogeneous individual attributes. Relational and individual attributes determine the probability of offending. Co-offending with organized crime members determines recruitment into the criminal group. All the main parameters are calibrated on data from Palermo or Sicily (Italy). We test the effect of the four policy scenarios against a baseline no-intervention scenario on the number of newly recruited and total organized crime members using Generalized Estimating Equations models. Results The simulations generate realistic outcomes, with relatively stable organized crime membership and crime rates. All simulated policy interventions reduce the total number of members, whereas all but primary socialization reduce newly recruited members. The intensity of the effects, however, varies across dependent variables and models. Conclusions Agent-based models effectively enable to develop theoretically driven and empirically calibrated simulations of organized crime. The simulations can fill the gaps in evaluation research in the field of organized crime and allow us to test different policies in different environmental contexts.
Criminalorganizationsexploittheirpresenceonterritories and local communities to recruit new workforce in order to carry out their criminal activities and business. The ability to attract individuals is crucial for maintaining power and control over the territories in which these groups are settled. This study proposes the formalization, development and analysis of an agent-based model (ABM) that simulates a neighborhood of Palermo (Sicily) with the aim to understand the pathways that lead individuals to recruitment into organized crime groups (OCGs). Using empirical data on social, economic and criminal conditions of the area under analysis, we use a multi-layer network approach to simulate this scenario. As the final goal, we test different policies to counter recruitment into OCGs. These scenarios are based on two different dimensions of prevention and intervention: (i) primary and secondary socialization and (ii) law enforcement targeting strategies.
The book presents theoretical, methodological, and technical advances in the study of norms in societies of autonomous intelligent agents, based on a collaboration among social, computational, and cognitive scientists. By conceptualizing norms as social and cognitive phenomena undergoing a complex dynamics, and thanks to a computational, agent-based approach, contributors address three sets of questions: (a) What are norms, and how may we differentiate them from social conformism on one hand and acquiescence under menace on the other? (b) How do norms emerge and change? An innovative answer is found in the interplay between the mental and social dynamics of norms. (c) How can we characterize the agents from among which norms emerge, why and how people represent norms and abide with or violate them in a non-necessarily deliberative way? Throughout the book, the surprise is that conformity is only the tip of the normative iceberg. Norms emerge in society while “immerging” into the mind. Their mental dynamics, occurring beneath the line of observation, allows all the sets of questions to be answered: a special agent architecture is needed for norm immergence, which in turn allows us to account for how norm-based behavior emerges as a special form of social regularity. After a review of different approaches, the volume presents a dynamic model of norms, the normative agent architecture, a simulation platform, and the artificial experiments testing the view of norms and the architecture proposed against a number of more or less realistic social scenarios.
Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriateness of various responses to a violation of a cooperative norm and to atypical social behaviors. Our findings highlight both cultural universals and cultural variation. We find a universal negative relation between appropriateness ratings of norm violations and appropriateness ratings of responses in the form of confrontation, social ostracism and gossip. Moreover, we find the country variation in the appropriateness of sanctions to be consistent across different norm violations but not across different sanctions. Specifically, in those countries where use of physical confrontation and social ostracism is rated as less appropriate, gossip is rated as more appropriate.
The original version of this Article contained an error in the author affiliations. Cecilia Reyna was incorrectly associated with ‘Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC). Facultad de Psicología (UNC), Ciudad Universitaria, Bv. de la Reforma esquina, Enfermera Gordillo s/n, Córdoba, Argentina.’ instead of the correct ‘Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas (IIPsi), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), CABA, República Argentina.’ This has now been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the Article. © The Author(s) 2021
Social norms pervade society and when they conflict with legal norms, the former undermine the latter making them ineffective. In this study, we propose that the extortion racket in Sicily has turned into a social norm and this is why recent top-down interventions have failed in stalling this socially undesirable activity. One exception is represented by Addiopizzo, a grass root movement that uses non-legal means to fight the racket phenomenon in Sicily. During the last 15 years, Addiopizzo was able to produce an effective reduction in the payment of protection money in the Sicilian city of Palermo by triggering, we suggest, among other things, a process of change in social norms. Acknowledging the importance of a change in social norms to achieve social change allows us to link the theory of institutions as 'rules' with the theory of institutions as 'equilibria'.
In this paper, we study how people from different countries would react to institutional changes in terms of tax compliance. We choose an experimental setting and focus on two features of the tax system: efficiency and tax rate. We develop our analysis in two countries characterized by high tax burdens, but with relevant differences in terms of tax evasion and the quality of public services: Italy and Sweden. The main result is that participants from both countries react similarly to changes in efficiency and tax rates: tax compliance rises when efficiency increases, and tax compliance falls when the tax rate increases. However, the absolute level of tax compliance depends on the population’s composition in terms of social preferences (prosocials and individualists). This may suggest that, even if cultural factors matter, institutional features—especially efficiency—play a relevant role in determining taxpayers’ behavior. In particular, if the level of efficiency is high, both Italians and Swedes tend to pay taxes when the tax burden is high. We conclude the paper by discussing related policy implications.
Tax evasion is a problem everywhere, but it is a much bigger policy problem in some countries than it is in others. The Italian government estimates that it loses more than 27 percent of total tax revenue to evasion, whereas the Swedish government estimates their "tax gap" to be less than 9 percent. What explains this variation? We test for the importance of culturally based attitudes and institutionally structured rules for taxes and benefits through a unique set of cross-national experiments and attitudinal surveys done in multiple locations across Italy, the UK, the United States, and Sweden. Participants in each location were presented with identical conditions based on institutional variations (tax rates, redistribution regimes, benefits) and asked to complete a survey afterward concerning their attitudes toward a number of social and political issues. A mixed-model analysis of the 2,537 subjects in our study reveals consistent influence of institutional scenarios and three attitude scales measuring pro-redistributive ideology, fiscal responsibility, and perceived government competence. Country effects, however, are more mixed and inconsistent.
Did cultures change shortly after, and in response to, the COVID-19 outbreak? If so, then in what way? We study these questions for a set of macro-cultural dimensions: collectivism/individualism, duty/joy, traditionalism/autonomy, and pro-fertility/individual-choice norms. We also study specific perceptions and norms like perceived threats to society (e.g. immigration) and hygiene norms. We draw on Evolutionary Modernization Theory, Parasite Stress Theory, and the Behavioural Immune System, and existing evidence, to make an overarching prediction: the COVID-19 pandemic should increase collectivism, duty, traditionalism, conformity (i.e. pro-fertility), and outgroup prejudice. We derive specific hypotheses from this prediction and use survey data from 29,761 respondents, in 55 cities and 43 countries, collected before (April–December 2019) and recently after the emergence of COVID-19 (April–June 2020) to test them. We exploit variation in disease intensity across regions to test potential mechanisms behind any changes. The macro-cultural dimensions remained stable. In contrast, specific perceptions and norms related to the pandemic changed: norms of hygiene substantially increased as did perceived threats related to disease. Taken together, our findings imply that macro-cultural dimensions are primarily stable while specific perceptions and norms, particularly those related to the pandemic, can change rapidly. Our findings provide new evidence for theories of cultural change and have implications for policy, public health, daily life, and future trajectories of our societies.
Human cooperation is both powerful and puzzling. Large-scale cooperation among genetically unrelated individuals makes humans unique with respect to all other animal species. Therefore, learning how cooperation emerges and persists is a key question for social scientists. Recently, scholars have recognized the importance of social norms as solutions to major local and large-scale collective action problems, from the management of water resources to the reduction of smoking in public places to the change in fertility practices. Yet a well-founded model of the effect of social norms on human cooperation is still lacking.We present here a version of the Experience-Weighted Attraction (EWA) reinforcement learning model that integrates norm-based considerations into its utility function that we call EWA+Norms. We compare the behaviour of this hybrid model to the standard EWA when applied to a collective risk social dilemma in which groups of individuals must reach a threshold level of cooperation to avoid the risk of catastrophe. We find that standard EWA is not sufficient for generating cooperation, but that EWA+Norms is. Next step is to compare simulation results with human behaviour in large-scale experiments.
We present a version of the experience-weighted attraction (EWA) reinforcement learning model that integrates norm conformity into its utility function that we call “EWA+Norms.” We compare the behavior of this hybrid model to the standard EWA when applied to a step-level public good game in which groups of agents must reach a threshold level of cooperation to avoid the risk of catastrophe. We find that standard EWA is not sufficient for generating cooperation, but that EWA+Norms is. We aim to compare simulation results with human behavior in large-scale experiments that we are currently running.
Social norms regulate our behavior in a variety of mundane and far-reaching contexts, from tipping at the restaurant to social distancing during a pandemic. However, how social norms emerge, persist, and change is still poorly understood. Here the authors investigate experimentally whether spontaneously emerging behavioral regularities (i.e., conventions) gain normativity over time and, if so, whether their normative underpinning makes them resistant to changes in economic incentives. To track the coevolution of behavior and normativity, the authors use a set of measures to elicit participants' first- and second-order normative beliefs and their (dis)approval of other participants' behaviors. The authors find that even in the limited duration of their lab experiment, conventions gain normativity that makes these conventions resistant to change, especially if they promote egalitarian outcomes and the change in economic incentives is relatively small. These findings advance our understanding of how cognitive, social and economic mechanisms interact in bringing about social change.
Cooperation is central to the success of human societies as it is crucial for overcoming some of the most pressing social challenges of our time; still, how human cooperation is achieved and may persist is a main puzzle in the social and biological sciences. Recently, scholars have recognized the importance of social norms as solutions to major local and large-scale collective action problems, from the management of water resources to the reduction of smoking in public places to the change in fertility practices. Yet a well-founded model of the effect of social norms on human cooperation is still lacking. Using statistical-physics techniques and integrating findings from cognitive and behavioral sciences, we present an analytically tractable model in which individuals base their decisions to cooperate both on the economic rewards they obtain and on the degree to which their action complies with social norms. Results from this parsimonious model are in agreement with observations in recent large-scale experiments with humans. We also find the phase diagram of the model and show that the experimental human group is poised near a critical point, a regime where recent work suggests living systems respond to changing external conditions in an efficient and coordinated manner.
From inmates in prison gangs to soldiers in elite units, the intimidating reputation of groups often precedes its members. While individual reputation is known to affect people's aggressiveness, whether one's group reputation can similarly influence behavior in conflict situations is yet to be established. Using an economic game experiment, we isolate the effect of group reputation on aggression and conflict from that of individual reputation. We find that group reputation can increase the willingness to inflict costs on others but only when individuals are able to punish their fellow members. Even if internal discipline can sustain their shared reputation, more intimidating groups provide fewer benefits to their members in the short run. Using an agent-based simulation, we show that this might not be the case in the long run. Our findings yield insights into the effects of group reputation on aggression, conflict, and possible consequences for group survival.
Social norms can help solve pressing societal challenges, from mitigating climate change toreducing the spread of infectious diseases. Despite their relevance, how norms shape cooperation among strangers remains insufficiently understood. Influential theories also suggest that the level of threat faced by different societies plays a key role in the strength ofthe norms that cultures evolve. Still little causal evidence has been collected. Here we deal with this dual challenge using a 30-day collective-risk social dilemma experiment to measure norm change in a controlled setting. We ask whether a looming risk of collective loss increases the strength of cooperative social norms that may avert it. We find that social norms predict cooperation, causally affect behavior, and that higher risk leads to stronger social norms that are more resistant to erosion when the risk changes. Taken together, our results demonstrate the causal effect of social norms in promoting cooperation and their role in making behavior resilient in the face of exogenous change.
Protection rackets cause economic and social damage across the world. States typically combat protection rackets using legal strategies that target the racketeers with legislation, strong sentencing, and increasing the presence and involvement of police officers. Nongovernmental organizations, conversely, focus on the rest of the population and counter protection rackets using a social approach. These organisations attempt to change the actions and social norms of community members with education, promotional campaigns, and discussions. We use an agent-based model, which draws on established theories of protection rackets and combines features of sociological and economic perspectives to modelling social interactions, to test the effects of legal and social approaches. We find that a legal approach is a necessary component of a policy approach, that social only approaches should not be used because they lead to large increases in violence, and that a combination of the two works best, although even this must be used carefully.
In social interactions, human decision-making, attitudes, and beliefs about others coevolve. Their dynamics are affected by cost-benefit considerations, cognitive processes (such as cognitive dissonance, social projecting, and logic constraints), and social influences by peers (via descriptive and injunctive social norms) and by authorities (e.g., educational, cultural, religious, political, administrative, individual or group, real or fictitious). Here we attempt to disentangle some of this complexity by using an integrative mathematical modeling and a 35-day online behavioral experiment. We utilize data from a Common Pool Resources experiment with or without messaging promoting a group-beneficial level of resource extraction. We directly estimate the weights of different factors in decision-making and beliefs dynamics. We show that personal norms and conformity with expected peers’ actions have the largest impact on decision-making while material benefits and normative expectations have smaller effects. Individuals behaving prosocially are characterized by higher weights of personal norms while antisocial types are more affected by conformity. Messaging greatly decreases the weight of personal norms while simultaneously increases the weight of conformity. It also markedly influences personal norms and normative expectations. Both cognitive and social factors are important in the dynamics of beliefs. Between-individual variation is present in all measured characteristics and notably impacts observed group behavior. At the same time, gender differences are small. We argue that one can hardly understand social behavior without understanding the dynamics of personal beliefs and beliefs about others and that cognitive, social, and material factors all play important roles in these processes. Our results have implications for understanding and predicting social processes triggered by certain shocks (e.g., social unrest, a pandemic, or a natural disaster) and for designing policy interventions aiming to change behavior (e.g., actions aimed at environment protection or climate change mitigation).
In the seminal work 'An Evolutionary Approach to Norms', Axelrod identified internalization as one of the key mechanisms that supports the spreading and stabilization of norms. But how does this process work? This paper advocates a rich cognitive model of different types, degrees and factors of norm internalization. Rather than a none-or-all phenomenon, we claim that norm internalization is a dynamic process, whose deepest step occurs when norms are complied with thoughtlessly. In order to implement a theoretical model of internalization and check its effectiveness in sustaining social norms and promoting cooperation, a simulated web-service distributed market has been designed, where both services and agents' tasks are dynamically assigned. Internalizers are compared with agents whose behaviour is driven only by self-interested motivations. Simulation findings show that in dynamic unpredictable scenarios, internalizers prove more adaptive and achieve higher level of cooperation than agents whose decision-making is based only on utility calculation.
Cooperation is crucial to overcome some of the most pressing social challenges of our times, such as the spreading of infectious diseases, corruption and environmental conservation. Yet, how cooperation emerges and persists is still a puzzle for social scientists. Since human cooperation is individually costly, cooperative attitudes should have been eliminated by natural selection in favour of selfishness. Yet, cooperation is common in human societies, so there must be some features which make it evolutionarily advantageous. Using a cognitive inspired model of human cooperation, recent work Realpe-Gómez (2018) has reported signatures of criticality in human cooperative groups. Theoretical evidence suggests that being poised at a critical point provides evolutionary advantages to groups by enhancing responsiveness of these systems to external attacks. After showing that signatures of criticality can be detected in human cooperative groups composed by Moody Conditional Cooperators, in this work we show that being poised close to a turning point enhances the fitness and make individuals more resistant to invasions by free riders. Copyright: © 2021 Vilone et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, suddenly erupted in China at the beginning of 2020 and soon spread worldwide. This has resulted in an outstanding increase on research about the virus itself and, more in general, epidemics in many scientific fields. In this work we focus on the dynamics of the epidemic spreading and how it can be affected by the individual variability in compliance with social norms, i.e. in the adoption of preventive social norms by population's members, which influences the infectivity rate throughout the population and through time. By means of theoretical considerations, we show how such heterogeneities of the infection rate make the population more resistant against the epidemic spreading. Finally, we depict possible empirical tests aimed to confirm our results.