Cross-societal variation in norm enforcement systems

Abstract

Across human societies, people are sometimes willing to punish norm violators. Such punishment can take the form of revenge from victims, seemingly altruistic intervention from third parties, or legitimized sanctioning from institutional representatives. Although prior work has documented cross-cultural regularities in norm enforcement, substantial variation exists in the prevalence and forms of punishment across societies. Such cross-societal variation may arise from universal psychological mechanisms responding to different socio-ecological conditions, or from cultural evolutionary processes, resulting in different norm enforcement systems. To date, empirical evidence from comparative studies across diverse societies has remained disconnected, owing to a lack of interdisciplinary integration and a prevalent tendency of empirical studies to focus on different underpinnings of variation in norm enforcement. To provide a more complete view of the shared and unique aspects of punishment across societies, we review prior research in anthropology, economics and psychology, and take a first step towards integrating the plethora of socio-ecological and cultural factors proposed to explain cross-societal variation in norm enforcement. We conclude by discussing how future cross-societal research can use diverse methodologies to illuminate key questions on the domain-specificity of punishment, the diversity of tactics supporting social norms, and their role in processes of norm change. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Social norm change: drivers and consequences’.

Teaching is associated with the transmission of opaque culture and leadership across 23 egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies

“…Punishment reinforces teaching opaque cultural norms. Across diverse societies, punishment serves to correct behavior that deviates from accepted norms and reinforces the importance of adhering to these norms [73][74][75] . Whiting 76 (p. 68) explains the important role of punishment in teaching proper, prosocial behavior and deference towards elders among the Northern Paiute children in the Great Basin region of Western North America:…”

Signals of Belonging: Emergence of Signalling Norms as Facilitators of Trust and Parochial Cooperation

“…Moreover, in our model, individuals that do not follow the signalling norm of their group are (indirectly) sanctioned through the withdrawal of trust. Future research could investigate the effect of direct sanctioning and the variation in the strength of norm enforcement on the emergence of signalling norms [62].…”

Social norm change: drivers and consequences

“…Interventions for norm change do not come without limitations and some contributions show how norm-based interventions might have backfiring effects [ 29 , 30 ]. This section starts with a review article on punishment as a bottom-up means of norm enforcement across cultures and societies [ 31 ]. It proceeds with four research articles that design and test norm interventions to change behavioural intentions in both online [ 32 ] and offline settings and in different cultural contexts [ 33 ], for norms and meta norms [ 29 ], to assess both individual and welfare consequences [ 30 ].…”

“…Molho et al . [ 31 ] tackle the issue of variation in punishment across societies. The authors argue that, to date, empirical evidence from cross-societal research has remained disconnected, and they urge for an interdisciplinary integration and an investigation of both the socio-ecological and cultural sources of cross-societal variation in norm enforcement.…”