Modelling social norms: an integration of the norm-utility approach with beliefs dynamics

Abstract

We review theoretical approaches for modelling the origin, persistence and change of social norms. The most comprehensive models describe the coevolution of behaviours, personal, descriptive and injunctive norms while considering influences of various authorities and accounting for cognitive processes and between-individual differences. Models show that social norms can improve individual and group well-being. Under some conditions though, deleterious norms can persist in the population through conformity, preference falsification and pluralistic ignorance. Polarization in behaviour and beliefs can be maintained, even when societal advantages of particular behaviours or belief systems over alternatives are clear. Attempts to change social norms can backfire through cognitive processes including cognitive dissonance and psychological reactance. Under some conditions social norms can change rapidly via tipping point dynamics. Norms can be highly susceptible to manipulation, and network structure influences their propagation. Future models should incorporate network structure more thoroughly, explicitly study online norms, consider cultural variations and be applied to real-world processes. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Social norm change: drivers and consequences’.

Social norm change: drivers and consequences

“…The contributions of this Theme Issue identify social norms both in humans and in animals and discuss models of norms dynamics that help understanding of how norms emerge, persist and change in a variety of settings, both controlled and uncontrolled. This section includes a review article on modelling approaches to understand norm change [ 20 ], an opinion article on the evolution of normativity in non-human animals [ 21 ], a research article on the impact of normative expressions on norm perception and compliance [ 22 ], and a research article on the inference of social norms from policy signals [ 23 ].…”

“…Gavrilets et al . [ 20 ] review existing theoretical approaches for modelling the origin, persistence and change of social norms. The authors present an integrative approach that combines norm-utility approaches with beliefs dynamics and examine how this novel approach makes it possible to effectively model the emergence, persistence and evolution of social norms.…”

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

“…In the trust game with signalling, the trustee can signal their identity to the truster before the truster makes a decision on whether to trust the trustee. 1 Using a trust game to study the emergence of signalling has two main advantages over using other games such as the Prisoner's Dilemma. First, the trust game models sequential decisions which are characteristic of many real-word interactions (e.g.…”

“…At times, mechanisms of social control reinforce norms that appear individually, or even collectively, costly or 'wasteful' [1]-such as mutilation practises [2] or extensive body tattoos [3]. We test the conjecture that such norms emerge as outcomes of signalling games [4][5][6][7] in contexts where groups could benefit from parochial cooperation-i.e.…”

Cross-societal variation in norm enforcement systems

“…When such opportunities are present, punishment can give rise to escalating cycles of revenge and reduce welfare (for a review see [13]). Further, punishment can be used to support not only prosocial but any norms [14] (see also [15]) and is sometimes targeted at cooperative group members rather than norm violators [13,16]. Additionally, the role of punishment in supporting norm enforcement in field settings remains debated [6,[17][18][19][20], and complicated by the fact that diverse tactics with varying costs can be used against norm breakers in real-world situations [7,19,21,22].…”