The interplay of social identity and norm psychology in the evolution of human groups

Abstract

People's attitudes towards social norms play a crucial role in understanding group behaviour. Norm psychology accounts focus on processes of norm internalization that influence people's norm-following attitudes but pay considerably less attention to social identity and group identification processes. Social identity theory in contrast studies group identity but works with a relatively thin and instrumental notion of social norms. We argue that to best understand both sets of phenomena, it is important to integrate the insights of both approaches. Social status, social identity and social norms are considered separate phenomena in evolutionary accounts. We discuss assumptions and views that support this separation, and suggest an integrated view of our own. We argue that we should be open to the early origins of human social complexity, and conjecture that the longer that the human social world involved multi-level societies the more probable it is that norm psychology and social identity interacted in rich ways. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Human socio-cultural evolution in light of evolutionary transitions’.

Human socio-cultural evolution in light of evolutionary transitions: introduction to the theme issue

“…Therefore, only humans build a network of distributed mental computation: a collective imagination . Kish Bar-On & Lamm [33] discuss the interplay of social identity and norm psychology in the evolution of human groups and suggest that the complexity and dynamism of human groups shaped unique features of norm psychology that are otherwise left unexplained. Szilágyi et al [34] combine evolutionary ecology of early humans (moving from forests to savannahs) with niche construction theory, to propose a dynamic model for the origins of language, based on the idea that climate change meant a nutritional crisis for Homo erectus that was resolved by confrontational scavenging, a dangerous practice impossible without tight cooperation and protolingusitic communication.…”

“…Therefore, only humans build a network of distributed mental computation: a collective imagination. Kish Bar-On & Lamm [33] discuss the interplay of social identity and norm psychology in the evolution of human groups and royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rstb Phil. Trans.…”

Human cooperation and evolutionary transitions in individuality

“…Kish Bar-On & Lamm [ 154 ] suggest that social norms and social identity negotiation are intertwined features of human behaviour that likely emerged in concert as early as H. heidelbergensis [ 155 ]. It is likely that social norms such as conflict avoidance were put to use in creating non-competitive egalitarian social structure and suppressing intra-group male–male competition, hence the decrease in sexual dimorphism [ 29 ].…”

The transition from animal to human culture—simulating the social protocell hypothesis

“…[57] for a review, as well as other contributions to this issue, e.g. [11,[58][59][60]), the SPH applies the concepts and theory of ETI in some detail, enabling thereby a sustained inquiry, guided by specific interpretations of which entities, levels, relations and processes are proposed to be at work. We here implement a model that simulates the ETI proposed by the SPH.…”