scholarly journals Internalizing cooperative norms in group-structured populations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erol Akçay ◽  
Jeremy Van Cleve
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Structured Populations ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Intrinsic Motivations ◽  
Preference Evolution

AbstractSocial norms play a crucial role in human behavior, especially in maintaining cooperation within human social groups. Social norms might be self-enforcing or be enforced by the threat of punishment. In many cases, however, social norms are internalized and individuals have intrinsic motivations to observe norms. Here, we present a model for how intrinsic preferences to adhere to cooperative norms can evolve with and without external enforcement of compliance. Using the methodology of preference evolution, we model how cooperative norms coevolve with the intrinsic motivations to follow them. We model intrinsic motivations as being provided by guilt, a kind of internal “punishment” that individuals feel for falling short of cooperative norms, and show that the shape of this internal punishment function plays a crucial role in determining whether and how much internalization can evolve. We find that internal punishment functions that eventually level off with the deviation from the norm can support internalization without external punishment. In contrast, internal punishment functions that keep escalating with the deviation from the norm require external punishment, but yield stronger norms and more cooperation when external punishment is present. By showing how different preference mechanisms can enhance or limit norms that stabilize cooperation, these results provide insights into how our species might have evolved the norm psychology that helps us maintain such complex social and cultural institutions.

scholarly journals Compliance with COVID-19 Mitigation Measures in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin van Rooij ◽  
Anne Leonore de Bruijn ◽  
Christopher Reinders Folmer ◽  
Emmeke Barbara Kooistra ◽  
Malouke Esra Kuiper ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
The United States ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Intrinsic Motivations ◽  
Fundamental Shift

The COVID-19 mitigation measures require a fundamental shift in human behavior. The present study assesses what factors influence Americans to comply with the stay at home and social distancing measures. It analyzes data from an online survey, conducted on April 3, 2020, of 570 participants from 35 states that have adopted such measures. The results show that while perceptual deterrence was not associated with compliance, people actually comply less when they fear the authorities. Further, two broad processes promote compliance. First, compliance depended on people’s capacity to obey the rules, opportunity to break the rules, and self-control. As such, compliance results from their own personal abilities and the context in which they live. Second, compliance depended on people’s intrinsic motivations, including substantive moral support and social norms. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for ensuring compliance to effectively mitigate the virus.

The Cooking Ape: An Interview with Richard Wrangham

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-37
Author(s):  
elisabeth townsend
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Primate Research ◽  
Social Organizations ◽  
Cooked Food ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Brain

Humans: The Cooking Ape Perhaps the first to suggest that humans were cooking as early as 1.9 million years ago, Richard Wrangham shows through his new research and his imagination how and possibly when cooking changed humans dramatically. Wrangham, Harvard University primatologist and MacArthur Fellow, has been studying the evolution of human cooking. After 25 years of primate research at his site in Kibale, Uganda, Wrangham is best known for explaining the similarity and differences across species of primate social organizations. In Kibale, he has analyzed chimpanzees’ behavior: how it’s changed when they interact with the environment and how their social groups have evolved. In particular, he noticed how food changed their interactions with each other. Like that of chimps, human behavior has been affected by food, especially as they shifted from raw to cooked food. Moving from eating food as it was discovered to collecting edibles and cooking them altered our social relationships. Cooked food has changed Homo sapiens physically by making food more digestible thereby altering jaws, teeth, and guts, and providing more calories for more expensive organs such as the brain. Wrangham discusses when and how humans may have started using fire to cook food, what they cooked, and the transition from cooking in an outdoor fire to hearths and open ovens.

Measuring Social Norms in Economics: Why It Is Important and How It Is Done

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-312
Author(s):  
Daniele Nosenzo ◽  
Luise Görges
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Experimental Economics ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Research Projects

Abstract Experimental economics offers new tools for the measurement of social norms. In this article, we argue that these advances have the potential to promote our understanding of human behavior in fundamental ways, by expanding our knowledge beyond what we learn by simply observing human behavior. We highlight how these advancements can inform not only economic and social theory, but also policymaking.We then describe and critically assess three approaches used in economics to measure social norms. We conclude our overview with a list of recommendations to help empirical researchers choose among the different tools, depending on the nature and constraints of their research projects.

Spectacular memory: Zombie pasts in the themed shopping malls of Dubai

2022 ◽  
pp. 175069802110665
Author(s):  
Paul O’Connor
Keyword(s):  
Social Groups ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Shopping Malls ◽  
Mass Consumption ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
The Past ◽  
Media Institutions ◽  
The Media ◽  
Coherent Body ◽  
Late Modern

Memory invariably involves sifting and sorting historical traces and reassembling them into societal representations of the past. Usually this has been done by social groups of different kinds or the cultural institutions associated with them, and has provided materials for the construction and maintenance of group identity. In what I term “spectacular memory,” however, the sifting and sorting of memory traces is performed by commercial and media institutions within a globalized cultural framework to create spectacles for mass consumption. Spectacular memory is enabled by the progressive breakdown of Halbwach’s “social frameworks of memory”—the association of memory with face-to-face relations within social groups. In late modern societies, “memory” as a coherent body of representations which is the property of more-or-less bounded social groups has largely devolved into a globalized store of representations curated and diffused through the media, advertising, tourism and entertainment industries. This article uses the example of the history-themed shopping malls of Dubai to characterize this form of memory.

scholarly journals Personal Life, Pragmatism and Bricolage

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 129-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Social World ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Personal Lives ◽  
Link Structure ◽  
Structure And Agency ◽  
Social Legitimation

Individualisation theory misrepresents and romanticises the nature of agency as a primarily discursive and reflexive process where people freely create their personal lives in an open social world divorced from tradition. But empirically we find that people usually make decisions about their personal lives pragmatically, bounded by circumstances and in connection with other people, not only relationally but also institutionally. This pragmatism is often non-reflexive, habitual and routinised, even unconscious. Agents draw on existing traditions - styles of thinking, sanctioned social relationships, institutions, the presumptions of particular social groups and places, lived law and social norms - to ‘patch’ or ‘piece together' responses to changing situations. Often it is institutions that ‘do the thinking’. People try to both conserve social energy and seek social legitimation in this adaption process, a process which can lead to a ‘re-serving' of tradition even as institutional leakage transfers meanings from past to present, and vice versa. But this process of bricolage will always be socially contested and socially uneven. In this way bricolage describes how people actually link structure and agency through their actions, and can provide a framework for empirical research on doing family.

scholarly journals Komunikacja międzypokoleniowa w  polskiej kulturze. Wyniki badań empirycznych

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 29-43
Author(s):  
Patrycja Kochanek
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
Intergenerational Communication ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Generation Problem

Intergenerational communication in Polish cultureThe object of this paper is to verify the structure of communication in cultural discourse in Poland. It is analyzed if this discourse sees differences between the next generations and if it personalizes communication for them. Pilot research CAWI was done in May 2017. Twenty one responders answered 7 opened and 5 closed questions in an online survey. All of the responders were working in cultural institutions. The categorization of the answers gave an image of the social groups that have some specific and unique characteristics and values. The quantitative analysis of the answers verified the hypotheses: cultural discourse creates communication according to the audience — which is generation specific. Cultural institutions see this generation problem in Poland and they attribute this change to the activities that have been created for people. This research is only an opening to further investigations on this topic.

Modeling Human Behavior to Reduce Navigation Time of Menu Items

2015 ◽  
pp. 162-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiantian Xie ◽  
Yuxi Zhu ◽  
Tao Lin ◽  
Rui Chen
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Algorithm ◽  
Markov Chain ◽  
Mobile Devices ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Prediction Accuracy ◽  
Prediction Models ◽  
Menu Item ◽  
Structure Complexity

With the increase in the number of menu items and the menu structure complexity, users have to spend more time in locating menu items when using menu-based interfaces. Recently, adaptive menu techniques have been explored to reduce the time and menu item prediction plays a crucial role in the techniques. Unfortunately, there still lacks effective prediction models for menu items. This chapter per the authors explores the potential of three prediction models based on Markov chain in predicting top n menu items with human behavior data while interacting with menus - the users' historical menu item selections. The results show that Weighted Markov Chain using Genetic Algorithm can obtain the highest prediction accuracy and significantly decrease navigation time by 22.6% when N equals 4 as compared to the static counterpart. Two application scenarios of these models on mobile devices and desktop also demonstrated the potentials in daily usage to reduce the time spent to search target menu items.

The Bhāgavata Speaks of Woman

2020 ◽  
pp. 123-136
Author(s):  
Gopal K. Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Gender Studies ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Subaltern Studies ◽  
Gender Discourse ◽  
Positive Light

Indic texts have played a crucial role in constructing, and greatly influencing, gender roles and social norms in Indian society. Scholarship on these texts has identified problems of identity and hegemony that are thoroughly discussed in such fields as subaltern studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and the like. Because of cultural practices such as satῑ‎ and religious laws for widows, Hinduism and some of its associated texts tend to have a reputation for patriarchal misogyny. In her Encyclopedia of Feminism, Lisa Tuttle advises scholars to ask “new questions of old texts;” following her lead, this chapter intends to examine the gender discourse contained in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, focusing on the text’s characterization of women as māyā, which we have here defined as God’s deluding or covering potency. The analysis should make it plain that while the Bhāgavata does support patriarchal institutions and practices, on a deeper level it portrays women in a far more positive light, holding them in a more esteemed position than one may assume.

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