Norms and Conformity V

Research on social rejection and acceptance finds that our brains treat social threats as seriously as physical threat. It is found in physiology that physical pain is an important mechanism for normal functioning of a human body. The pain people experience makes people retract from harmful situations. It has been observed that people with congenital insensitivity to pain have a shorter lifespan (Nagasako et al., 2003). Children with this condition incur carelessly repeated damage to their tongue, eyes, joints, skin, and muscles.  Some die before adulthood, and others have a reduced life expectancy (Mardy et al., 2001).  Social rejection and the anticipation of it give rise to negative physical sensation. People who experience social rejection show increased activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and right anterior insula, the areas of the brain that are involved in the experience of pain (DeWall et al., 2010).

In the experiment conducted by Zhong and Leonardelli (2008), people who recalled being rejected feel the room was significantly colder. The slowing of the heart rate is another physiological symptom of rejection (Moor et al., 2010). Social exclusion also has a harmful impact on cognitive ability and causes self-defeating behavior. These results suggest that our social needs are built upon an existing physiological system that evolved to process physical input from the environment (Eisenberger et al., 2003). Companionship, on the other hand, can reduce the physical symptoms that are related to physical pains (Coan et al., 2006). Positive social contacts can predict physiological well-being as people with more positive social contacts are happier and live longer (Cacioppo and Patrick, 2008).

In the evolutionary process of the human species, it is vital to cooperate with others and rely on the group. Individuals who take social exclusion very seriously have an evolutionary advantage to pass on their genes. Genetically, we are wired to be sensitive to even minor nuance of rejection, just as we are sensitive to physical pains. Therefore, it is clearly that people conform to be liked by other group members, to avoid rejection and to maintain a good standing in the group.

Norms and Conformity IV

Neuroscience suggests human beings have the tendency to spontaneously and unconsciously mirror the behaviors of others when they interact with one another. This phenomenon is the so-called chameleon effect” (Hatfield et al., 1993; Chartrand et al., 1999).  Listening to language, for example, is accompanied by an increase in fMRI activity in the primary motor areas for speech production (Wilson et al., 2004) and in the tongue (Iacoboni, 2007). These findings can be extended to other behaviors that are a part of social exchanges.  It can be conjectured that mimicry is important for social relations and the formation of social norms because people who are more helpful and generous toward others are those who are mimicked in experimental situations (Decety, 2007).

Why do people exhibit this tendency to mimic others? Why do people conform? Most economists consider conforming to normative social influence is irrational. Simon (1990) points out that it is adaptive for individuals to learn social norms from others in a society.  As the best learners of the norms have a survival advantage, people are genetically programmed to learn and conform to social norms (Hoffman 1981; Kameda et al. 2003).

Social psychologists have shown that conforming behavior is not at all irrational. Schachter (1951) conducted an experiment which showed that in a group, people tended to like conformists better than nonconformists. In his experiment, there were three confederates taking one of three roles in a discussion: the modal person took a position that conformed to the average position, the deviate took a position diametrically opposed to the general orientation, and the slider initially took a position that was similar to the deviate’s but gradually slid into a modal conforming position.

The results showed that the person who was liked most was the modal person who conformed to the group norm; the deviate was liked least.  When people make decisions, they always think about the social pressure from others, which provide information to the group members as to how well their actions conform to the established norms. Back in the time of hunter-gatherer society when individual human being was almost helpless when faced with severe natural environment and the attack from other tribes, group membership increased an individual’s chance to survive. Hence evolution bequeaths us as a species the desire to form groups. If group membership increases the likelihood of an individual’s survival, favorable standing in a group gained by conformity to the existing norms is desirable. Therefore, we may have been wired genetically to mimic the behavior of members to keep a good standing in a group. On the other hand, the impetus to avoid social rejections by group members due to nonconformity may also be rooted physiologically in the human species.

Why are we risk averse and risk loving at the same time?

Admit it: we are risk averse. This is evolutionarily advantageous: danger was everywhere back in the jungle, and you'd better choose to play safe to survive.

But interestingly, most people like to gamble. Where there is a small possibility that we get really rich, we are willing to take risk for it. If we think about it, all the entrepreneurs are risk loving -- they are willing to take risk to receive profit. Men are more risk loving than women, which make sense from an evolutionary point of view. It also explains why most entrepreneurs are male. Well, incidentally, the reason why most experts in the world are male is because men are wired in such a way that they can focus on polishing a skill, which is different than they way females are created.

One way to explain this is suing probability weighting -- it has been observed that people tend to over-weigh small chance event: we try very hard, more than necessary, to avoid danger that is extremely unlikely to happen; we also expect extremely unlikely gains to happen more often that they should.

But why? Maybe evolutionary theory is the way to go...

Norms and Conformity III

Social influences play an important role in social interactions. Social psychologists suggest that social influence can be informational or normative. Informational social influence occurs when the need to know what is right. They use others as a source of information. Informational social influence usually results in private acceptance wherein people truly believe in what other people are saying or doing.

Informational social influence has been used by economists to explain herd behavior and information cascade, showing how individual rational action can lead to group irrationality (Banerjee, 1992; Bikhchandani et al., 1992). Normative social influence, on the other hand, occurs because people have the need to be accepted by others. Normative social influence usually leads to public compliance, but not necessarily private acceptance. Normative social influence plays an important role in the functioning of social norms.

Social psychologists suggest that people are prone to social influence even when no other people are present. According to the self-awareness theory, people engage in the introspection process and evaluate and compare their behavior to their internal standards and values (Carver, 2003; Duval and Silvia, 2002). We want to consider ourselves as good, decent, wise, and intelligent individuals, and we want to be like by others. In order to feel good about ourselves, we tend to avoid taking actions that are socially inappropriate and abide by our personal norms. When we internalize social norms as our inner beliefs, we will also actively do what is prescribed by social norms.

Norms and Conformity II

Elster (1989) distinguishes social norms from moral norms, claiming that the former is motivated by the emotion of shame while the latter by the emotion of guilt. Also, as social norms are context dependent, moral norms are typically consequentialist and independent of context. This categorization is not helpful for analysis, as there is a great overlap between moral norms and social norms. It is better to simply distinguish social norms from personal norms, where conformity to social norms is motivated by acceptance of others and conformity to personal norms main aims to be liked by oneself. In this categorization, moral norms can fall into either social norms or personal norms, depending on contexts.

Social norms are different from personal norms. While both personal norms and social norms indicate what sort of behavior is appropriate or inappropriate, prescribed or proscribed, they satisfy different psychological needs. According to the self-determination theory, people have three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence, and connectedness (Deci and Ryan 2000). Conforming to social norms fulfills the need to feel connected to others, to be liked by others. Abiding to personal norms satisfies the need to feel competent, to be right and to be liked by self. Personal norms are shaped by social norms to some extent, but they do not need to be identical. People may or may not internalize social norms as their personal beliefs. An individual may demonstrate a certain behavior prescribed by social norms, but the overt behavior may be incongruent with her personal beliefs. Under certain circumstances, behavior prescribed by social norms may not be conducive to the survival of individuals, so evolution endows human beings the ability to embrace personal beliefs that to some degree differ from social norms.

The Ik people are a good example to illustrate the possible discrepancy between social norms and personal norms. The Ik people often try to avoid situations where they have to follow a social norm. As documented by Turnbull (1987), it is clear that these hunter-gatherers had the norm of reciprocity, but they tried hard to avoid being a help-receiver. They would repair their leaking roof at night in order to escape offers to help and future responsibilities to repay the favor. They also hunted in a furtive way in order not to share the bounty with people encountered along the way. In the case of the Ik people, nobody is violating the norm, but everybody is trying to avoid situations where they would have to follow it.

Norms and Conformity I

Human beings are social animals (Aronson, 2003). We constantly interact with others on a daily basis. Social norms establish the boundaries or parameters of acceptable behavior in a group, and they are indispensable for the functioning of a group. Early research in social psychology suggests that in the absence of a social norm, people have the tendency to create one. Sherif (1937) conducted an experiment showing that after repeated public pronouncements, people establish a group norm using information provided by other people’s judgment.

Bicchieri (2005) argues that social norms and conventions are mechanisms to coordinate people’s actions in a group. She maintains that there is a subtle difference between social norms and conventions. Although both social norms and conventions are coordinating device, conventions (which are stable descriptive norms according to Bicchieri) are used to solve a coordination game, while social norms transform social dilemmas into coordination games. In other words, it is consistent with an individual’s interest to follow a convention, while following a social norm may be contradicting with a person’s immediate interest. Traffic rules are a good example of conventions. As long as you know that other people drive on the right according to the convention, you will also want to drive on the right because it fits your personal interest. But being generous and acting fairly toward others, which is prescribed by the social norms, does not square with your personal interest as it incurs material cost or the renunciation of benefit.

Bicchieri’s categorization in my view is not a good one, as it does not really correspond to the essence of social norms. Social norms have a social component in them: you conform to social norms because you want to be liked by others and have a good standing in the group. Whenever an individual thinks about whether her behavior is acceptable by others, she is probably thinking of a social norm. Foot-binding of women in ancient China, as Bicchieri argued, is a convention. No matter how this practice came into existence, it quickly spread to all but the lowest classes, and was accepted as a sign of gentility and an important condition for marriage (Mackie, 1996). It is obvious, however, a woman decides to go through the pains to bind her feet is mainly concerned about the acceptance of others, and for this reason, it is better to treat it as a social norm. Conformity to social norms has a signaling function: it sends signals to others who you are.

Studies on Culture and Social Norms VI

Economists believe that sanctioning is an inherent part of social norms. Fehr and Fischbacher (2004) use third-party punishment to study the functioning and content of social norms. A third party who can take costly action to punish selfish behavior is introduced into the dictator game and the prisoners’ dilemma game. About two thirds of the third parties punished selfish offers of the dictators in a third-party dictator game, and about 60% punished defectors in the prisoners’ dilemma game. Their experiment indicates that third-party sanctions are important for the functioning of social norms. Indeed, it may well be that this third-party punishment itself is prescribed by a social norm.

Social norms can be used to explain some interesting experimental results. Xiao and Houser (2009) found that rejection of unfair offers is significantly less frequent in an ultimatum game when receivers can express their feelings to the proposer. The authors conclude that costly punishment may be just a way to express negative emotions. Using the social norms theory, we can speculate the social norm prescribe to show antipathy when the proposer acts unfairly. When it is possible to use negative emotions to demonstrate an aversion to the unfair behavior, the receiver does not feel necessary to engage in costly punishment. The possibility for the receivers to express negative feelings also makes the proposers more likely to give fair offer, possibly because it exerts focusing influence and draws the attention of the proposers to the social norm.

Xiao and Houser (2005) studied the effect of emotional expression in a one-shot dictator game. Their results confirm that avoiding written expression of disapproval, or negative emotion, plays an important role in promoting fair decision making. Proposers act more generously when the receivers can respond with written messages, although monetary sanctions are more effective when we compare the results from the dictator game and the ultimatum game. These results imply that others' pinion may serve the same function as sanctions in the operation of social norms.