Studies on Culture and Social Norms II

One way to understand the functioning of social norms is to study behavioral differences across cultures. In the area of experimental economics, several cross-culture experiments have been conducted, the results of which show how culture can make a difference in individual behavior. Roth et al. (1991) conducted a cross-cultural experiment, comparing related two person bargaining game and multi-person market environment in Japan, Yugoslavia, Israel, and the United States. While the market outcomes converged to equilibrium, the outcomes in the bargaining game varied greatly across culture: the Japanese and Israeli offers are lower, but rejection rates are not higher in these two countries. The similar rejection rates indicate that countries have different sharing norms as to what constitutes a reasonable offer and those norms are well accepted in each country.

Henrich et al. (2001) ran an experiment using ultimatum game in 15 small societies. Their results reveal dramatic differences across cultures: in some societies, people show rational behavior predicted by traditional game theory, and in other societies “hyper-fair” offers are common, which can be interpreted as competitive gift-giving insults. Average offers in each society are strongly correlated with the degree of market integration. Contrary to most people would expect, in cultures with the most market integration, people exhibit more prosocial behavior. This implies that either market experience gives rise to norms of equal division or the norms of fairness promote the development of markets. Henrich et al. (2006) uses ultimatum game and third-party punishment game to study punishing behavior in the same 15 societies. They find that although people from all societies show some willingness to take costly action to punish unfair behavior, the magnitude of the punishment varies a lot across cultures. They also find that costly punishment is positively correlated with altruistic behavior across societies. The study of Henrich et al. (2010) shows that community size positively correlated with punishment and participation in religion is also likely to be associated with fairness. Using third-party dictator game played in 12 societies, Marlowe et al. (2008) also show that people from a larger and more complex society are more likely to engage in “altruistic” punishment. These results suggest that prosocial behavior is not just the product of an inherent psychology but also shaped by norms and institutions that have evolved over the human history.

Buchan et al. (2006) examine cultural difference using a trust game. The game was played in China, Japan, Korea and the United States. They asked the participants to fill out a questionnaire in order to get a measure of their cultural orientation (collectivist or individualist) in the context of the trust game. Their data show that people from different countries exhibit different level of other-regarding behavior: Chinese are most trusting and trustworthy while the Japanese are least so 7. Also, the influence of social distance on a person’s other-regarding behavior varies across country. This implies that individual’s cultural orientation may interact with other factors to influence behavior.