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.