Social norms as rules of social games
Social norms as rules of social games
One of the most interesting aspects of human life is how our behaviour is articulated around social norms that, in many ways can seem arbitrary. People drive on the right of the road in many countries but on the left in others. They shake hands to greet each other in some places, and hug and kiss in others. In some cultures, guests finish their plates when invited for dinner to show appreciation for the meal, while in others they leave food to indicate they were served enough.We are well aware of these differences. The saying “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” reflects our understanding that we should adapt to the local norms to fit in. But what exactly are norms? Why do they matter, how do they shape our behaviour and how do they change? Social norms are one of the most puzzling aspects of human behaviour, often seeming to defy rational explanation. In this post, I’ll show how game theory can provide clear answers to these questions. To discuss social norms, let’s start with what sociology can tell us about them. Unfortunately, some sociologists, like Christine Horne have highlighted the many unanswered questions about social norms.Extract from Christine Horne’s article “Sociological perspectives on the emergence of social norms” (2001)One aspect of social norms emphasised in sociology is that they act as external constraints on our behaviour, originating from society. This view was already proposed by the father of sociology, Emile Durkheim, who aimed to clearly separate the new discipline from psychology by making it clear that there are some things that influence behaviour and are social in nature and external to each individual. He defined “social facts” as:Manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him. - Durkheim (1895)Social norms are such facts. They are rules of behaviour existing in a given social context. These rules are coercive, in part because they are enforced by others when we are found not to respect them. Norms are ordinarily enforced by sanctions, which are either rewards for carrying out those actions regarded as correct or punishments for carrying out those actions regarded as incorrect. - Coleman (1990)In addition to external sanctions, sociologists have argued that norms can become internalised. The sociologist Talcott Parsons is known for stating that individuals internalise the values and the social roles they must conform to in a functional society.A stable system requires above all the internalization of value-orientations to a degree which will sufficiently integrate the goals of the person with the goals of the collectivity. - Parsons and Shils (1951)As a consequence of this internalisation of social norms, people feel psychological pressure to conform to the social roles and expectations ascribed to them. In his discussion of social norms, Jon Elster (1994) pointed out that they are “sustained by the feelings of embarrassment, anxiety, guilt, and shame that a person suffers at the prospect of violating them.”1 In that view, individuals are receptacles of social and cultural elements that shape their personality, behaviour and feelings. There is limited focus on the agency of individuals, their personal desire, their incentives, and their strategies. Instead, the focus is on the social constraints that shape their actions and beliefs. The feeling of autonomy, the idea that we do what we want in our lives is largely an illusion.We are the victims of an illusion which leads us to believe we have ourselves produced what has been imposed upon us externally. - Durkheim (1895)These views have influenced the discourse on social norms. Individuals are often described either as naive social pawns following blindly arbitrary rules or as unhappy victims of the coercion that “society” puts on them. This way of seeing social norms permeates public discussions when existing norms are being criticised. One example is gender norms which are often described as external constraints imposed by society.This vision, however, raises a range of questions. How does “society” create norms? Why are these norms here instead of others? How does society drill these norms into our heads and make us feel bad for deviating from them? Why would people be so naive and lack agency in regard to social norms? How to explain that people may be so compliant at following some norms, while they can be very apt at finding ways not to follow other norms like when they engage in tax avoidance or speed on the road?2 These questions can be answered and it is possible to make sense of the features of social norms by adopting a richer vision of social behaviour that emphasises the agency of individuals.The nature and functioning of social norms are considerably clarified using insights from game theory. There is a compelling body of literature that describes and discusses social norms as equilibria of social games. As I have discussed in a previous post, an equilibrium in game theory is a situation where, given what everybody else is doing, you do not have an interest in changing your actions.The philosopher David Lewis, was among the first scholars to approach social norms as equilibria from a game-theoretic standpoint, in his influential book, Convention (1969).He sees social conventions as solutions to coordination games. A typical example is the choice of driving on one side of the road. Drivers are better off driving on the same side to avoid collisions. For arbitrary reasons, a country may have adopted one side instead of the other as a convention. It is then in the interest of every driver to follow this convention and not deviate. You may think that we drive on one side of the road because it is the law. But laws only work if they reflect a social convention. It is easy to establish a law that enshrines a previously existing convention. But governments who try to implement new laws deviating from existing conventions typically find it very difficult (Basu, 2018).3In a driving game, either driving on the right or left (with the expectation that others will do the same) effectively resolves the problem. A shared social norm of driving on a particular side aids the coordination of expectations and behaviour. The norm may have originated from random precedents and gradually become established as a convention.Coordination games are everywhere when you think about it. This is partly because successful interactions with others require some degree of shared intentionality (O'Madagain and Tomasello, 2022). That is, we need a common understanding of the situation and a common understanding that this understanding is shared by other people. We also need an understanding of the likely intentions of other people and how other people’s actions inform us about their intentions. Similarly, we need to be confident that they understand our intentions and understand how our actions signal our intentions.The social norms that pervade our social interactions are therefore not “arbitrary” in that sense. They are good solutions that greatly facilitate social interactions and remove doubts and uncertainties that would act as frictions limiting our ability to quickly navigate social situations. Social norms allow us to seamlessly do things that are much more complex than they look, like walking in a crowded public space, ordering a meal in a restaurant, and taking turns talking in meetings. Seeing somebody violating a norm, breaks our expectations about this person’s behaviour. Even if the violation is small it may raise reasonable concerns: what else may this person be doing next? It is why minor deviations of social norms often generate feelings of awkwardness, sometimes creepiness. “Social experiment” videos where people violate social norms are a subgenre on Youtube. Here a person stares continuously at other people in public places, generating uneasy reactions.The game theorist Ken Binmore (2005) extended this logic to norms of fairness which determine who should get what in social situations where benefits and costs have to be shared among people. A key insight from game theory is that substantial gains can often be secured from sustained cooperation in repeated interactions. However, the manner in which these gains can be shared is not uniquely determined. Technically, there are many efficient equilibria, where players could agree to share the gains from cooperation and consequently be better off than not cooperating. However, some of these agreements would lead to a very unequal division, with one player receiving a disproportionately larger share of the benefits. To successfully sustain cooperation, people must agree on how to divide the gains from such collaboration.Binmore points out that fairness norms are helping us to do exactly this. These norms function as conventions that facilitate coordination and the selection of one of the efficient equilibria. The “fair” way to share benefits and costs is just one of many possible means of dividing gains. It is the option we commonly agree to settle on, and it is the one we expect others to consent to. Our willingness to accept it and our shared expectations that others will also comply help us to coordinate swiftly without needing to renegotiate each time.In Natural Justice (2005), Binmore considers two hypothetical individuals, Adam and Eve, who can repeatedly cooperate as long as they agree on how to share the gains from cooperation. An agreement—to cooperate and share the gains from cooperation—where neither Adam nor Eve can improve their material payoff is “efficient”. There are many such situations. A shared norm of fairness can help Adam and Eve select one of the efficient equilibria without having to negotiate or fight over it.Fairness norms are ubiquitous. They pervade our social interactions and help us solve problems like: Deciding which child should get the cherry on the top of the cake (“Your brother is the youngest, we’ll give it to him”); Deciding who should get praise in collective endeavours (“Susan should be particularly congratulated on the amount of work she put into this project”); Deciding who should have a say in collective decisions (“The inhabitants of Smallville had to be consulted as this highway project would impact their community”). From understanding norms as equilibria of social games, we recover and explain key aspects of norms discussed in sociology:Norms are external to individuals because equilibria emerge as social configurations that are usually beyond the control of each individual. Norms constrain individual behaviour because they come with social rewards for compliance and penalties for deviations. We are those creating the corresponding rewards and penalties because it is in our interest to be seen as invested in shared norms and not to be seen as condoning norm violations. Norms are therefore self-enforcing because enforcement is part of the norm. 4 This perspective also helps solve the puzzles about social norms.People are not social pawns who follow social norms blindly. Instead, they react to the social rewards and penalties they can expect from their actions.The psychological strain felt when violating norms has a function. The feelings of shame and guilt act as the shadow costs of the risks of future social penalties (Gilbert 2003;  Sznycer, et al. 2016). They help us to anticipate the external risks of being found violating social norms in terms of loss of reputation and material punishment.5 Norms (and the psychological cost of deviating from them) are not created and imposed by something called “society”. Instead, they are stable configurations of expectations and behaviours that perpetuate themselves because each individual has an interest to have these expectations and adopt these behaviours. They are de facto rules of the social games we play, and—typically—no one either created them in the past or controls them now.An essential insight in considering social norms as equilibria is that they are not necessarily “good”. The origin of social norms can be accidental in nature and their effect might be collectively harmful.Note that being an equilibrium does not make a social norm good or efficient; there are lots of bad equilibria around. It simply means that the expectations and actions of all the parties concerned are consistent, or that their expectations are self-fulfilling. - Bicchieri (2005)In that case, society would benefit from changing norms, but such changes can be hard as people don’t have an interest in altering their behaviour until others do likewise. Understanding norms as equilibria helps us understand how norms can be changed.The view that people are naively driven by social norms may result in support for a paternalistic approach to behavioural alteration, guided by supposedly more informed actors like government officials. Yet evidence on interventions targeting social norm change shows that merely instructing people about the “better” behaviours they should adopt often fails (Tankard and Paluck, 2016). Changing norms necessitates a collective shift in expectations and behaviours which can be difficult to achieve. People may reasonably balk at the idea of being the first mover as they face the risk of being penalised for deviating from the existing norm, without gaining benefits from the new norm in case it does not catch on. This aspect of norms explains the way they change: norms tend to be sticky most of the time, but they tend to change quickly when they do change.The process will tend to exhibit long periods of stasis in which it is close to some equilibrium, punctuated by relatively brief periods in which the equilibrium shifts in response to stochastic shocks. We call this the punctuated equilibrium effect.  Young (1998)The histories of both the legalisation of marijuana in the USA and the legalisation of same-sex marriages illustrate how norms can appear almost immutable for extended periods, only to change swiftly later on.The evolution of the legalisation of marijuana in US states: social norms can seem immutable for a long time, and then eventually change very quickly.A quick change of social norms is typically associated with a change of the beliefs and preferences of a large proportion of people, in favour of the new norm. This evolution is in line with the view that individuals’ internalised beliefs and behaviour do not exist because they are imposed by “society” for norms to persist. Instead, norms persist as social equilibria, and individuals have incentives to uphold beliefs and preferences that align with the existing norms. When social norms do change, people have an interest to align their beliefs and preferences with the new norm. People can prove very flexible and able to do so.  How Americans’ attitude towards the legalisation of marijuana has quickly shifted once it became legalised in most US states.The understanding that people are not naively following social norms adds another reason to have some scepticism toward paternalistic external interventions. Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom (1990) made the point that people are not helpless at solving social problems. On the contrary, social groups can be very good at setting up effective norms through collective discussion and self-organisation. The possibility to discuss and negotiate collectively a new norm can be pivotal to facilitate a shift in social norms. Locally negotiated norms frequently produce better outcomes than externally imposed rules by government officials.The nature of norms as equilibria also helps explain why group leaders, role models and people highly connected socially can have a much larger impact on the change in social norms than the average person (e.g. Paluck and Shepherd 2012). These effects are likely not primarily because people blindly follow leaders, but rather because leaders and role models can act as coordination mechanisms that help people trust that others will synchronously change their behaviour and expectations.Whether leaders know what they are doing better than their followers or not, they can be very useful to a society as a coordinating device for solving the equilibrium selection problem. - Binmore (2001)In summary, viewing social norms as equilibria of social games helps us understand their features—why they are stable and how they constrain individual behaviour through rewards for compliance and penalties for deviations. It also enlightens us on why society can sometimes be mired in undesirable social norms and how these norms can evolve. Most importantly, it portrays people not as mere automatons living with an illusory sense of autonomy but as individuals primarily interested in successfully navigating social interactions. When social norms change, people can adapt with notable agility. In essence, people are not social pawns; they are players of social games, though they (mostly) do not set the games’ rules.This post is part of a series on how game theory helps us make sense of a wide range of social behaviours. In previous posts, I wrote a quick introduction to game theory, and I showed how it is strikingly effective at explaining tennis players’ strategies. You can subscribe to receive future posts. ReferencesBasu, K., 2018. The republic of beliefs: A new approach to law and economics. Princeton university press.Bicchieri, C., 2005. The grammar of society: The nature and dynamics of social norms. Cambridge University Press.Binmore, K., 2001. Natural justice and political stability. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, pp.133-151.Binmore, K., 2005. Natural justice. Oxford university press.Binmore, K., 2022. Thinking about social norms. 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