Norms, preferences, and conditional behavior

Politics, Philosophy and Economics

Volumn 9, Issue 3, 2010, Pages 297-313

  Bicchieri, Cristina ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Bayesian games; Evolutionary models; Expectations; Experimental games; Personal norms; Social norms

Indexed keywords

EID: 77955910649     PISSN: 1470594X     EISSN: 17413060     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1470594X10369276     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. C. Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
2. C. Bicchieri and A. Chavez, 'Behaving as Expected: Public Information and Fairness Norms', Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 2 (2010): 161-78
3. C. Bicchieri and R. Muldoon, 'Competing for Fairness', mimeo (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2010)
4. C. Bicchieri and E. Xiao, 'Do the Right Thing: But Only If Others Do So', Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 22 (2009): 191-208
5. C. Bicchieri, E. Xiao and R. Muldoon, 'Trust If You Wish, Always Reciprocate', Politics, Philosophy and Economics (forthcoming).
6. Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 11.
7. Having conditional preferences implies having a plurality of rank orderings. However, a challenge faced by any such theory is to model how preferences are indexed to classes of situations. For example, if my preference for following a fairness norm depends upon having certain beliefs, I may prefer x to y in a class of situations in which those beliefs are met, and y to x otherwise. Modeling an agent's different preference orderings is complicated by the fact that, due to threshold dependency, we are dealing with discontinuous functions.
8. See Bicchieri and Chavez, 'Behaving as Expected'.
9. It was also common knowledge that proposers, at the end of each game, would not be told the outcome of the game they played. Finally, players were paid for two out of three games, and the games to be paid for were randomly decided at the end of the experimental session.
10. Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 21.
11. Italo Calvino, (1951). The Nonexistent Knight and the Cloven Viscount. Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore.
12. S. Nichols, 'Emotions, Norms, and the Genealogy of Fairness' (in this issue). 9. The trend is the same in the salient condition, in which we ask participants questions about what they think the responders believe is fair. In this treatment, there are more (5,5) and less (8,2) choices, but still the large majority of (8,2) choices is concentrated in the limited information condition.
13. Bicchieri and Xiao, 'Do the Right Thing'.
14. In our experiment, we gave different information to different groups of subjects before they made an allocation choice in a dictator game. A group was told that a majority of subjects in a previous experiment made a fair choice (FC); another group was told that a majority of subjects in a previous experiment made a selfish choice (SC); a third group was told that a majority of subjects in a previous experiment believed that one should make a fair choice (FB); a fourth group was told that a majority of subjects in a previous experiment believed that one should make a selfish choice (SB); and the last two groups were given conflicting information. One group was told that a majority of subjects in a previous experiment believed that one should make a fair choice, but a majority of subjects in another experiment made a selfish choice (SC + FB). The last group was told that a majority of subjects in a previous experiment believed that one should make a selfish choice, but a majority of subjects in another experiment made a fair choice (FC + SB).
15. Bicchieri and Chavez, 'Behaving as Expected'.
16. N. Elias, The History of Manners (New York: Pantheon, 1978)
17. G. Mackie, 'Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account', American Sociological Review 6 (1996): 999-1017.
18. A.G. Sanfey, J.K. Rilling, J.A. Aronson, L.E. Nystrom and J.D. Cohen, 'The Neural Basis of Economic Decision-making in the Ultimatum Game', Science 300 (2003): 755-8.
19. S. Harris, S. Sheth and M.S. Cohen, 'Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief, and Uncertainty', Annals of Neurology 63 (2008): 141-7.
20. M. Spitzer, U. Fischbacher, B. Herrnberger, G. Gron and E. Fehr, 'The Neural Signature of Social Norm Compliance', Neuron 56 (2007): 185-96.
21. Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 94.
22. J. Henrich et al. (editors), Foundations of Human Sociality: Ethnography and Experiments in 15 Small-scale Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
23. A norm can also be instantiated by a set of strategies that are phenotypically similar. So there can be a one-to-many relationship between norms and equilibria. See C. Bicchieri, J. Duffy and G. Tolle, 'Trust Among Strangers', Philosophy of Science 71 (2004): 1-34.
24. Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 26.
25. In a typical Bayesian game, nature picks player types with a given probability, and players are assumed to share such 'common priors'. See J. Harsanyi, 'Games with Incomplete Information Played by "Bayesian" Players', Parts I-III, Management Science 14 (1967-68): 159-82, 320-34, 486-502. In our case, we may think of shared scripts providing common priors.
26. The utility function I introduced tells us that, for a sufficiently high k (a parameter that measures one's norm sensitivity), the trustee will prefer to reciprocate. See Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 52.
27. Note that the probability value.67 can be understood as the 'risk factor' of the (T, N) equilibrium. Clearly, such an equilibrium is more risky than the (NT, NN) equilibrium.
28. The aggregate results show that the large majority of first movers transfer some money, but only close to 50 percent of second movers reciprocate (by giving back at least the amount sent). For example, Berg et al. found that 30 out of 32 first movers transferred some money, whereas only 14 out of 30 second movers gave back at least the transfer amount. See J. Berg, J. Dickhaut and K. McCabe, 'Trust, Reciprocity and Social History', Games and Economic Behavior 10 (1995): 122-42.
29. Bicchieri et al., 'Trust If You Wish, Always Reciprocate'.
30. Bicchieri, Xiao and Muldoon (2009) 'Trust If You Wish, Always Reciprocate'
31. H. Gintis, 'Social Norms as Choreography' (in this issue).
32. The common priors and common knowledge assumptions are rather severe constraints imposed on solution concepts. My model is much more general in terms of information conditions. In particular, my definition of social norms has the advantage of not assuming common knowledge on the part of the players. A norm only requires players to have mutual expectations (empirical and normative), and no assumption is made about how such expectations are formed or justified.
33. P. Vanderschraaf, 'Convention as Correlated Equilibrium', Erkenntnis 42 (1995): 65-87
34. P. Vanderschraaf, 'Knowledge, Equilibrium and Convention', Erkenntnis 49 (1998): 337-69.
35. Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, p. 38.
36. B. Skyrms and K.J.S. Zollman, 'Evolutionary Considerations in the Framing of Social Norms' (in this issue).
37. S.B. Ball and C. Eckel, 'The Economic Value of Status', Journal of Socio-Economics 4 (1998): 495-514.
38. Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, pp. 81 ff.
39. It may also be the case that different people may have different partitions, so even the assumption of common partitions is questionable.
40. Bicchieri and Muldoon, 'Competing for Fairness'.
41. B. Skyrms, The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
42. J.M. Alexander, The Structural Evolution of Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
43. Bicchieri et al., 'Trust Among Strangers'.
44. Bicchieri, The Grammar of Society, Ch. 6.
45. Ibid., p. 52.