Giulia Andrighetto : Norm change and cooperation under collective risk in a long-term experiment
DySoC / Exeter Webinar Series
Evolution and Social Systems
The Center for the Dynamics of Social Complexity and Exeter is happy to announce a series of free webinars for Fall 2021 on Evolution and Social Systems. This series is a continuation of the past semester seminars: DySoC/NIMBioS Webinar Series on Cultural Evolution and DySoC/NIMBioS Webinar Series on Human Origins and Cultural Evolution.
https://www.dysoc.org/ess_webinars
Speaker: Giulia Andrighetto (Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC) at CNR, Malardalen University, Vasteras, Sweden)
Topic: Norm change and cooperation under collective risk in a long-term experiment
Abstract: Social norms are a crucial part of the solution to our most pressing societal challenges, from mitigating climate change to reducing the spread of infectious diseases. Despite their relevance, how norms shape cooperation among strangers is still insufficiently understood. Influential theories suggest that the level of exogenous threats faced by different societies plays a key role in the strength of the norms that different cultures have evolved. Still causal evidence of exogenous threats on norms has not been so far collected. Here we deal with this dual challenge using a 30-day collective-risk social dilemma experiment to observe and measure norm change in a controlled setting. We ask whether a looming but uncertain collective catastrophe changes the strength of the social norms of cooperation that may avert it. We find that social norms predict cooperation and causally affect behavior. We also provide the first empirical demonstration that higher risk spontaneously lead to stronger social norms and that, when the risk changes, stronger social norms are more resistant to erosion. Still, the foreseeable loosening of norms in low risk settings has important policy implications. Taken together, our results demonstrate the causal effect of social norms in promoting cooperation and their role in making behavior resilient in the face of exogenous change.
The seminar series is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the European Research Council.
(European Research Council (ERC) funding awarded to Thomas Currie under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (The Cultural Evolution & Ecology of Institutions, grant agreement no. 716212).)