 Social conformity under evolving private preferencesGames and Economic Behavior, 2021, vol. 128, issue C, 104-124 Abstract: We propose a model of social norms changing in response to evolving privately held preferences. Our aim is to rationalize the tendency for individuals who hold minority preferences to take actions favored by the majority. We do this using a game involving a tension between a desire to act according to one's underlying preferences and a desire to conform to the majority opinion. We find that even after a majority of the population shares what was previously a minority opinion, members of the new majority are slow to change their behavior. The timing and speed with which behavior transitions to match new, majority-held opinions depends on the size of the reward for conformity. When the rewards for conformity are low, the transition is gradual, with considerable periods of costly public disagreement. When the rewards for conformity are high, transitions are slow to start but conclude rapidly once they begin. Keywords: Conflict; Conformity; Social change; Hypocrisy; Insincerity; Groupthink; Pluralistic ignorance; Preference falsification; Experimental economics (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:128:y:2021:i:c:p:104-124 DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2021.04.005 Access Statistics for this article Games and Economic Behavior is currently edited by E. Kalai More articles in Games and Economic Behavior from Elsevier |
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