Conditions for the Emergence of Shared Norms in Populations with Incompatible Preferences

Dirk Helbing, Wenjian Yu, Karl-Dieter Opp and Heiko Rauhut

PLOS ONE, 2014, vol. 9, issue 8, 1-14

Abstract: Understanding norms is a key challenge in sociology. Nevertheless, there is a lack of dynamical models explaining how one of several possible behaviors is established as a norm and under what conditions. Analysing an agent-based model, we identify interesting parameter dependencies that imply when two behaviors will coexist or when a shared norm will emerge in a heterogeneous society, where different populations have incompatible preferences. Our model highlights the importance of randomness, spatial interactions, non-linear dynamics, and self-organization. It can also explain the emergence of unpopular norms that do not maximize the collective benefit. Furthermore, we compare behavior-based with preference-based punishment and find interesting results concerning hypocritical punishment. Strikingly, pressuring others to perform the same public behavior as oneself is more effective in promoting norms than pressuring others to meet one’s own private preference. Finally, we show that adaptive group pressure exerted by randomly occuring, local majorities may create norms under conditions where different behaviors would normally coexist.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0104207 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 04207&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0104207

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0104207

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().