The evolution of norms within a society of captives

Chad W. Seagren () and David Skarbek ()
Additional contact information
Chad W. Seagren: Naval Postgraduate School

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, 2021, vol. 16, issue 3, No 4, 529-556

Abstract: Abstract How do norms evolve when people have no choice to opt out of social interactions? One example of such a setting is prison. Past research usually relies on ethnographic work to understand the emergence and maintenance of norms among prisoners. We instead use this rich qualitative literature to inform an agent-based model to demonstrate how norms evolve in response to demographic changes in prison. In the model, agents play a one-shot, though possibly repeated, prisoner’s dilemma with other agents. Agents lack the ability to decline to play with their selected opponent. We consider tag-mediated play and norm enforcement as mechanisms to facilitate prisoner cooperation and to examine the effects of increasing prison populations and increasing ethnic heterogeneity on the maintenance of cooperative norms. We also calibrate the model with empirical data from the California prison system. Parameters of the model correspond to demographic changes between 1951 and 2016, where the size of the prison population increased 14-fold and ethnic heterogeneity by 30%. Simulation results show that such changes dramatically decrease levels of cooperation and compliance. These results are consistent with the actual observed breakdown of the cooperative norms in California prisons.

Keywords: Self-governance; Norms; Prison; Agent-based model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K4 P37 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11403-021-00316-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:jeicoo:v:16:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s11403-021-00316-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ry/journal/11403/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11403-021-00316-7

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination is currently edited by A. Namatame, Thomas Lux and Shu-Heng Chen

More articles in Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination from Springer, Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().