Explaining Norms

This book presents the concept of norms by four different philosophers. They discuss how norms emerge, persist, change, and how they serve to explain what we do.

Social norms are rules that prescribe what people should and should not do given their social surroundings and circumstances. Norms instruct people to keep their promises, to drive on the right, or to abide by the golden rule. They are useful explanatory tools, employed to analyze phenomena as grand as international diplomacy and as mundane as the rules of the road. But our knowledge of norms is scattered across disciplines and research traditions, with no clear consensus on how the term should be used. Research on norms has focused on the content and the consequences of norms, without paying enough attention to their causes. Social Norms reaches across the disciplines of sociology, economics, game theory, and legal studies to provide a well-integrated theoretical and empirical account of how norms emerge, change, persist, or die out. Social Norms opens with a critical review of the many outstanding issues in the research on norms: When are norms simply devices to ease cooperation, and when do they carry intrinsic moral weight? Do norms evolve gradually over time or spring up spontaneously as circumstances change? The volume then turns to case studies on the birth and death of norms in a variety of contexts, from protest movements, to marriage, to mushroom collecting. The authors detail the concrete social processes, such as repeated interactions, social learning, threats and sanctions, that produce, sustain, and enforce norms. One case study explains how it can become normative for citizens to participate in political protests in times of social upheaval. Another case study examines how the norm of objectivity in American journalism emerged: Did it arise by consensus as the professional creed of the press corps, or was it imposed upon journalists by their employers? A third case study examines the emergence of the norm of national self-determination: has it diffused as an element of global culture, or was it imposed by the actions of powerful states? The book concludes with an examination of what we know of norm emergence, highlighting areas of agreement and points of contradiction between the disciplines. Norms may be useful in explaining other phenomena in society, but until we have a coherent theory of their origins we have not truly explained norms themselves. Social Norms moves us closer to a true understanding of this ubiquitous feature of social life.

The author explores why a large number of international organizations adopted sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa despite strategic and economic interests that had fostered strong ties with it in the past. She argues that the emergence of the norm of racial equality is the reason.

In this new edition of his critically acclaimed book, Jon Elster examines the nature of social behavior, proposing choice as the central concept of the social sciences. Extensively revised throughout, the book offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms, drawing on many case studies and experiments to explore the nature of explanation in the social sciences; an analysis of the mental states - beliefs, desires, and emotions - that are precursors to action; a systematic comparison of rational-choice models of behavior with alternative accounts, and a review of mechanisms of social interaction ranging from strategic behavior to collective decision making. A wholly new chapter includes an exploration of classical moralists and Proust in charting mental mechanisms operating 'behind the back' of the agent, and a new conclusion points to the pitfalls and fallacies in current ways of doing social science, proposing guidelines for more modest and more robust procedures.

Large scale behavioral interventions work in some social contexts, but fail in others. The book explains this phenomenon with diverse personal and social behavioral motives, guided by research in economics, psychology, and international consulting done with UNICEF. The book offers tested tools that mobilize mass media, community groups, and autonomous "first movers" (or trendsetters) to alter harmful collective behaviors.

The philosopher Cristina Bicchieri here develops her theory of social norms, most recently explained in her 2006 volume The Grammar of Society. Bicchieri challenges many of the fundamental assumptions of the social sciences. She argues that when it comes to human behavior, social scientists place too much stress on rational deliberation. In fact, many choices occur without much deliberation at all. Bicchieri's theory accounts for these automatic components of behavior, where individuals react automatically to cues--those cues often pointing to the social norms that govern our choices in a social world Bicchieri's work has broad implications not only for understanding human behavior, but for changing it for better outcomes. People have a strong conditional preference for following social norms, but that also means manipulating those norms (and the underlying social expectations) can produce beneficial behavioral changes. Bicchieri's recent work with UNICEF has explored the applicability of her views to issues of human rights and well-being. Is it possible to change social expectations around forced marriage, genital mutilations, and public health practices like vaccinations and sanitation? If so, how? What tools might we use? This short book explores how social norms work, and how changing them--changing preferences, beliefs, and especially social expectations--can potentially improve lives all around the world.

We spend a great deal of time learning our vocations and avocations as we work at jobs, participate in home life, and take part in civic activities and politics. In doing so, we engage in practices that consist of complex bodies of norms. These practices themselves are bodies of knowledge-often acquired from others-about what we take to be good ways or right ways to do certain things. As we learn how to solve problems and act on this knowledge, the practice itself changes. In Norms and Practices, James D. Wallace shows that norms of all kinds, including ethical norms, are intensely social constructs learned through constant interaction with others. Wallace suggests that ethical norms have long been misunderstood as practice-independent prescriptions for behavior; he regards them instead as items of practical knowledge that are constituents of practices. We are given the luxury of learning from others' mistakes and successes, often in a very informal way. Such lessons from collective or individual experience often carry more weight than do pronouncements from an external source. Wallace shows that practices and norms, including ethical norms within such spheres as biomedical research, family life, and politics, continually change as practitioners face novel problems.

The people of Myanmar were struck by three major human rights disasters during the country's period of democratization from 2003 to 2012: the 2007 Saffron Revolution, the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, and the 2012 Rakhine riots, which would evolve into the ongoing Rohingya crisis. These events saw Myanmar's government categorically labeled as an offender of human rights, and three powerful Southeast Asian member states—Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia—responded to the violations in very different ways. In each case, their responses to the crises were explicitly shaped by norm conflict, which may be understood as a tension between international and domestic norms. Their reactions were compelled by a need to address conflicting domestic and international expectations for norm compliance regarding human rights protection and non-interference in internal affairs. In Norms in Conflict: Southeast Asia's Response to Human Rights Violations in Myanmar, Anchalee Rüland makes sense of state action that occurs when a governing body is faced with a circumstance that is at once in line with and contrary to its own governing policies. She defines five different types of response strategies to situations of norm conflict and examines the enabling factors that lead to each strategy. Domestic norms are known to evolve as a country's values change over time yet Rüland argues that the old and new norms may also coexist; knowledge of the underlying political context is crucial for those seeking a solid understanding of state behavior. Norms in Conflict challenges the conventional understanding of the logic of consequences in determining state behavior, advancing constructivist theory and establishing a provocative new conversation in international relations discourse.

We use this review of Explaining Norms (Oxford University Press, 2013) by Geoffrey Brennan, Lina Eriksson, Robert Goodin, and Nicholas Southwood (BEGS) as an occasion to question the predominant definition of norms among legal scholars and empirical researchers. Part I discusses two foundational questions about norms: what are they, and what is it to comply with them? We identify BEGS's key insights into these questions and some problems with their analysis. Part II sets out the leading definition of norms in the legal literature, which we call “reductive behaviorism.” Reductive behaviorism sees norms primarily as patterns or regularities of behavior. An implication of this definition is that to behave in accordance with a norm is to comply with it. Part III deploys BEGS's insights about norm compliance to identify two important phenomena that reductive behaviorism leaves out. First, reductive behaviorism denies that norms could concern anything other than externally manifest behaviors, such as patterns of deliberation. However, many norms do concern deliberation, so reductive behaviorism cannot describe how these norms operate. Second, complying with certain norms requires not only that someone behave and deliberate in accordance with the norm, but also that the norms factor into the agent's deliberations. In these cases, to use BEGS's terminology, compliance requires following a norm, rather than merely conforming to it. Yet, reductive behaviorism cannot appreciate any meaningful difference between conforming to and following a norm, let alone explain why some norms must be followed. The predominant view of norms thus fails on its own terms. Reductive behaviorism provides an incomplete picture of how norms work. While certain of BEGS's conclusions strike us as incorrect, their insights can help remedy these conceptual deficiencies in legal scholarship and inspire improvements in the empirical study of norms.

Social norms are rules that prescribe what people should and should not do given their social surroundings and circumstances. Norms instruct people to keep their promises, to drive on the right, or to abide by the golden rule. They are useful explanatory tools, employed to analyze phenomena as grand as international diplomacy and as mundane as the rules of the road. But our knowledge of norms is scattered across disciplines and research traditions, with no clear consensus on how the term should be used. Research on norms has focused on the content and the consequences of norms, without paying enough attention to their causes. Social Norms reaches across the disciplines of sociology, economics, game theory, and legal studies to provide a well-integrated theoretical and empirical account of how norms emerge, change, persist, or die out. Social Norms opens with a critical review of the many outstanding issues in the research on norms: When are norms simply devices to ease cooperation, and when do they carry intrinsic moral weight? Do norms evolve gradually over time or spring up spontaneously as circumstances change? The volume then turns to case studies on the birth and death of norms in a variety of contexts, from protest movements, to marriage, to mushroom collecting. The authors detail the concrete social processes, such as repeated interactions, social learning, threats and sanctions, that produce, sustain, and enforce norms. One case study explains how it can become normative for citizens to participate in political protests in times of social upheaval. Another case study examines how the norm of objectivity in American journalism emerged: Did it arise by consensus as the professional creed of the press corps, or was it imposed upon journalists by their employers? A third case study examines the emergence of the norm of national self-determination: has it diffused as an element of global culture, or was it imposed by the actions of powerful states? The book concludes with an examination of what we know of norm emergence, highlighting areas of agreement and points of contradiction between the disciplines. Norms may be useful in explaining other phenomena in society, but until we have a coherent theory of their origins we have not truly explained norms themselves. Social Norms moves us closer to a true understanding of this ubiquitous feature of social life.