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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
| By: | Fabian Winter (Max-Planck Institute of Economics, Jena); Mitesh Kataria (Max-Planck Institute of Economics, Jena) |
| Abstract: | We study the existence of homophily (i.e. the tendency for people to make friends with people who are similar to themselves) with respect to trustworthiness. We ask whether two friends show similarly trustworthy behavior towards strangers, and whether this is anticipated by outsiders. We develop a simple model of bayesian learning in trust games and test the derived hypotheses in a controlled laboratory environment. In the experiment, two trustees sequentially play a trust game with the same trustor, where the trustees depending on treatmen are either friends or strangers to each other. We affirm the existence of homophily with re- spect to trustworthiness. Trustors' beliefs about the trustees' trustfulness are not affected by the knowledge about the (non-)existent friendship between the trustees. Behaviorally, however, they indirectly reciprocate the (un-)trustworthy behavior of one trustee towards his/her friends in later interactions. |
| Keywords: | social networks, homophily, trust, friendship, indirect tit-for-tat |
| JEL: | C92 D83 J24 J40 |
| Date: | 2013–10–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jrp:jrpwrp:2013-044&r=soc |
| By: | FORSTER, Manuel (Université catholique de Louvain, CORE, Belgium; CES, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France); MAULEON, Ana (Université catholique de Louvain, CORE, Belgium; CEREC, Université Saint-Louis, Bruxelles, Belgium); VANNETELBOSCH, Vincent (Université catholique de Louvain, CORE, Belgium; CEREC, Université Saint-Louis, Bruxelles, Belgium) |
| Abstract: | We investigate the role of manipulation in a model of opinion formation where agents have opinions about some common question of interest. Agents repeatedly communicate with their neighbors in the social network, can exert some effort to manipulate the trust of others, and update their opinions taking weighted averages of neighbors’ opinions. The incentives to manipulate are given by the agents’ preferences. We show that manipulation can modify the trust structure and lead to a connected society, and thus, make the society reaching a consensus. Manipulation fosters opinion leadership, but the manipulated agent may even gain influence on the long-run opinions. In sufficiently homophilic societies, manipulation accelerates (slows down) convergence if it decreases (increases) homophily. Finally, we investigate the tension between information aggregation and spread of misinformation. We find that if the ability of the manipulating agent is weak and the agents underselling (overselling) their information gain (lose) overall influence, then manipulation reduces misinformation and agents converge jointly to more accurate opinions about some underlying true state. |
| Keywords: | social networks, trust, manipulation, opinion leadership, consensus, wisdom of crowds |
| JEL: | D83 D85 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–09–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cor:louvco:2013050&r=soc |
| By: | Pauline Grosjean (School of Economics, Australian School of Business, the University of New South Wales) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses new micro-level evidence from a nationally representative survey of 39,500 individuals in 35 countries to shed light on how individual experiences of conflict shape political and social preferences. The investigation covers World War II and recent civil conflict. Overwhelmingly, the results point to the negative and enduring legacy of war-related violence on political trust and perceived effectiveness of national institutions, although the effects are heterogeneous across different types (external vs. internal) and outcomes (victory vs. defeat) of conflict. Conflict spurs collective action, but of a dark nature, one associated with further erosion of social and political trust. |
| Keywords: | Conflict, social capital, state capacity, Europe, Caucasus, Central Asia |
| JEL: | N24 O57 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:swe:wpaper:2013-29&r=soc |
| By: | John E. Roemer (Dept. of Political Science, Yale University) |
| Abstract: | Although evidence accrues in biology, anthropology and experimental economics that homo sapiens is a cooperative species, the reigning assumption in economic theory is that individuals optimize in an autarkic manner (as in Nash and Walrasian equilibrium). I here postulate a cooperative kind of optimizing behavior, called Kantian. It is shown that in simple economic models, when there are negative externalities (such as congestion effects from use of a commonly owned resource) or positive externalities (such as a social ethos reflected in individuals’ preferences), Kantian equilibria dominate Nash-Walras equilibria in terms of efficiency. While economists schooled in Nash equilibrium may view the Kantian behavior as utopian, there is some -- perhaps much -- evidence that it exists. If cultures evolve through group selection, the hypothesis that Kantian behavior is more prevalent than we may think is supported by the efficiency results here demonstrated. |
| Keywords: | Kantian equilibrium, Social ethos, Implementation |
| JEL: | D60 D62 D64 C70 H30 |
| Date: | 2012–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1854r&r=soc |
| By: | Liu, Elaine M. (University of Houston); Meng, Juanjuan (Peking University); Wang, Joseph Tao-yi (National Taiwan University) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates how Confucianism affects individual decision making in Taiwan and in China. We found that Chinese subjects in our experiments became less accepting of Confucian values, such that they became significantly more risk loving, less loss averse, and more impatient after being primed with Confucianism, whereas Taiwanese subjects became significantly less present-based and were inclined to be more trustworthy after being primed by Confucianism. Combining the evidence from the incentivized laboratory experiments and subjective survey measures, we found evidence that Chinese subjects and Taiwanese subjects reacted differently to Confucianism. |
| Keywords: | social norm, Confucianism, time preferences, risk aversion, trust |
| JEL: | C91 Z10 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7684&r=soc |
| By: | Brañas-Garza, Pablo (Middlesex University Business School, London); Espín, Antonio M. (Universidad de Granada); Neuman, Shoshana (Bar-Ilan University) |
| Abstract: | This study explores the effect of several personal religion-related variables on social behaviour, using three paradigmatic economic games: the dictator (DG), ultimatum (UG), and trust (TG) games. A large carefully designed sample of a Spanish urban adult population (N=766) is employed. From participants' decisions in these games we obtain measures of altruism, bargaining behaviour and sense of fairness/equality, trust, and positive reciprocity. Three dimensions of religiosity are examined: (i) religious denomination; (ii) the intensity of religiosity, measured by active participation at church services; and (iii) converting out into a different denomination than the one raised in. The major results are: (i) individuals with "no religion" made decisions closer to rational selfish behaviour in the DG and the UG compared to those who affiliate with a "standard" religious denomination; (ii) among Catholics, intensity of religiosity is the key variable that affects social behaviour insofar as religiously-active individuals are generally more pro-social than non-active ones; and (iii) the religion raised in seems to have no effect on pro-sociality, beyond the effect of the current measures of religiosity. Importantly, behaviour in the TG is not predicted by any of the religion-related variables we analyse. Given the accelerating share of "no religion" individuals (in Europe and elsewhere) and the large influx of immigrants – who tend to be more religiously active compared to the native populations – our findings have significant implications for the future pro-sociality patterns in Europe. |
| Keywords: | church attendance, religion, economic experiments, pro-social behaviour, Spain |
| JEL: | C7 C9 Z12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7683&r=soc |
| By: | Olivetti, Claudia (Boston University); Patacchini, Eleonora (Sapienza University of Rome); Zenou, Yves (Stockholm University) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores a novel mechanism of gender identity formation. Specifically, we explore how the work behavior of a teenager's own mother, as well as that of her friends' mothers, affect her work decisions in adulthood. The first mechanism is commonly included in economic models. The second, which in social psychology is also emphasized as an important factor in gender identity formation, has so far been overlooked. Accordingly, our key theoretical innovation is how the utility function is modeled. It is assumed that an adult woman's work decisions are influenced by her own mother's choices as well as her friends' mothers' choices when she was a teenager, and the interaction between the two. The empirical salience of this behavioral model is tested using a network model specification together with the longitudinal structure of the AddHealth data set. We find that both intergenerational channels positively affect a woman's work hours in adulthood, but the cross effect is negative, indicating the existence of cultural substitutability. That is, the mother's role model effect is larger the more distant she is (in terms of working hours) from the friends' mothers. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational transmission, gender identity, labor force participation, social networks |
| JEL: | J22 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7704&r=soc |
| By: | Andries Richter (Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Norway); Johan Grasman (and Statistical Methods, Wageningen University, the Netherlands) |
| Abstract: | Experimental and observational studies have highlighted the importance of agents being conditionally cooperative when facing a social dilemma. We formalize this mechanism in a theoretical model that portrays a small community having joint access to a common pool resource. The diffusion of norms of cooperation takes place via interpersonal relations, while individual agents face the temptation of higher profits by overexploiting the resource. Agents remain conditionally cooperative, unless other individuals are misbehaving already. We can observe a bubble of conditional cooperators slowly building up followed by a sudden burst, which means that a transition from a cooperative social norm to non-cooperation occurs. Interestingly, in some parameter regions alternative stable states and limit cycles arise. The latter implies that the same community goes through such a transition repeatedly over long time spans – history thus repeats itself in the form of the creation and erosion of social capital. |
| Keywords: | Common Pool Resource, Conditional Cooperators, Social-Ecological Complexity, Social Capital, Social Norms |
| JEL: | C73 D70 D64 Q20 |
| Date: | 2013–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2013.80&r=soc |
| By: | Andriani, Luca; Sabatini, Fabio |
| Abstract: | This paper contributes to the literature by conducting the first empirical investigation into the determinants of prosocial behaviour in the Palestinian territories, with a focus on the role of trust and institutions. Drawing on a unique dataset collected through the administration of a questionnaire to a representative sample of the population of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, we have found that institutional trust is the strongest predictor of prosociality. This result suggests that, in collectivist societies with low levels of generalized trust, the lack of citizens’ confidence in the fairness and efficiency of public institutions may compromise social order. The strengthening of institutional trust may also reinforce prosocial behaviour in individualist societies, where a decline in generalized trust has been documented by empirical studies. |
| Keywords: | Institutional trust; generalized trust; prosocial behaviour; social capital; institutions; Palestine |
| JEL: | D72 D74 H79 Z1 |
| Date: | 2103–10–28 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:51003&r=soc |
| By: | Anil Alpman (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne - Paris School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a new theory of social norms that explores the relation between individuals' income, time allocation decisions, and consumption choices on the one hand, and the determinants of individuals' decision to conform or not to social norms on the other. It is shown that rational consumers may obey inefficient social norms, which in turn would slow economic development. An empirical test of the model is performed for different categories of countries using the World Values Survey, a voluminous cross-country micro dataset. The results yield the gain and the cost of disobeying inefficient social norms, the latter of which can be used as an indicator of social pressure regarding conformity. |
| Keywords: | Social norms, social interactions, consumer behavior, household production, economic development, social pressure indicator. |
| JEL: | D11 D12 O43 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:cesdoc:13038r&r=soc |
| By: | Benoît Chalvignac |
| Abstract: | In this paper we extend the gift-exchange game setting to include a new experimental treatment where subjects are paired with the same partner for the whole game. We observe that the matching mode is more critical to cooperation levels than the contractual arrangement, and that trust-based contracts outperform incentive-based contracts when interaction is repeated within the same pair. In the partner setting, individual preferences seem only to be second-order determinants of cooperation levels and most subjects are highly responsive to others' cooperative choices. Our findings help explain the cooperation dynamics required for organizations to leverage their incentive structure and to endure. |
| Keywords: | Gift-exchange game; Trust; Cooperation; Informal organization. |
| JEL: | D2 D7 M2 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2013-18&r=soc |
| By: | Loukas Balafoutas; Nikos Nikiforakis |
| Abstract: | Extensive evidence from laboratory experiments indicates that many individuals are willing to use costly punishment to enforce social norms, even in one-shot interactions. However, there appears to be little evidence in the literature of such behavior in the field. We study the propensity to punish norm violators in a natural field experiment conducted in the main subway station in Athens, Greece. The large number of passengers ensures that strategic motives for punishing are minimized. We study violations of two distinct efficiency enhancing social norms. In line with laboratory evidence, we find that individuals punish norm violators. However, these individuals are a minority. Men are more likely than women to punish violators, while the decision to punish is unaffected by the violator’s height and gender. Interestingly, we find that violations of the better known of the two norms are substantially less likely to trigger punishment. We present additional evidence from two surveys providing insights into the determinants of norm enforcement. |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:feb:natura:00385&r=soc |
| By: | Hensvik, Lena (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy); Nordström Skans, Oskar (IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy) |
| Abstract: | The paper provides an overview of existing knowledge regarding the role played by social networks in the process where young workers are matched to employing firms. We discuss standard theories of why social networks may be an important element in the job-matching process and survey the empirical literature on labor market networks with an emphasis on studies pertaining to the role of social contacts during the school-to-work transition phase. In addition, we present some novel evidence on how contacts established while working during the final year in high school affect youth labor market entry. Finally, we discuss how insights from this literature can be used to improve the quality of social programs targeted towards young workers in the Nordic countries. |
| Keywords: | Referrals; school-to-work transition; youth unemployment |
| JEL: | J24 J64 M51 Z13 |
| Date: | 2013–10–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2013_023&r=soc |
| By: | Jocelyn Donze; Trude Gunnes |
| Abstract: | This article studies how a firm fosters formal and informal interaction among its employees to create a collective identity and positively influence their effort. We develop an agency model, in which employees have both a personal and a social ideal for effort. The firm does not observe the personal ideals, which gives rise to an adverse selection problem, but can make its workforce more sensitive to the social ideal by allocating part of working hours to social interaction. We show that there are two reasons why the firm invests in social capital. First, it reinforces the effectiveness of monetary incentives. Second, by creating a shared identity in the workforce, the firm is able to reduce the adverse selection problem. We also show that the firm allocates more time to bonding activities when employees have low personal ideals for effort or when they are more heterogeneous as regards these ideals. |
| Keywords: | agency theory, social interaction, social norms, norm regulation. |
| JEL: | D2 D8 J3 M5 |
| Date: | 2013 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2013-17&r=soc |
| By: | Jonathan Meer (Texas A&M University); Harvey S. Rosen (Princeton University) |
| Abstract: | A general finding in the empirical literature on charitable giving is that among older individuals, both the probability of giving and the conditional amount of donations decrease with age, ceteris paribus. In this paper, we use data on giving by alumni at an anonymous university to investigate end-of-life giving patterns. Our main finding is that taking into account the approach of death substantially changes the age-giving profile for the elderly—in one segment of the age distribution, the independent effect of an increase in age on giving actually changes from negative to positive. We examine how the decline in giving as death approaches varies with the length of time that a given condition is likely to bring about death, and the individual’s age when he died. We find that for individuals who died from conditions that bring about death fairly quickly, there is little decline in giving as death approaches compared to those who died from other causes. Further, the decline in giving as death approaches is steeper for the elderly (for whom death is less likely to be a surprise) than for the relatively young. These findings suggest that our primary result, that failing to take into account the approach of death leads to biased inferences with respect to the age-giving profile, is not merely an artifact of some kind of nonlinearity in the relationship between age and giving. |
| Keywords: | charitable giving, aging, financing of higher education, philanthropy, terror management theory |
| JEL: | D64 I23 J14 H41 |
| Date: | 2013–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pri:cepsud:236rosen&r=soc |
| By: | Kolmar, Martin |
| Abstract: | This article summarizes the major findings from the economic and socio-biological theories of group conflicts and contrasts them with findings from sociology and social psychology, especially the relationship between group size and group success. The predictive power of some of the results of economic group-conflict models for behavior in laboratory experiments is relatively poor if one assumes that individuals are self-interested. One gets systematic overinvestment compared to the theoretical predictions, which points to the fact that other-regarding references may be an important explanatory variable. This conjecture is in line with findings in evolutionary biology, social psychology, and neuroscience that all point to a close link between the structure of individual preferences and group conflicts. In fact, the evidence suggests group conflicts were constitutive for the ability of individuals to cooperate, and that this willingness to cooperate evolved in the form of parochial altruism. Building on this idea, the last part of the essay builds a bridge between parochial altruism and social identities and traces the question how social identities are constructed and what this implies for the structure of group conflicts. |
| Keywords: | Group conflicts, Parochial altruism, Cooperation, Social identities |
| JEL: | D74 H41 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:usg:econwp:2013:31&r=soc |
| By: | Cozzi, Guido (University of St. Gallen); Mantovan, Noemi (Bangor University); Sauer, Robert M. (Royal Holloway, University of London) |
| Abstract: | Working as a volunteer is a widespread phenomenon that has both individual and societal benefits. In this paper, we identify the wage returns to working for free by exploiting exogenous variation in rainfall across local area districts in England, Scotland and Wales. Instrumental variables estimates reveal large returns for both men and women. However, the returns are differentially greater for men and account for a substantial proportion of the gender earnings gap. A comparison of OLS and IV estimates also indicates negative selection into volunteering for both genders. In a model of optimal volunteering, negative selection implies that a reduction in the cost of volunteering will lead to an expanded and higher-skilled pool of volunteers, and greater societal benefits. A policy that has the effect of reducing the cost relatively more for women may also narrow the gender earnings gap. |
| Keywords: | volunteering, altruism, gender differences, discrimination, instrumental variables, rainfall, negative selection |
| JEL: | C26 D64 H41 J16 J31 J71 |
| Date: | 2013–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7697&r=soc |