Giulia Andrighetto

• Researcher at Italian National Research Council

The Cambridge Handbook of Moral Psychology is an essential guide to the study of moral cognition and behavior. Originating as a philosophical exploration of values and virtues, moral psychology has evolved into a robust empirical science intersecting psychology, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and neuroscience. Contributors to this interdiscip...

Understanding and predicting human cooperative behaviour and belief dynamics remains a major challenge both from the scientific and practical perspectives. Because of the complexity and multiplicity of material, social and cognitive factors involved, both empirical and theoretical work tends to focus only on some snippets of the puzzle. Recently, a...

The COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, suddenly erupted in China at the beginning of 2020 and soon spread worldwide. This has resulted in an outstanding increase on research about the virus itself and, more in general, epidemics in many scientific fields. In this work we focus on the dynamics of the epidemic spreading and how it can...

Did cultures change shortly after, and in response to, the COVID-19 outbreak? If so, then in what way? We study these questions for a set of macro-cultural dimensions: collectivism/individualism, duty/joy, traditionalism/autonomy, and pro-fertility/individual-choice norms. We also study specific perceptions and norms like perceived threats to socie...

When someone violates a social norm, others may think that some sanction would be appropriate. We examine how the experience of emotions like anger and disgust relate to the judged appropriateness of sanctions, in a pre-registered analysis of data from a large-scale study in 56 societies. Across the world, we find that individuals who experience an...

The emergence of COVID-19 dramatically changed social behavior across societies and contexts. Here we study whether social norms also changed. Specifically, we study this question for cultural tightness (the degree to which societies generally have strong norms), specific social norms (e.g. stealing, hand washing), and norms about enforcement, usin...

Social norms research is booming. In recent years, several experts have recommended using social norms (unwritten rules that prescribe what people ought or ought not to do) to confront the societal, environmental and health challenges our societies face. If we are to do so, a better understanding is required of how social norms themselves emerge, e...

Global challenges like the climate crisis and pandemic outbreaks require collective responses where people quickly adapt to changing circumstances. Social norms are potential solutions, but only if they themselves are flexible enough. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity to study norm formation and decay in real-world contexts. We tr...

In social interactions, human decision-making, attitudes, and beliefs about others coevolve. Their dynamics are affected by cost-benefit considerations, cognitive processes (such as cognitive dissonance, social projecting, and logic constraints), and social influences by peers (via descriptive and injunctive social norms) and by authorities (e.g.,...

Many collective action problems are inherently linked to honesty. By deciding to behave honestly, people contribute to solving the collective action problem. We use a laboratory experiment from two sites ( n = 331 and n = 319) to test whether honest preferences can drive cooperation and whether these preferences can be differentially activated by f...

Vaccine hesitancy is one of the main threats to global health, as became clear once more during the Covid-19 pandemic. Vaccination campaigns could benefit from appeals to social norms to promote vaccination, but without awareness of the social norm in place any intervention relying on social norms may backfire. We present a two-step approach of soc...

Online platforms play a relevant role in the creation and diffusion of false or misleading news. Concerningly, the COVID-19 pandemic is shaping a communication network which reflects the emergence of collective attention towards a topic that rapidly gained universal interest. Here, we characterize the dynamics of this network on Twitter, analysing...

Social norms regulate our behavior in a variety of mundane and far-reaching contexts, from tipping at the restaurant to social distancing during a pandemic. However, how social norms emerge, persist, and change is still poorly understood. Here the authors investigate experimentally whether spontaneously emerging behavioral regularities (i.e., conve...

The emergence of cooperation among self-interested agents has been a key concern of the multi-agent systems community for decades. With the increased importance of networkmediated interaction, researchers have shifted the attention to the impact of social networks and their dynamics in promoting or hindering cooperation, drawing various contextdepe...

Social norms have been investigated across many disciplines for many years, but until recently, studies mainly provided indirect, implicit and correlational support for the role of social norms in driving behaviour. To understand how social norms, and in particular social norm change, can generate a large-scale behavioural change to deal with some...

The emergence due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 disease, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, suddenly erupted at the beginning of 2020 in China and soon spread worldwide. This has caused an outstanding increase on research about the virus itself and, more in general, epidemics in many scientific fields. In this work we focus on the dynamics of the ep...

Objectives: We test the effects of four policy scenarios on recruitment into organized crime. The policy scenarios target (i) organized crime leaders and (ii) facilitators for imprisonment, (iii) provide educational and welfare support to children and their mothers while separating them from organized-crime fathers, and (iv) increase educational an...

Research Summary This study uses agent-based models (ABMs) to compare the impacts of three different types of interventions targeting recruitment to terrorism—community workers at community centers; community-oriented policing; and an employment program for high-risk agents. The first two programs are social interventions that focus on de-radicaliz...

The emergence of cooperation among self-interested agents has been a key concern of the multi-agent systems community for decades. With the increased importance of network-mediated interaction, researchers have shifted the attention on the impact of social networks and their dynamics in promoting or hindering cooperation, drawing various context-de...

Social norms can help solve pressing societal challenges, from mitigating climate change to reducing the spread of infectious diseases. Despite their relevance, how norms shape cooperation among strangers remains insufficiently understood. Influential theories also suggest that the level of threat faced by different societies plays a key role in th...

Criminal organizations exploit their presence on territories and local communities to recruit new workforce in order to carry out their criminal activities and business. The ability to attract individuals is crucial for maintaining power and control over the territories in which these groups are settled. This study proposes the formalization, devel...

Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriatene...

Norm enforcement may be important for resolving conflicts and promoting cooperation. However, little is known about how preferred responses to norm violations vary across cultures and across domains. In a preregistered study of 57 countries (using convenience samples of 22,863 students and non-students), we measured perceptions of the appropriatene...

Cooperation is crucial to overcome some of the most pressing social challenges of our times, such as the spreading of infectious diseases, corruption and environmental conservation. Yet, how cooperation emerges and persists is still a puzzle for social scientists. Since human cooperation is individually costly, cooperative attitudes should have bee...

We conduct laboratory experiments to study peer effects on compliance with extortive requests. To this aim, we use an “extortion game” with multiple victims. In agreement with our hypothesis, our results show that when the information on peers’ behavior is available, compliance with appropriative requests is triggered by conformism among victims ra...

From inmates in prison gangs to soldiers in elite units, the intimidating reputation of groups often precedes its members. While individual reputation is known to affect people’s aggressiveness, whether one’s group reputation can similarly influence behavior in conflict situations is yet to be established. Using an economic game experiment, we isol...

Criminal organizations exploit their presence on territories and local communities to recruit new workforce in order to carry out their criminal activities and business. The ability to attract individuals is crucial for maintaining power and control over the territories in which these groups are settled. This study proposes the formalization, devel...

PROTON D5.1 presents two agent-based models (ABMs), one on recruitment in organised crime network and the other on radicalisation and terrorist recruitment. The report presents each model in sequence, addressing the design of the models including their theoretical framework, state of the art, and model overview. It then outlines the calibration, va...

Criminal organizations exploit their presence on territories and local communities to recruit new workforce in order to carry out their criminal activities and business. The ability to attract individuals is crucial for maintaining power and control over the territories in which these groups are settled. This study proposes the formalization, devel...

Protection rackets cause economic and social damage across the world. States typically combat protection rackets using legal strategies that target the racketeers with legislation, strong sentencing, and increasing the presence and involvement of police officers. Nongovernmental organizations, conversely, focus on the rest of the population and cou...

In this work, we explore the role of learning dynamics and social norms in human cooperation on networks. We study the model recently introduced in [Physical Review E, 97, 042321 (2018)] that integrates the well-studied Experience Weighted Attraction learning model with some features characterizing human norm psychology, namely the set of cognitive...

Cooperation is central to the success of human societies as it is crucial for overcoming some of the most pressing social challenges of our time; still, how human cooperation is achieved and may persist is a main puzzle in the social and biological sciences. Recently, scholars have recognized the importance of social norms as solutions to major loc...

In this paper, we study how people from different countries would react to institutional changes in terms of tax compliance. We choose an experimental setting and focus on two features of the tax system: efficiency and tax rate. We develop our analysis in two countries characterized by high tax burdens, but with relevant differences in terms of tax...

Computer simulation has recently been recognised by criminologists as a useful tool for bridging the gap between theoretical and empirical analyses of organised crime and for supplementing their weaknesses. GLODERS-S is an innovative and configurable agent-based simulator specialised in reproducing the dynamics of a specific type of criminal organi...

The aim of this chapter is to summarise the problems incurred during the phases of calibrating and validating the extortion racket models used by the GLODERS project. The chapter starts with the discussion of the data availability and summarises shortly the contents of Sect. 4. 3. It continues with a discussion of what parameterisation, calibration...

Norms, in their many forms, are all around us. The social world that we inhabit is saturated with them. As others have elegantly put it, ‘from forceps to grave, human life is wrapped in a tightly woven tapestry of rules, standards, and expectations that govern every aspect of social behaviour’ (Anderson & Dunning, 2014). Not only are norms widespre...

Mafias can be considered as criminal organisations that are in the business of producing, promoting, and selling protection. Here, we describe the Palermo Scenario, an agent-based model of protection rackets aimed to deepen our understanding of protection rackets, and help policymakers to evaluate methods for destabilising them. Additionally, since...

Protection racketeering groups are powerful, deeply entrenched in multiple societies across the globe, and they harm the societies and economies in which they operate in multiple ways. These reasons make their dynamics important to understand and an objective of both scientific and application-oriented interest. Legal and social norm-based approach...

We study how communication affects cooperation in an experimental public goods environment with punishment and counter-punishment opportunities. Participants interacted over 30 rounds in fixed groups with fixed identifiers that allowed them to trace other group members' behavior over time. The two dimensions of communication we study are asking for...

This study examines cultural differences in ordinary dishonesty between Italy and Sweden, two countries with different reputations for trustworthiness and probity. Exploiting a set of cross-cultural tax compliance experiments, we find that the average level of tax evasion (as a measure of ordinary dishonesty) does not differ significantly between S...

Mafias are highly powerful and deeply entrenched organised criminal groups that cause both economic and social damage. Overcoming, or at least limiting, their harmful effects is a societally beneficial objective, which renders its dynamics understanding an objective of both scientific and political interests. We propose an agent-based simulation mo...

As shown by the recent crisis, tax evasion poses a significant problem for countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy. While these societies certainly possess weaker fiscal institutions as compared to other EU members, might broader cultural differences between northern and southern Europe also help to explain citizens' (un)willingness to pay their...

Summary of tax reporting rounds. (PDF)

Example screenshot: Earnings reporting screen. (PNG)

Detailed Description of Selected Covariates. (PDF)

Compliance rate across all locations. (PNG)

Summary of participant characteristics: Italy and the UK. (PDF)

IRB Approval Letters. (PDF)

English Language Experimental Instructions. (PDF)

English Language Questionnaire. (PDF)

Three main motivations can explain compliance with social norms: fear of peer punishment, the desire for others' esteem and the desire to meet others' expectations. Though all play a role, only the desire to meet others' expectations can sustain compliance when neither public nor private monitoring is possible. Theoretical models have shown that su...

In the seminal work 'An Evolutionary Approach to Norms', Axelrod identified internalization as one of the key mechanisms that supports the spreading and stabilization of norms. But how does this process work? This paper advocates a rich cognitive model of different types, degrees and factors of norm internalization. Rather than a none-or-all phenom...

In this chapter, we will discuss the need of Agent Based Modelling (ABM) to study the dynamics of a specific type of illegal system, i.e., Extortion Racket Systems, which appear to be highly prosperous and to behave as a dynamic system, spreading wide and fast in current Western societies. This work arises from two traditions of study: one is relat...

In this paper we study how people from different European countries would react, in terms of tax compliance, to institutional changes. We choose an experimental setting and we focus on two features of the tax system – efficiency and tax rate. We develop our analysis in three countries characterized by different systems: Italy, Sweden, UK. The main...

Recent research has shown that the level of tax evasion varies widely across advanced industrial democracies, but exactly why this is the case remains an unresolved puzzle. To shed light on this vital question, we are conducting are a large European Research Council (ERC) project titled Willing to Pay? Testing Institutionalist Theories with Experim...

Punishment plays a crucial role in favoring and maintaining social order. Recent studies emphasize the effect of the norm-signaling function of punishment. However, very little attention has been paid so far to the potential of group punishment. We claim that when inflicted by an entire group, the recipient of punishment views it as expressing norm...

Social norms are largely regarded as solutions to the problem of attaining and maintaining social order (Axelrod, 1986; Durkheim, 1950 [1895]; Fehr & Fishbacher, 2004; Posner, 2000). It is argued that the norm of reciprocity, for example, solves what is currently known as the puzzle of human cooperation (Axelrod, 1986; Boyd & Richerson, 1988; Ginti...

This analysis shows an interesting consequence of normative acts which is usually overlooked: their power to favour the communication and subsequent diffusion of normative requests. The belief that a behaviour is prescribed by a large number of individuals contributes to increase its observance and defence, thereby creating a positive dynamic that...

This chapter aims to identify the main relevant steps in the evolution of (social) norms as well as some of the factors or determinants of such a process and to discuss the most urgent scientific tasks to be fulfilled within a community of scientists committed to the study of norms. It is clearly the case that the scientific study of norms needs in...

Per comprendere il legame tra norme sociali e azione, proponiamo un’analisi del modo in cui le norme sono rappresentate nella mente degli individui e dei meccanismi che permettono la formazione delle rappresentazioni normative. Tale modello cognitivo dell’obbedienza alle norme permette anche di riconoscere una proprieta delle azioni normative solit...

Emotional synthetic characters are able to evaluate (appraise) events as positive or negative with their emotional states being triggered by several factors. Currently , the vast majority of models for appraisal in synthetic characters consider factors related to the goals and preferences of the characters. We argue that appraisals that only take i...

Emotional synthetic characters are able to evaluate (appraise) events as positive or negative with their emotional states being triggered by several factors. Currently, the vast majority of models for appraisal in synthetic characters consider factors related to the goals and preferences of the characters. We argue that appraisals that only take in...

Material punishment has been suggested to play a key role in sustaining human cooperation. Experimental findings, however, show that inflicting mere material costs does not always increase cooperation and may even have detrimental effects. Indeed, ethnographic evidence suggests that the most typical punishing strategies in human ecologies (e.g., go...

Punishment intensity in the Experiments with Human Subjects depending on punished subject’s contribution minus that of punisher. (TIF)

Average required contribution in tokens over rounds 11–20 in the Experiments with Human Subjects. (TIF)

Percentages of the three verbal messages sent in the message and sanction treatment over rounds 11–20 in the Experiments with Human Subjects. (TIF)

Amount of punishments, sanctions and messages sent in the Agent Based simulation. (TIF)

Determinants of punishment levels in the punishment and sanction treatments in the Experiments with Human Subjects: random-effects tobit regressions. (TIFF)

Determinants of suggested contributions in the message and sanction treatments in the Experiments with Human Subjects: random-effects tobit regressions. (TIFF)

Percentage of individuals that sent a message over rounds 11–20 in the Experiments with Human Subjects. (TIF)

Dynamics of the Individual and Normative Drives in the Agent Based Model. (TIF)

Mean Cooperation along the simulation experiment contrasted with the value of the Forgetting Probability. (TIF)

Determinants of punishment levels in the sanction treatment in the Experiments with Human Subjects: random-effects tobit regressions. (TIFF)

Average Payoffs along the Agent Based simulation. (TIF)

Mean Cooperation along the simulation experiment contrasted with the value of the Initial Punishment Probability. (TIF)

Mean Cooperation along the simulation experiment contrasted with the value of the Individual Weight. (TIF)

Supporting Information Document. (DOC)

Norm Salience Mechanism in the Agent Based Model: Cues and Weights. (TIFF)

Virtual environments often try to simulate situations where agents should display socially acceptable behaviour, as described by social norms. Actions that fulfil or violate norms can be potential sources for emotions, not just for the agent responsible, but for all agents that witness the event. We claim that the type and intensity of those emotio...

The aim of this paper is to clarify what kind of normativity characterizes a convention. First, we argue that conventions have normative consequences because they always involve a form of trust and reliance.We contend that it is by reference to a moral principle impinging on these aspects (i.e. the principle of Reliability) that interpersonal oblig...

In this paper, an integrated, cognitive view of different mechanisms, reasons and pathways to norm compliance is presented. After a short introduction, theories of norm compliance are reviewed, and found to group in four main typologies: the rational choice model of norm compliance; theories based on conditional preferences to conformity, theories...