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When norm change hurts

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Philosophical Transactions B
Authors:
Charles Efferson at University of Lausanne
Charles Efferson
Sönke Ehret
Sönke Ehret
Sönke Ehret
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Lukas von Flüe at University of Lausanne
Lukas von Flüe
Sonja Vogt at University of Bern
Sonja Vogt
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Abstract

Applied cultural evolution includes any effort to mobilize social learning and cultural evolution to promote behaviour change. Social tipping is one version of this idea based on conformity and coordination. Conformity and coordination can reinforce a harmful social norm, but they can also accelerate change from a harmful norm to a beneficial alternative. Perhaps unfortunately, the link between the size of an intervention and social tipping is complex in heterogeneous populations. A small intervention targeted at one segment of society can induce tipping better than a large intervention targeted at a different segment. We develop and examine two models showing that the link between social tipping and social welfare is also complex in heterogeneous populations. An intervention strategy that creates persistent miscoordination, exactly the opposite of tipping, can lead to higher social welfare than another strategy that leads to tipping. We show that the potential benefits of miscoordination often hinge specifically on the preferences of people most resistant to behaviour change. Altogether, ordinary forms of heterogeneity complicate applied cultural evolution considerably. Heterogeneity weakens both the link between the size of a social planner’s intervention and behaviour change and the link between behaviour change and the well-being of society. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Social norm change: drivers and consequences’.
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Research
Cite this article: Efferson C, Ehret S, von Flüe
L, Vogt S. 2024 When norm change hurts. Phil.
Trans. R. Soc. B 379: 20230039.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2023.0039
Received: 30 June 2023
Accepted: 21 November 2023
One contribution of 15 to a theme issue ‘Social
norm change: drivers and consequences’.
Subject Areas:
behaviour, evolution
Keywords:
social tipping, behaviour change, coordination,
conformity, social norms
Authors for correspondence:
Charles Efferson
e-mail: charles.efferson@unil.ch
Sonja Vogt
e-mail: sonja.vogt@unil.ch
Electronic supplementary material is available
online at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.
c.6980739.
When norm change hurts
Charles Efferson, Sönke Ehret, Lukas von Flüe and Sonja Vogt
University of Lausanne, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
CE, 0000-0001-8244-4497; LvF, 0000-0001-5134-8128; SV, 0000-0001-8217-8272
Applied cultural evolution includes any effort to mobilize social learning
and cultural evolution to promote behaviour change. Social tipping is one
version of this idea based on conformity and coordination. Conformity
and coordination can reinforce a harmful social norm, but they can also
accelerate change from a harmful norm to a beneficial alternative. Perhaps
unfortunately, the link between the size of an intervention and social tipping
is complex in heterogeneous populations. A small intervention targeted at
one segment of society can induce tipping better than a large intervention
targeted at a different segment. We develop and examine two models show-
ing that the link between social tipping and social welfare is also complex in
heterogeneous populations. An intervention strategy that creates persistent
miscoordination, exactly the opposite of tipping, can lead to higher social
welfare than another strategy that leads to tipping. We show that the poten-
tial benefits of miscoordination often hinge specifically on the preferences of
people most resistant to behaviour change. Altogether, ordinary forms of
heterogeneity complicate applied cultural evolution considerably. Hetero-
geneity weakens both the link between the size of a social planner’s
intervention and behaviour change and the link between behaviour
change and the well-being of society.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Social norm change: drivers and
consequences’.
1. Introduction
Applied cultural evolution is, to shun euphemism, an attempt to engineer
culture. A social planner wants people to behave differently, and she intervenes
in society in pursuit of this objective. The interesting twist is that, once people
exposed to the intervention start to change behaviour, endogenous cultural
evolutionary processes can take effect. Some people change behaviour because
they have direct experience with the intervention. Some people change behav-
iour because they observe others doing so. If the social planner knows how this
second process works, she can implement her intervention in a way that maxi-
mizes the sum of both the direct effect and the associated indirect cultural
evolutionary effect. In particular, the indirect effect might far outstrip the
direct effect, in which case cultural evolutionary dynamics dramatically amplify
the intervention’s consequences. This idea is the essence of applied cultural
evolution as an attempt to engineer culture [1].
The indirect cultural evolutionary effect occurs because we influence, teach
and learn from each other, and we do not do so randomly [2]. We pay attention
to some people and ignore others [3,4]. Sometimes we follow the majority, and
sometimes we do not [5,6]. Some people provide examples of how to behave,
and some people provide examples of how not to behave [7–9]. Some beha-
viours we simply like, and others we do not [10]. Whatever the details, the
necessary result is some kind of cultural evolution at the aggregate level
[1,11,12]. If we want to know what kind of cultural evolution, the details are
crucial [1,11,13,14]. If we discriminate when we learn from each other in one
way, cultural evolution unfolds accordingly. If we discriminate in some other
way, we can expect cultural evolution to unfold quite differently.
Engineering culture sounds unpleasant, even imperialistic, and sometimes it
is [15–17]. However, because most people live in a society, any attempt to
© 2024 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.
... Contributions examine, for instance, the welfare consequences of engineering norm change and how crosscultural variation in norm enforcement systems impacts the dynamics of social norm change. Interventions for norm change do not come without limitations and some contributions show how norm-based interventions might have backfiring effects [29,30]. This section starts with a review article on punishment as a bottom-up means of norm enforcement across cultures and societies [31]. ...
... This section starts with a review article on punishment as a bottom-up means of norm enforcement across cultures and societies [31]. It proceeds with four research articles that design and test norm interventions to change behavioural intentions in both online [32] and offline settings and in different cultural contexts [33], for norms and meta norms [29], to assess both individual and welfare consequences [30]. ...
... Finally, Efferson et al. [30] develop two theoretical models that predict when interventions that engineer norm change may be successful and when instead they would backfire. Based on the notion of tipping points, they argue that conformity and coordination can reinforce a harmful social norm, but they can also accelerate change from a harmful norm to a beneficial alternative. ...
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