Predicting social tipping and norm change in controlled experiments
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) James Andreoni, University of California, San Diego; Nikos Nikiforakis, New York University Abu Dhabi; Simon Siegenthaler, University of Texas at Dallas
Version: View help for Version V4
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Project Citation:
Andreoni, James, Nikiforakis, Nikos, and Siegenthaler, Simon. Predicting social tipping and norm change in controlled experiments. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-04-01. https://doi.org/10.3886/E134021V4
Project Description
Summary:
View help for Summary
The ability to predict
when societies will replace one social norm for another can have significant
implications for welfare, especially when norms are detrimental. A popular theory poses that the pressure to conform to social
norms creates tipping thresholds which, once passed, propel societies toward an
alternative state. Predicting when societies will reach a tipping threshold,
however, has been a major challenge due to the lack of experimental data for
evaluating competing models. We present evidence from a large-scale lab
experiment designed to test the theoretical predictions of a threshold model
for social tipping and norm change. In our setting, societal preferences change
gradually, forcing individuals to weigh the benefit from deviating from the
norm against the cost from not conforming to the behavior of others. We show
that the model correctly predicts in 96% of instances when a society will
succeed or fail to abandon a detrimental norm. Strikingly, we observe widespread
persistence of detrimental norms even when individuals determine the cost for
non-conformity themselves as they set the latter too high. Interventions that
facilitate a common understanding of the benefits from change help most societies
abandon detrimental norms. We also show that instigators of change tend to be more
risk tolerant and to dislike conformity more. Our findings demonstrate the
value of threshold models for understanding social tipping in a broad range of
social settings and for designing policies to promote welfare.
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