6.1 Introduction

The experimental literature on social dilemmas has long documented the positive effect of communication on cooperation. Sally (1995), in a meta-analysis spanning thirty-five years of Prisoner's Dilemma experiments, shows that the possibility of communicating significantly increases cooperation. Social psychologists have explained such a finding by hypothesizing that the act of communicating contributes to promoting trust by creating empathy among participants (see Loomis (1959), Desforges et al. (1991), Davis and Perkowitz (1979)). Bicchieri (2002, 2006), in a different perspective, puts forward a focusing function of communication hypothesis, according to which communication can focus agents on shared rules of behavior and – when it does focus them on pro-social ones – generates a normative environment which is conducive to cooperation. More specifically, when individuals face an unfamiliar situation, they need cues to understand how best to act and, for this reason, they check whether some behavioral rule they are aware of applies to the specific interaction. The effect of communication is to make a behavioral rule situationally salient, that is, communication causes a shift in an individual's focus towards the strategies dictated by the now-salient rule. In doing so, communication also coordinates players' mutual expectations about which strategies will be chosen by the parties. In other words, (under some conditions) communication elicits social norms.

While a large proportion of studies on the effect of pre-play communication focuses on Prisoner's Dilemma games, Bicchieri, Lev-On, and Chavez (2010) examine behavior in sequential trust games. In what follows we shall look at those findings, discuss an interpretation based on the above hypothesis, and suggest a theoretical application that can account for it. Given that our analysis equally applies to the Prisoner's Dilemma, this essay contributes to the broad literature on social dilemmas by proposing an application for dynamic interactions.

Bicchieri (2002) provides the basis for the focusing function of communication argument: when a rule of behavior becomes situationally salient, it causes a shift in an individual's focus, thereby generating empirical and normative expectations that direct one's actions.

Introduction

In the previous chapter, I presented some ‘internal’ existence conditions for social norms. Without normative beliefs, empirical expectations, and conditional preferences for conformity by a sufficient percentage of individuals in a population, no norm would survive. My definitions were meant to highlight the interdependence of beliefs and actions that create and support this kind of collective phenomena. I left open the question of how expectations and beliefs exert their influence on social behavior, and under which conditions the norms they support become prescriptively or proscriptively operative. These questions arise from the fact that norms are not continuously activated; rather, they become salient and active only under certain situational conditions. Even when active, norms operate along with other dynamics, sometimes competitively. Thus, under any given set of circumstances, observed behavior may be due to factors other than the operation of norms, but this fact per se does not deprive the concept of scientific validity. What needs to be demonstrated is that norms have predictable effects on social behavior and that we can make interesting and accurate predictions about the influence of norms in specific social situations.

To fully accomplish this goal a good operational definition of social norms is in order. By ‘operational’ I mean that such a definition must have an empirical, testable content. The definition provided in Chapter 1 lends itself to empirical testing, because we can establish whether individuals have certain beliefs and expectations and whether their behavior is consistent with their expectations.

Introduction

A social dilemma is, by definition, a situation in which each group member gets a higher outcome if she pursues her individual interest, but everyone in the group is better off if all group members further the common interest. Overpopulation, pollution, Medicare, public television, and the depletion of scarce and valuable resources such as energy and fish-rich waters are all examples of situations in which the temptation to defect must be tempered by a concern with the public good. There are several reasons why some individuals might not contribute to the provision of public goods or refrain from wasting common resources. Usually these resources are used by or depend on very large groups of people for their continued maintenance. It is easy, therefore, for an individual to consider her contribution to a public good or her personal consumption of a common resource as insignificant. Furthermore, in social dilemmas there is a huge difference between the costs and benefits accruing to an individual. Gains go to the individual, but the costs are shared by all. Given the structure of social dilemmas, rational, self-interested individuals are predicted to defect always. Yet almost 50 years of experiments on social dilemmas show cooperation rates ranging from 40 to 60%, and everyday experience shows people making voluntary contributions to public goods, giving to charities, volunteering, and refraining from wasting resources.

There is plenty of evidence that most people are conditional cooperators: They cooperate when they expect others to cooperate and defect otherwise.

Introduction

The discussion of the effects of communication in social dilemmas points to the emergence of a shared understanding of the situation among participants, and their convergence to a common script. Group communication, when successful, generates common beliefs and expectations, which in turn make possible coordinated action. I have previously stressed how the norms that people focus on influence their behavior. It is also important to study how norms form in the first place. This question is tantamount to asking how certain beliefs originate and how we come to believe that a behavioral regularity exists that applies to certain types of situations Bettenhausen and Murnighan (1985, 1991) were the first to study experimentally norm formation in small groups. In their experiments on the allocation of research money among coalitions, they report that groups rapidly formed norms about resource sharing, but each group displayed a unique character and developed unique norms. Their research provides evidence that norm formation is a step-by-step process. In a newly formed group, all members will initially anchor the current situation to what they perceive are previously experienced situations. Each group member will have a sense of which behavioral scripts may be appropriate to the new situation because they resemble behaviors adopted in similar social contexts. As they interact, group members trade scripts, and, through discussion, they come to form a shared perspective of what the ‘appropriate behavior’ is.

Introduction

The example I used in the previous chapter is that of the emergence of a drinking norm. Such a norm is typically descriptive, though in some situations even such an irrelevant behavior may come to signify allegiance to a particular group, not unlike the rules of etiquette I described in Chapter 1. When what started as a descriptive norm acquires some ulterior significance, when people start attributing value to it and believe they are expected by others to follow the group norm, it becomes a social norm. Probably many group norms that fulfill a signaling or exclusionary function were born as descriptive norms. Teenage groups are an example: Their dress codes may have emerged by chance, but soon enough they become imbued with meaning and value.

Not all social norms, however, stem from descriptive norms. In particular, the pro-social norms I am interested in seem to partake of a very different origin. Norms of cooperation, promise-keeping, reciprocity, or fairness are some of the institutions that allow a society to function smoothly, if not exist. The problem of social order, its origin and maintenance, has traditionally been associated with the existence of pro-social behaviors. If, as I am, one is interested in the spontaneous emergence of such order, then a central question becomes how to model the emergence of those behavioral patterns that keep a society together. There is, however, a difference in pro-social norms as to their importance for society's survival.

Introduction

One of the most important concepts in social exchanges and interactions is that of fairness. We can come to accept the most onerous tasks if we are convinced that the decision procedure was fair, and, conversely, we may reject even a profitable exchange if we feel treated unfairly. Since the dawn of philosophy, a concern with fairness – what it is and how to define it – has been central to the philosopher's quest. Philosopher's concern, however, is more with finding reasons to justify and lend consistency to our intuitions about fairness than with the actual fairness judgments that people express. My interest here is to understand how people form fairness judgments and the nature of the cognitive dynamics involved in the process. Within a given culture, there is usually a great deal of agreement as to how given goods, positions, and opportunities ought to be allocated, and what properties of the claimants matter to the allocation. Every culture has developed a number of shared scripts about the fair allocation and distribution of various goods in different circumstances. Norms of fairness, in turn, are just an essential part of such shared scripts. Our fairness judgments are thus never completely subjective, independent of what our group or society considers fair given the circumstances. When we assess a situation or judge or decide about the fairness of an allocation, we apply scripts and obey norms that successfully coordinate our expectations and behaviors with the expectations and behaviors of other people.

I do not remember when my interest in social norms began, but the subject has been a long-standing source of curiosity and frustration for me. As a stranger living for many years in foreign countries, I have had to constantly negotiate the meaning of rules and practices that more often than not I did not fully understand, the subtleties of a social language that was not my mother tongue. Norms are the language a society speaks, the embodiment of its values and collective desires, the secure guide in the uncertain lands we all traverse, the common practices that hold human groups together. The norms I am talking about are not written and codified; you cannot find them in books or be explicitly told about them at the outset of your immersion in a foreign culture. We learn such rules and practices by observing others and solidify our grasp through a long process of trial and error. I call social norms the grammar of society because, like a collection of linguistic rules that are implicit in a language and define it, social norms are implicit in the operations of a society and make it what it is. Like a grammar, a system of norms specifies what is acceptable and what is not in a social group. And analogously to a grammar, a system of norms is not the product of human design and planning.