Norms and Development : Interdisciplinary Approach

1
Norms and Development Interdisciplinary Approach

• Week 12
• Social Norms in Dynamic Interactions III
• Institutional View of Culture

2
Closed Society A World of Assurance

• Punishment is costly and may not be feasible.
• Commitment formation is an individually adaptive
  strategy ? Out-for-Tat (OFT Hayashi Yamagishi,
  1998). It is cheap and efficient alternative
  which is feasible in wide range of situations.
• Once OFT is adopted, people establish long-term
  relationships and closed society is created.

3
Open SocietyA World of Uncertainty AND
Opportunities

• Commitment formation creates opportunity costs.
  You may lose an opportunities to establish much
  more beneficial relationships with new partners.
• Trust is an adaptive cognitive bias when
  opportunity costs are high.
• ? In Hayashi Yamagishi(1998)'s computer
  simulations, it was found that OFT is not
  adaptive anymore when opportunity cost is
  introduced. Another strategy, which has a
  positive bias in estimating the benefit that will
  be obtained from interaction with strangers,
  outperformed OFT.

4
Coevolution of Trust and Social Intelligence

• High-trusters are good at detecting cheaters!
• ? They are more accurate in predicting the
  behaviors in PD after 30 min. discussion with the
  others (Yamagishi et al., 1999 Kikuchi et al.,
  1997).
• High-trusters are more sensitive to the
  information indicating untrustworthiness!
• ?When received a piece of negative information,
  high-trusters evaluated the target more
  negatively than low-trusters (Yamagishi et al.,
  1999 Kosugi Yamagishi, 1998).

5
Closed and Open Societies Multiple Equilibriums
in Dynamic Systems

• In a closed society, where people establish
  long-term relationships, opportunity costs are
  low just because one is less likely to find a new
  partner.
• In an open society, where people don't hesitate
  to interact with strangers, opportunity cost is
  high because one is more likely to find a new
  partner.
• ? Thus, two societies are two different
  equilibriums in adaptive dynamic systems.

6
Institutional View of Collectivist
CulturePerfect Version

• People dont trust unknown people.
• Distrustful people cooperate only when they are
  assured that the other will cooperate.
  Assurance (but not trust!) is provided under
  institutions which make cooperation rational.
• Commitment formation is individually rational
  strategy and provides assurance. People want to
  stay in relationships for avoiding being cheated.
• Commitment relationships reduce opportunity costs
  in a society and makes trust less adaptive (?a).

7
Two Routes in Macro-to-Micro Transition

• Institutional People acquire adaptive traits
  (behavioral and psychological) that makes
  themselves adaptive in a given social structure.
• Psychological People acquire psychological and
  behavioral patterns via imitation or teaching.
  These traits are directly transmitted.
• ? The distinction may not be solid and,
  undeniably, both are important. It seems to be
  the case, however, that psychologists have paid
  attentions only to the second process, isnt it?

8

• "By methodological necessity, most psychological
  research focuses on fixed slices of this
  inherently dynamic process, and culture often is
  conceptualized in static terms, thus reinforcing
  stereotypical images of a certain culture. To
  understand more fully the relations between
  psychology and culture, however, it is necessary
  to focus more explicitly on this dynamic
  interactions. (Lehman, Choi Schaller, 2004,
  p.703, Ann. Rev. Psych.)"

9
Coleman BoatThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism

• Protestant religious doctrine

10
From the Boat to the Fleet
Copied from Kanazawa (2001)