A pluralistic framework for the psychology of norms

Abstract

Social Norms – rules that dictate which behaviors are appropriate, permissible, or obligatory in different situations for members of a given community – permeate all aspects of human life. Many researchers have sought to explain the ubiquity of social norms in human life in terms of the psychological mechanisms underlying their acquisition, conformity, and enforcement. Existing theories of the psychology of social norms appeal to a variety of constructs, from prediction-error minimization, to reinforcement learning, to shared intentionality, to evolved psychological adaptations. However, most of these accounts share what we call the psychological unity assumption, which holds that there is something psychologically distinctive about social norms, and that social norm adherence is driven by a single system or process. We argue that this assumption is mistaken. In this paper, we propose a methodological and conceptual framework for the cognitive science of social norms that we call normative pluralism. According to this framework, we should treat norms first and foremost as a community-level pattern of social behavior that might be realized by a variety of different cognitive, motivational, and ecological mechanisms. Norm psychologists should not presuppose that social norms are underpinned by a unified set of processes, nor that there is anything particularly distinctive about normative cognition as such. We argue that this pluralistic approach offers a methodologically sound point of departure for a fruitful and rigorous science of norms.

Rethinking Norm Psychology

“…Unlike moral psychology, norm psychology is concerned with the psychological processes mediating altruism, well-being, character, virtue, and the moral emotions, such as shame and guilt, only insofar as they influence an individual’s capacity to acquire and implement social rules ( Kelly & Setman, 2021 ). Norm psychology was born out of discontent with moral psychology ( Westra & Andrews, in press ). However, the overlap remains so substantial that, in this article, I often refer to the work of moral psychologists (e.g., Bear & Knobe, 2017 ; Cushman, 2013 ; Greene, 2017 ; Haidt, 2001 , 2012 ).…”

“…Instead of encouraging open inquiry about the kinds of mental representations involved in norm processing, it presupposes that normative behavior is mediated by complex, language-like mental representations. If, like Sripada and Stich, researchers avoid this assumption, a rule-based definition of norms leaves the field deeply uncertain about the explanatory target of norm psychology ( Westra & Andrews, in press ). What is the nature of a rule when it is not written, spoken, or inscribed in the mind in sentential form?…”

“…The poverty–wealth scheme suggests that two types of evidence have been underexploited by norm psychologists. Variation among groups and individuals in a society (b above) and across species (d above) could provide important clues to the origins of norm psychology but is rarely mentioned by individuals who identify as norm psychologists ( Westra & Andrews, in press ).…”

“…Evidence of this kind suggests that “ought thought” ( Westra & Andrews, in press )—explicit psychological processes specialized for normativity—is concocted from more domain-general mentalizing and reasoning processes through conversation, observation, and interaction in the course of development ( Cushman et al, 2013 ; Hawkins et al, 2019 ; Ho et al, 2017 ; Imuta et al, 2016 ; Rhodes & Wellman, 2017 ; Sterelny, 2021 ). The explicit processes of deontic reasoning used by some minorities, for example, lawyers, ethicists, and moral philosophers in Western societies, have been constructed by “intelligent design” ( Dennett, 2009 ); like algebra or calculus, they have been fashioned deliberately by generations of scholars with the express purpose of finding the right way of thinking about what is right.…”

The interplay of social identity and norm psychology in the evolution of human groups

“…The idea that social identity affects norm-governed behaviour and vice versa has been tackled from different angles by several studies in psychology, political science, philosophy, economic decision making and cultural evolution studies [43][44][45][46][47][48][49]. It has been argued that the structure of social identity is tied to the structure of society, that social identity affects cooperation between individuals [50], that norm-following behaviour can reinforce group identity [51], and that social norms are not individual-level but community-level patterns of social behaviour [52]. However, as Davis and Kelly rightfully point out, the absence of a comprehensive conceptual overview of the different approaches and their interactions stands out [48].…”