The Ash Twins Blog

Social norms often enjoin actions that impose small externalities on others. Before transmission of contagious diseases was understood, for example, public spitting was socially acceptable and quite common.  After physicians discovered saliva’s role in the spread of human diseases, however, a social norm against public spitting emerged and the practice was curtailed.  This norm served the public interest substantially, but it did not emerge organically from the members of the community working together.  Rather, as social scientist Jon Elster notes, the social norm against public spitting was founded in a legal norm: Governments passed no-spitting laws first, which then led to the social norm.  In cases like public spitting, moreover, the social norm often persists even after the legal norm withers away.  This dynamic of a social norm being established by an outside authority, argues Elster, is the common characteristic of those norms that serve the public interest: “Over and over again, we find that outside intervention is necessary to stop people from imposing these negative externalities on each other.”

Source:  Jon Elster, Explaining Social Behavior (2007)

From Hans Sherrer, “The Inhumanity of Government Bureaucracies,” The Independent Review 5 (2000) pp. 249-264:

Bureaucratic structures increase sadistic behavior by permitting and even encouraging it. This effect is produced by the systematic lessening of the moral restraints inherent in personal agency (Kelman 1973, 52). Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo’s “Stanford County Prison” experiment in the early 1970s confirmed this relationship in dramatic fashion (Zimbardo, Haney, and Banks 1973). The experiment revealed that the sadism of people unhealthily obedient to authority can be tapped into and given an expressive outlet by their association with a bureaucratic organization, demonstrating that placing people in an environment in which they can freely exercise their sadistic impulses can have a liberating effect on their doing so. Zimbardo conducted the experiment by setting up a mock jail in the basement of a building and using participants from the general public who had been selected for their normality. Those chosen to participate were randomly assigned the role of a guard or an inmate. To Zimbardo and his fellow researchers’ surprise, a majority of the guards began to behave sadistically toward the inmates within hours of initiation of the experiment (1973, 87–97). Just as surprising, the inmates meekly accepted their subservient role and mistreatment…

The universality of Zimbardo’s finding is confirmed by the fact that the overwhelming majority of the heinous acts committed in Europe during the Nazi era were not perpetrated by fanatics or deranged people. To the contrary, those acts were performed by ordinary Germans, French, Poles, Czechs, and others who considered themselves to be legally authorized to act in ways that we retrospectively view as inhumane  (Browning 1993, 159–89; Kren and Rappoport 1994, 70, 81–83)…

A bureaucracy typically categorizes people outside of it in groups based on how much they conform to its standards. The more nonconforming or deviant a person or group is considered to be from bureaucratic norms, the higher the probability that person or group will be subject to dehumanization by a process known as distancing (Bauman 1989, 102–4)—a method of physically or mentally separating selected people from the rest of society. Those people are demonized and turned into strangers even though they may pose no threat to the public. Furthermore, mentally separating selected persons or groups by distancing often serves as a public relations precursor to their eventual physical separation. When practiced on a large scale, distancing typically degenerates into what are retrospectively described as witch hunts (McWilliams 1950, 3–23, 235–340). One consequence of the distancing process is that it enables what ordinarily appear to be decent people to act barbarically toward those who have been dehumanized. One of the best-known examples of mental separation is the dehumanization of Jews during the 1930s by Nazi propaganda that portrayed them as the human incarnation of rats and lice (Bosmajian 1974). This action was taken to justify a legal differentiation between the Jews and the approved people in German society. The special legal status of Jews made their mistreatment by bureaucrats an activity for the patriotic general public to support. Similarly, American soldiers in Vietnam did not kill human beings. They killed “gooks,” “dinks,” and “slopes.” And earlier, the Americans who contributed to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not exterminate hundreds of thousands of women, children, and old people, but a dehumanized and faceless “Jap” enemy (Keen 1991). Distancing is actively employed in the United States. The most vivid example is the use of criminal prosecutions as a ritualistic procedure to mentally and physically distance men, women, and children labeled as criminals from the rest of American society (Blumberg 1973, 77). Distancing people through the criminalization process also serves the function of justifying the exercise of bureaucratic power as a “necessary evil” in order to assuage people’s fears and insecurities about groups and individuals politically assigned the role of being a domestic enemy (Becker 1975, 96–127)…

The attraction of power-hungry people to positions of authority in a bureaucracy can have tragic consequences for everyone affected. To some degree, everyone in society is affected when the power-oriented people who influence and control the performance of bureaucracies express their darkest and most inhumane prejudices.7 For example, more than one in ten members of Congress as well as many federal judges are former U.S. attorneys. The power of compulsion and punishment available to U.S. attorneys and their prosecuting attorney brethren in the state courts attracts zealous people to seek these bureaucratic positions of minimal accountability. Positions in state legislatures and state courts are filled with former local, county, and state prosecutors, who infect all of the positions they fill, whether legislative or judicial, with their societally corrosive attitudes and prejudices…

Well-planned and well-coordinated atrocities have been carried out by bureaucracies in many countries, including the United States (Rummel 1994, Courtois and others 1999).

· Tir 05

o “Bureaucratic structures increase sadistic behavior by permitting and even encouraging it. This effect is produced by the systematic lessening of the moral restraints inherent in personal agency (Kelman 1973, 52). Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo’s “Stanford County Prison” experiment in the early 1970s confirmed this relationship in dramatic fashion (Zimbardo, Haney, and Banks 1973). The experiment revealed that the sadism of people unhealthily obedient to authority can be tapped into and given an expressive outlet by their association with a bureaucratic organization, demonstrating that placing people in an environment in which they can freely exercise their sadistic impulses can have a liberating effect on their doing so. Zimbardo conducted the experiment by setting up a mock jail in the basement of a building and using participants from the general public who had been selected for their normality. Those chosen to participate were randomly assigned the role of a guard or an inmate. To Zimbardo and his fellow researchers’ surprise, a majority of the guards began to behave sadistically toward the inmates within hours of initiation of the experiment (1973, 87–97). Just as surprising, the inmates meekly accepted their subservient role and mistreatment.” (252)

o “The universality of Zimbardo’s finding is confirmed by the fact that the overwhelming majority of the heinous acts committed in Europe during the Nazi era were not perpetrated by fanatics or deranged people. To the contrary, those acts were performed by ordinary Germans, French, Poles, Czechs, and others who considered themselves to be legally authorized to act in ways that we retrospectively view as inhumane (Browning 1993, 159–89; Kren and Rappoport 1994, 70, 81–83).” (253)

o “A bureaucracy typically categorizes people outside of it in groups based on how much they conform to its standards. The more nonconforming or deviant a person or group is considered to be from bureaucratic norms, the higher the probability that person or group will be subject to dehumanization by a process known as distancing (Bauman 1989, 102–4)—a method of physically or mentally separating selected people from the rest of society. Those people are demonized and turned into strangers even though they may pose no threat to the public. Furthermore, mentally separating selected persons or groups by distancing often serves as a public relations precursor to their eventual physical separation. When practiced on a large scale, distancing typically degenerates into what are retrospectively described as witch hunts (McWilliams 1950, 3–23, 235–340). One consequence of the distancing process is that it enables what ordinarily appear to be decent people to act barbarically toward those who have been dehumanized. One of the best-known examples of mental separation is the dehumanization of Jews during the 1930s by Nazi propaganda that portrayed them as the human incarnation of rats and lice (Bosmajian 1974). This action was taken to justify a legal differentiation between the Jews and the approved people in German society. The special legal status of Jews made their mistreatment by bureaucrats an activity for the patriotic general public to support. Similarly, American soldiers in Vietnam did not kill human beings. They killed “gooks,” “dinks,” and “slopes.” And earlier, the Americans who contributed to the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not exterminate hundreds of thousands of women, children, and old people, but a dehumanized and faceless “Jap” enemy (Keen 1991). Distancing is actively employed in the United States. The most vivid example is the use of criminal prosecutions as a ritualistic procedure to mentally and physically distance men, women, and children labeled as criminals from the rest of American society (Blumberg 1973, 77). Distancing people through the criminalization process also serves the function of justifying the exercise of bureaucratic power as a “necessary evil” in order to assuage people’s fears and insecurities about groups and individuals politically assigned the role of being a domestic enemy (Becker 1975, 96–127).” (255-56)

o The attraction of power-hungry people to positions of authority in a bureaucracy can have tragic consequences for everyone affected. To some degree, everyone in society is affected when the power-oriented people who influence and control the performance of bureaucracies express their darkest and most inhumane prejudices.7 For example, more than one in ten members of Congress as well as many federal judges are former U.S. attorneys. The power of compulsion and punishment available to U.S. attorneys and their prosecuting attorney brethren in the state courts attracts zealous people to seek these bureaucratic positions of minimal accountability. Positions in state legislatures and state courts are filled with former local, county, and state prosecutors, who infect all of the positions they fill, whether legislative or judicial, with their societally corrosive attitudes and prejudices.

Well-planned and well-coordinated atrocities have been carried out by bureaucracies in many countries, including the United States (Rummel 1994, Courtois and others 1999).

Eliaz and Schotter (2007) had players make a risky choice between Box A and Box B–just one box had a cash reward.  In both “states of nature” H and L, the reward was more likely to be in Box A, but the probability was higher in state H.  Subjects could pay a fee to learn what state of nature was operative.  Despite the fact that picking Box A was the dominant decision no matter what state of nature was operative, most subjects (about  75%) paid the fee to learn the state of nature.  Eliaz and Schotter explain this irrational result as the consequence of a “confidence effect” — that humans gain intrinsic utility from being more confident in their decisions.

I dispute this explanation. A better explanation, in my view, is that, by default, we follow a social norm that more information is better in economic decisions.  This social norm is unquestionably adaptive in real-life economic decision-making; this useful rule of them gets transferred to laboratory decisions by default.  If the game is played once or just a few times, the social norm will be followed.  After repeating many times, though, the subjects would wise up to the fact that paying the fee is a waste.

One could determine whether the confidence effect or the social norm is the better explanation by replicating the experiment with subjects repeating it for many periods.  Eliaz and Schotter’s confidence effect would be identical in all periods; if they are right, then fee payment should remain steady.  If I’m right, then fee-paying should converge downward over time toward the optimum.

Anthropologist R.J. Watson compared societies in which warriors did or did not conceal their appearance before going to war and the extent to which they killed, tortured, or mutilated their victims:

[O]f the twenty-three societies for which these two data sets were present, in fifteen warriors changed their appearance.  They were the societies that were the most destructive; fully 80 percent of them (twelve of fifteen) brutalized their enemies.  By contrast, in seven of eight of the societies in which the warriors did not change their appearance before going into battle, they did not engage in such destructive behavior.

Source: Paul Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect, pp. 303-304.

Some writers have proposed that mixed-strategy experiments don’t reveal much about subjects’ decision processes, while other studies suggest that subjects behave as predicted in MSE games, even when those predictions are counterintuitive.[1] However, subjects cannot engage in truly random behavioral sequences without training[2] because the cognitive demands of playing a game interfere with the player’s ability to randomize effectively.[3] Another interpretation is that successful players don’t need to randomize as such in MSE, but rather need to avoid their opponent’s predicting moves effectively.[4]

[2] Neuringer 1986.

[3] Camerer 2003 at 138.

[4] Id. at 150.

I wrote the following as part of an experimental economics paper, but I decided to scrap it and put it on the blog.

The Prisoners’ Dilemma and Chicken games, one may recall, can both be represented by the following payoff matrix:

PD & Chicken Payoffs

A PD is distinguished from chicken in the order of inequalities among payoffs.  As a mnemonic device and as trivia, T stands for Temptation, R for Reward, P for Punishment, and S for Sucker’s Payoff.  In PD, the following inequality holds: T>R>P>S; in Chicken, the following inequality holds: T>R>S>P.

The mechanics of both games can be illustrated by evolutionary biology’s model of cooperative hunting.  Two lions hunting prey can give chase (cooperate) or hold back (defect).  Giving chase is costly in expenditures of energy, and the prey will be shared equally regardless, so the highest payoff is to hold back while the other lion gives chase (T).  The second-best payoff, R, represents both lions giving chase, in which the energy costs of hunting are shared.  The P payoff is given to both lions if neither gives chase.  In PD, P is greater than S, the payoff given to a lone cooperator; in Chicken, S is greater than P.  One can conceptualize this difference as differing energy costs of giving chase: In PD, the costs of giving chase are so high that hunting alone is worse than no one hunting at all (S<P); in Chicken, the hunting costs are low enough that it is better to be the only one giving chase than to have no one hunting at all (S>P).

In PD, both players have dominant pure strategies of defect: Mutual defection is a pure-strategy Nash equilibrium.  While cooperation can emerge in an indefinitely repeated game, finitely repeated games unravel into defection by backward induction.[1] In an iterated chicken game, the evolutionarily stable strategy matches the mixed-strategy equilibrium.  That is, the set of strategies (x,y) will be evolutionarily stable only if each (either pure or mixed) strategy x_i and y_i is a best reply to (x,y).[2] Otherwise, a superior mutant strategy will invade and displace it.

The following table uses prevention investments of 25 and 75 to illustrate the decisional dynamics of another game, Crime Deterrence. I use arrows to indicate the rational change in decision at each outcome:

Fig. 3.3 – Snowdrift Payoffs

The first thing to note is that payoffs are asymmetric.  In terms of the TRPS inequality, T₂>R₁>R₂,T₁,S₂>P1>S₁,P₂.  As with chicken, there is no pure-strategy Nash equilibrium; the optimal strategies for both players would require mixed strategies.  There are two significant differences: 1) Regulator is rewarded for higher investments only when Criminal takes (R₁>T₁); and 2) Stay results in the same payoff for Criminal no matter what Regulator invests (R₂=S₂).

[2] Jorgen W. Weibull, Evolutionary Game Theory (1995), ch. 5.

The New York Times’ John Tierney reports experimental evidence that single women are more attracted to men who are already in relationships.

[T]he researchers quizzed male and female undergraduates — some involved in romantic relationships, some unattached — about their ideal romantic partner.

Next, each of the experimental subjects was told that he or she had been matched by a computer with a like-minded partner, and each was shown a photo of an attractive person of the opposite sex. (All the women saw the same photo, as did all the men.) Half of the subjects were told that their match was already romantically involved with someone else, while the other half were told that their match was unattached. Then the subjects were all asked how interested they were in their match.

To the men in the experiment, and to the women who were already in relationships, it didn’t make a significant difference whether their match was single or attached. But single women showed a distinct preference for mate poaching. When the man was described as unattached, 59 percent of the single women were interested in pursuing him. When that same man was described as being in a committed relationship, 90 percent were interested. The researchers write:

According to a recent poll, most women who engage in mate poaching do not think the attached status of the target played a role in their poaching decision, but our study shows this belief to be false. Single women in this study were significantly more interested in the target when he was attached. This may be because an attached man has demonstrated his ability to commit and in some ways his qualities have already been ‘‘pre-screened” by another woman.

These are certainly interesting results, but I am skeptical that the differential reports are reflected in behavior.  What experimenters describe as “interest” could reflect the subject’s approval of a male undergraduate that can remain in a committed relationship.  That approval might not translate into more assertive courtship behavior.  Control experiments with older individuals would clarify this point.

Link to the original study.

Here is a sample of headlines from the last month for articles on the “Cash for Clunkers” program:

• Washington Post, 8/11/09, Popular ‘Cash For Clunkers’ Thins Out Car Lots
• El Dorado Telegraph, 8/13/09, Cash for Clunker program drives auto sales
• Miami Herald, 8/09/09, ‘Cash for Clunkers’ is an all-around winner

Compare to today’s New York Times headline:

• Even with ‘Cash for Clunkers,’ Retail Sales Decline in July

The New York Daily News reports:

Newly minted brides should do more than vow to love their hubbies for a lifetime, say the majority of Americans. Some 70 percent of the respondents in a new study feel they should also take their spouse’s surname – and 50 percent say that it should be a legal requirement for a woman to take her spouse’s last name.

The study, presented Tuesday at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting, was done by the Center for Survey Research at Indiana University, as reported by USA Today.

Some 815 people were asked multiple choice and open-ended questions about a variety of family and gender issues. On the issue of marital name change, the majority of respondents weighed in with a fairly conservative answer, says Laura Hamilton, Indiana University associate professor and lead study author.