Arguements for and Against Morality
1. Introduction
Philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences have not yet produced a consensual theory about the nature of norms. As is often the case with categorization, some authors approach the phenomenon as “lumpers” and others as “splitters.” Lumpers tend regroup norms under a comprehensive definition, generally centered on the way in which norms match actions with permissibility judgments. Heath (2008, 66), for instance, considers norms to be social rules that “classify actions as permissible or impermissible; they do not specify which outcomes are more or less desirable.” Similarly, Sripada and Stich (2006, 281) define a norm as a “rule or principle that specifies actions that are required, permissible, or forbidden independently of any legal or social institution.” In contrast, splitters consider that types of norms can be identified and consistently distinguished. Several independent typologies of norms have been proposed, often based on unrelated criteria. The most influential of these typologies was initially proposed by Turiel (1983) and distinguishes “moral,” “conventional,” and “personal” norms. The distinction, which has received much attention in subsequent research in philosophy and psychology, is based on people’s dispositions to judge whether the validity of a norm is dependent or not on authority and context. An alternative typology has been proposed by Shweder et al. (1997) and includes what they call norms of “community,” “autonomy,” and “divinity.” Their so-called “CAD model” distinguishes norms on the basis of their content: community norms include prescriptions about the function of an individual within a social group, autonomy norms about an individual’s preferences and rights, and divinity norms about interactions with supernatural beings, which they take to include different sexual or food taboos. Rozin et al. (1999) have extended the CAD model to link types of norms with types of emotional reactions to norm violations. In their view, violations of community norms elicit contempt, violations of autonomy norms anger, and violations of divinity norms disgust. This article is about two new typologies of norms that have been proposed recently by Cristina Bicchieri (2006, 2008) and Jon Elster (2007, 2009). The reason why we have decided to assess these typologies jointly is twofold. The first is that they have been developed independent of previous typologies and can thus be assessed independent of them. The second is that they are based on similar criteria. Instead of focusing on the content of norms (as Shweder et al. 1997) or on the way people assess the validity of norms (as Turiel 1983), they focus on the way in which context, and especially other agents’ expectations and behaviors, shapes one’s preference to comply with norms. We begin this article with a presentation of Bicchieri’s distinction between social and moral norms (1) and Elster’s distinction between social, moral, and quasi-moral norms (2). After having highlighted the similarities between the two typologies (4), we explain why neither Bicchieri’s (5) nor Elster’s (6) offers a consistent distinction between types of norms. We conclude by arguing that both typologies do not capture causally relevant features of norms and should be abandoned (7). Despite this judgment, we emphasize that both authors correctly identify causally relevant features of human psychology that should figure in any account of the motivational infrastructure underlying norm compliance.
2. Bicchieri’s typology: Social norms versus moral norms
Cristina Bicchieri is a philosopher of economics whose interest in norms is strongly influenced by research in experimental economics and, especially, by the way in which compliance can be elicited in experimental settings. According to Bicchieri (2006), preferences for compliance with social norms are conditional on the satisfaction of two types of expectations: normative and empirical. In contrast, preferences for compliance with moral norms are unconditional. We begin by explaining what social norms are, according to Bicchieri, and why she gives a central place to expectations in her definition. We then turn to her definition of moral norms.
What are social norms?
Bicchieri (2006, 10) presents her model of social norms as a rational reconstruction of the conditions under which social norms can be taken to guide action. The first part of her theory has to do with the way in which we apply social norms to everyday situations. According to Bicchieri (2008, 231), “whenever we face a new situation, we interpret, understand and encode it using categories, scripts and schemata.” When decoding particular situations, contextual clues are causally relevant to the elicitation of particular scripts, which in turn come with specific beliefs and expectations. As we will see, the role of such expectations is of crucial importance for Bicchieri’s typology. According to Bicchieri (2006, 11), two conditions must be satisfied for a social norm to exist in a given population. First, a sufficient number of individuals must know that the norm exists and applies to a situation. Second, a sufficient number of individuals must have a conditional preference to comply with the norm, given the right expectations are satisfied. This second condition—the presence of a sufficient number of conditional followers—is the one that justifies distinguishing social and moral norms. Bicchieri distinguishes two types of expectations that must be satisfied for conditional compliance with social norms to obtain. Normative expectations refer to what one thinks others expect from you, what they think one ought to do. Empirical expectations refer to what one has observed or knows about the behavior of others in similar situations. Both concepts aim at capturing the ways in which particular types of expectations determine preferences for compliance in economic experiments, as well as in real life. Below we present some empirical evidence used by Bicchieri to distinguish both types of expectations and, indirectly, to justify linking the existence of social norms to the presence of a sufficient number of conditional followers.
2.1 Normative expectations
Others’ expectations about oneself are often of crucial importance in predicting one’s behavior. This can be shown in the context of economic experiments, which Bicchieri uses extensively to support her account of social norms. For example, Dana et al. (2006) ran an experiment in which they wanted to assess if and how much people would pay to have the possibility of acting unfairly in a “quiet” fashion. In a standard Dictator game (DG), a first player (dictator) receives $10 and can share any part of this sum with a second anonymous player (receiver). Once the dictator has made his decision, the game ends and both players receive the sum that has been decided. Both players also know that the result is the outcome of first player’s decision. In the variant of the game designed by Dana et al (2006), dictators have the opportunity to pay 1$ to exit the game (and thus to receive 9$), but with the advantage of the receiver not being informed that the game was played. They find out that about one third of dictators are ready to pay to quietly exit the game. By manipulating the information, the experimenters highlight the importance of second player’s expectations for the dictators. This suggests that, if given the opportunity, many subjects would choose to use Plato’s Ring of Gyges, which would give them the power to become invisible (Dana et al. 2006, 201). As a matter of fact, the exit option “allowed dictators to control perceptions, and that led some to be more selfish than they otherwise would be if left only with power and anonymity.” (Dana et al. 2006, 201) The authors emphasize that, “when… the receivers beliefs and expectations cannot be manipulated by exit, exit is seldom taken. We conclude that giving often reflects a desire not to violate others expectations rather than a concern for others welfare per se” (Dana et al. 2006, 93). This means that, even in anonymous experimental games, the mere fact of knowing that an actual other has expectations towards oneself influences one’s decision. We can expect the effect to be much stronger in real-life situations in which we interact with significant others. An additional example of the importance of others’ expectations on norm compliance can be found in an Ultimatum game designed by Kagel et al. (1996). Instead of playing the game with dollars, they played it with “chips” that the players must subsequently exchange for dollars. They then compared the behavior of players in games with different exchange rates and different information regarding the exchange rates. The most interesting treatment for our discussion is the one in which the chips had three times more value to the proposer than to the receiver, and only the proposer knew this. In this treatment, proposers gave about half of the chips, suggesting that they primarily cared about the appearance of fairness or, in Bicchieri’s terms, about satisfying others’ normative expectations.
2.2 Empirical expectations
The importance of empirical expectations in ensuring compliance with social norms is often at the center of discussions about the “broken window effect.” Vandalism or littering are assumed to be more likely when evidence of vandalism or littering are present in the environment. To test the importance of empirical expectations in an experimental context, Bicchieri and Xiao (2009) designed a variant of the Dictator game with asymmetric payoffs and asymmetric information about payoffs. The game is set up to create a conflict between normative and empirical expectations in dictators. The most relevant treatment for our discussion is one in which the dictators know that they are expected to act fairly, but also know that a majority of dictators have been acting unfairly in a previous session. A conflict then arises between the normative expectations that are elicited and the dictators’ empirical knowledge of other dictators’ unfairness. The results suggest that agents preferentially act upon what they think others would do in the same situation, even if this implies adopting a behavior that is not in line with what others would approve of. In sum, when there is a conflict between normative and empirical expectations, the latter is most reliable in predicting agents’ choices.
2.3 What are moral norms?
The distinction between social and moral norms is based on the conditionality of the preferences for compliance. According to Bicchieri (2006, 20), “by their very nature, moral norms demand (at least in principle) an unconditional commitment.” Although she gives few details about the nature of this unconditional commitment, she suggests that it is based on emotional responses that give one independent reasons to comply with a norm: “typically contemplating killing or incest elicits a strong negative emotional response of repugnance” (Bicchieri 2006, 21). An important point is that Bicchieri’s distinction between social and moral norms is not based on the content of the norm (by contrast with Turiel (1983)): “What needs to be stressed here is that what makes something a social or a moral norm is our attitude toward it.” (Bicchieri 2006, 21) Moral norms are those that are followed unconditionally upon emotional reactions, whereas social norms are followed conditionally upon the satisfaction of normative and empirical expectations. Bicchieri is also clear that she considers the category of social norms to include many norms that could be prima facie considered as moral: “…many of what we commonly think of as ‘moral’ norms, such as norms of reciprocity, honesty or fairness, are not norms most of us unconditionally follow. They may be more or less well-entrenched, we may find more or less difficult to disobey them, but most individuals are sensitive to what others do or expect them to do in this respect.” (Bicchieri 2008, 233-234)
Here again, what matters for a social norm to obtain is that the preference for compliance can be shown to be dependent upon the satisfaction of the normative and empirical expectations.
3. Elster’s typology: Social, moral, and quasi-moral
As with Bicchieri’s, Elster’s typology gives a central role to the context in which norms are elicited. In contrast with Bicchieri, however, Elster also pays significant attention to the emotional mechanisms underlying compliance with norms.
3.1 Social norms
A first characteristic of social norms, according to Elster, is that they serve no particular purpose. That is to say, they are not the product of instrumental reasoning. For example, “always wear black at funerals” serves no particular purpose, although people generally expect others to wear black in theses circumstances and think others expect them to do the same. This “shared” aspect is of major importance for Elster. To exist, social norms have to be shared and known to be so by the relevant people (Elster 1999, 98). In other words, social norms are public prescriptions that are not followed instrumentally and that are the product of shared expectations. Typical social norms discussed by Elster are norms of revenge or norms of etiquette (Elster 2007, 361-365). Another feature of social norms is that they are enforced by sanction mechanisms directed at violators. The fear of material punishment can motivate compliance with the norm, but the main motivation behind compliance with social norms is the desire to avoid shame. The violation of social norms elicits contempt in observers, which in turn triggers the experience of shame in the norm violator. According to Elster, it is the emotional costs associated with this experience of shame that must be understood as the central form of punishment supporting social norms. Material punishment, for its part, must primarily be taken as an indicator of the intensity of observers’ contempt toward the violator and, thus, of the intensity of shame that one should experience. In sum, according to Elster (2009, 199), social norms “are maintained by the interaction of contempt in the observer of a norm violation and shame in the norm violator.” In Elster’s view, shame supports compliance with social norms through an indirect causal link. Indeed, shame is not experienced as a direct consequence of the violation of a social norm, but rather because someone observed the violation and consequently expressed contempt toward the violator. Hence, “the operation of social norms depends crucially on the agents being observed by others.” (Elster 2009, 196)
3.2 Moral norms
According to Elster, the emotion sustaining moral norms is guilt. Whereas shame is elicited by the presence of contempt in some observer, guilt does not depend on the fact of being observed. It is elicited when agents contemplate possible norm violations or when they remember past violations. In principle, the triggering of guilt does not depend on the presence of a particular emotional response in the observer. The violation of a moral norm is thus likely to elicit guilt directly in the norm violator. Elster (2009, 197) recognizes that witnesses of a moral violation generally experience indignation, but emphasizes that the experience of guilt does not causally depend on the presence of an indignant observer. For example, someone who has stolen a book at the library without anyone noticing may feel guilty later on and bring the book back and apologize. The action tendencies of guilt are generally the undoing of the harm done whenever possible—like in the case of bringing the book back—and the reparation of the social ties that have been breached. This point is very important in distinguishing guilt from shame. Elster thinks that shame supports social norms by motivating people to conceal violations of norms or to comply with norms to avoid being the target of contempt. In contrast, guilt supports moral norms by leading people to undo harm and to apologize. In sum, Elster understands moral norms as distinct from social norms because compliance with them is sustain by guilt. In his view, this connection entails that the elicitation of moral norms is independent of the fact that one is being observed, as well as independent of the emotion experienced by the observers of the violation. Typical moral norms discussed by Elster (2007, 104) include “the norm to help others in distress, the norm of equal sharing, and the norm of ‘everyday Kantianism’ (do what would be best if everyone did the same).”
3.3 Quasi-moral norms
Quasi-moral norms are peculiar because they are not defined with reference to any emotional mechanism. According to Elster (2009, 196), compliance to quasi-moral norms is conditional on the agents observing others complying with the norm. An example of a successful quasi-moral norm relates to the reduction of households’ water consumption in Bogotá under the mayorship of Antanas Mockus. The city authorities were willing to reduce water consumption but were rebutted by the costs of monitoring individual households’ use. They then decided to show the aggregate level of water consumption on TV. People could then know if other citizens were doing their share. If so, according to Elster (2009, 197), they were motivated to reduce their own consumption. This example shows that compliance by others can sometimes motivate people to comply with norms. In Elster’s view, most fairness and cooperation norms are quasi-moral (whereas they are presented as social in Bicchieri’s model). For example, reporting your income correctly to the relevant authorities is considered to be a norm of fairness—since pooling costs and expenses is considered to be collectively advantageous, although everyone has an incentive to cheat. If an increasing proportion of the population fails to report their income correctly and get away with it, it is plausible that more and more people would lose the motivation to comply. The idea is that what motivates people to follow quasi-moral norms is the desire to contribute if others are contributing. Workers follow a quasi-moral norm if they report their income correctly only when most people do, just as people follow a quasi-moral norm when they refrain from throwing garbage away when others use wastebaskets. In brief, the defining feature of quasi-moral norms is that people comply on the basis of others’ compliance.
4. Comparing Elster and Bicchieri
Elster’s typology shares interesting features with Bicchieri’s. Elster identifies three types of norms where Bicchieri sees only two, but the criteria on which they base their typologies are interestingly similar (see table 1). According to Elster, for instance, social norms are elicited when one is being observed. There is an obvious parallel with what Bicchieri describes as “normative expectations,” because being observed is probably the most obvious reason to infer that others have expectations about one’s behavior. Being observed conditions compliance with social norm in Elster (via the experience of shame), just as the satisfaction of normative expectations conditions it in Bicchieri.
Table 1. Elster’s typology of norms and equivalents in Bicchieri
|Elster’s typology |Context of elicitation |Emotional mechanism |Equivalent in Bicchieri |
|Social norms |Being observed |Shame |Normative expectations |
|Moral norms |Independent of context |Guilt |Emotional reactions / |
| | | |independent reasons |
|Quasi-moral norms |Observing others comply |? |Empirical expectations |
The parallel extends to Elster’s quasi-moral norms and Bicchieri’s empirical expectations. Elster’s quasi-moral norms are elicited when others comply, which is precisely how Bicchieri justifies the importance of empirical expectations. Elster’s typology thus distinguishes three types of norm because the variables “being observed” and “observing others comply” are associated with different types of norms (respectively “social norms” and “quasi-moral norms). In Bicchieri, in contrast, the satisfaction of normative and empirical expectations are two variables that condition the preference for the same type of norms: social norms. Moral norms, for their part, can be taken as more or less equivalent in both typologies. Both authors define them by the presence of motivations that are broadly independent of context. The only difference is that Elster focuses on a precise emotional mechanism (guilt), while Bicchieri is less committed to a specific emotional reaction. Although relevant differences exist between the two typologies, they are sufficiently close to be subjected to similar criticisms. In the rest of this paper, we argue that both Bicchieri and Elster fail to draw consistent distinctions between types of norms. We begin with a critical assessment of the distinction between social and moral norms in Bicchieri. We then argue that Elster’s addition of the category of quasi-moral norms, as with his specification of the emotional mechanisms underlying norm compliance, creates further confusion.
5. What is wrong with Bicchieri’s typology?
Bicchieri (2005; 2008) suggests distinguishing social and moral norms on the basis of the preference supporting compliance. While compliance with social norms is conditional on the satisfaction of normative and empirical expectations, compliance with moral norms is unconditional. One way of questioning the distinction between social and moral norms would be to show that our preferences for “moral norms,” although intuitively perceived as unconditional, are in fact conditional on the satisfaction of our normative and empirical expectations. Bicchieri (2008, 234) points in this direction, when she writes: “If norms against killing are just social constructs, however well entrenched, isn’t it possible that they, too, are subject to conditional acceptance? For sure the threshold at which one would switch allegiance will be very high, but there will be one.” This strategy, however, would not amount to abandoning the distinction between social and moral norms, but only to show that the category of “moral norms” is in fact empty. But out criticism runs deeper. We want to question the possibility of distinguishing types of norms on the basis of the (un)conditionality of the preference for compliance. We will show this on the basis of an example. Consider the rule that says “you should not steal.” Intuitively, there are reasons to consider this rule as a moral norm in Bicchieri’s sense. Most of us consider that they have independent reasons not to steal and expect to experience guilt or disgust if they do. But at the same time, “you should not steal” also apparently qualifies as a social norm. Although no experimental studies might be available here, it is reasonable to expect people’s preference for not stealing to depend on the satisfaction of their empirical and normative expectations. If no one complies with the norm, or if no one expects us to comply with the norm, it is likely that our motivation to refrain from stealing will decrease. The preference for not stealing must then, at least to some extent, be conditional on the satisfaction of normative and empirical expectations. Then, should we consider the rule as a social or as a moral norm? Bicchieri’s idea is that a “sufficient number” of individuals must have a conditional preference for the norm to qualify as social. The problem is that the number of conditional followers may not be fixed and might actually depend on other variables that have no place in Bicchieri’s definition. One such variable is how much there is to gain from the violation of the rule. Bicchieri’s definition contains a reference to the costs of potential “sanction,” but no reference to the gains that could potentially ensue from violating the rule. This, in our view, creates a general problem for Bicchieri’s distinction. Indeed, an individual’s preference for complying with the rule “you should not steal” is not only likely to depend upon 1) the satisfaction of empirical and normative expectations and 2) the costs of potential sanctions, but also upon 3) independent moral reasons, and, most importantly for our argument, 4) the potential gains from violating the rule. The impact of this last variable on individuals’ preferences has an important consequence for Bicchieri’s distinction. A rule such as “you should not steal” could stop being a social norm in certain contexts simply because it becomes more advantageous not to comply with it. In other words, in general circumstances, the rule would qualify as a social norm. But above a certain expected gain from breaking the rule, the number of conditional followers would stop being sufficient for the rule to qualify as such. At this point, however, a sufficient number of individuals would probably still have an aversive reaction at the idea of stealing, so the rule would still qualify as a moral rule. In sum, the rule “you should no steal” would switch from the status of social norm to that of moral norm, simply because not complying with the rule is more advantageous in some contexts. This strikes us as a counterintuitive result, but it is an unavoidable consequence of the conceptual link that Bicchieri establishes between the existence of a social norm and the presence of a sufficient number of conditional followers. Although it is true that people have a conditional preference for compliance for most, if not all, norms, it is also true that they have at least some independent reasons for complying with the rule, even when they prefer not to. These independent reasons, be they rooted in emotions or moral reasoning, are not always determinate in actual decision-making, but there is no question that they can be in certain cases, depending not on empirical and normative expectations, but on what is at stake.
6. What is wrong with Elster’s typology?
In this section we first question Elster’s distinction between social and moral norms, and then turn to the concept of quasi-moral norms to show it does not rest on much firmer ground. Elster distinguishes social from moral norms on the basis of their context of elicitation and of the emotional mechanism underlying compliance. Social norms are said to be elicited when one is being observed and to be respected out of shame. In contrast, moral norms are elicited independently of observation and are to be respected out of guilt. We think that both criteria are unlikely to pick out distinctive types of norms. The first reason has to do with the impact of being observed on behavior. There are good reasons to believe (both intuitive and experimental) that being observed always has an impact on norm compliance. Take for instance the variant of the dictator game run by Dana et al. (2006) and discussed above. In this experiment, dictators are ready to pay to quietly exit the game and, hence, to avoid creating expectations in the other player. Is “being generous” or “being fair” in a dictator game a social or a moral norm? Our guess is that many persons will consider that they have a moral obligation to give something and would experience guilt when giving nothing. Still, it is clear that dictators care about being observed and that publicity has an impact on their behavior. Can the same be said about rules such as “you should not steal” or “you should not hurt others”? It is reasonable to assume that most people feel that they have moral obligation not to steal or hurt others and that they would experience guilt if they did. But it also is reasonable to say that being observed has a causal impact on the elicitation of these norms. Won’t the likelihood that I steal or hurt others be reduced if I am observed? Our intuition is that being observed always has an impact on the elicitation of norms, be they social or moral, and Elster certainly fails to provide any clear example of a norm that publicity would not contribute to eliciting. The distinction between shame and guilt is not going to bring Elster much farther. If there are reasons to distinguish these two emotions and to associate them with distinct action-tendencies, there are also reasons to doubt that one (shame) is elicited by public violations of norms while the other is elicited independently of others’ attitude. Tangney et al. (2007) conducted longitudinal studies about self-conscious emotions, with a focus on shame and guilt. They report that there is heterogeneity in people’s disposition to experience both emotions. They distinguish shame-prone and guilt-prone people, on the basis of individual’s propensity to experience a particular emotion in a wide range of circumstances. Shame-prone people tend to experience shame even in private when thinking about a moral violation. In contrast, guilt-prone people tend to experience guilt even in social contexts, probably even when they are the target of contempt. Elster’s distinction between social and moral norms implies that guilt and shame have distinctive elicitors, but Tangney and colleagues’ (2006) results recommend circumspection on this matter. They suggest that guilt-prone persons will see normative violations as calling for reparation, while shame-prone persons will tend to categorize even minor normative violations as diminishing their value as persons. Elster may thus be right to argue that there are different emotional responses to violations of norms, but there are good reasons to think that he is wrong to link these responses to different types of norms. Another reason to doubt Elster’s distinction can be found in Teroni and Deonna (2009), who examined the different criteria found in the literature to distinguish shame and guilt. They distinguish what is typical and what is constitutive of shame and guilt. In contrast with Elster, they suggest that being observed by others—or imagining being observed—might be typical of the experience of shame, but is neither constitutive of this emotion nor necessary to its elicitation (Teroni and Deonna 2009, 729). If shame is defined as the emotion through which we perceive that our value as persons is undermined, then there is no reason to believe that its elicitation necessarily involves being observed by others. This undermines Elster’s distinction between shame and guilt and, indirectly, his distinction between social and moral norms. Although Elster’s analysis of motivational mechanisms is helpful, his attempt to connect them with different types of norms is misleading. Our criticism can be extended to the concept of quasi-moral norms that Elster sees as being elicited by others’ compliance and that he broadly equates with norms of cooperation and fairness. The problems with this new category are multifold. First, there is no reason to believe that observing others comply contributes to the elicitation of a particular subset of norms, instead of norms in general. Aren’t norms such as “you should not hurt others,” which can be regarded as typical moral norms, also more likely to be elicited when others comply with them? Second, there is no reason to believe that norms of cooperation or fairness, prototypical quasi-moral norms according to Elster, are not elicited by being observed, what he considers to be the defining feature of social norm. If I know that people expect me to be fair, isn’t the likelihood that I will be fair higher than otherwise? Finally, in contrast with moral and social norms, Elster’s quasi-moral norms are not supported by a specific emotional reaction. This is not a problem per se. What may pose a problem, however, is the fact that being unfair or uncooperative might trigger the emotions of guilt and shame that Elster associates closely with social and moral norms. If we fail to do our share of a common task, we might experience shame just as if we break a rule of etiquette, or guilt just as if we hurt someone. In sum, we contend that both the contexts of elicitation and the emotional mechanisms discussed by Elster do not justify distinguishing moral, social, and quasi-moral norms. There are no a priori reasons to deny that what he identifies as prototypical social, moral, and quasi-moral norms can all be elicited by being observed by others or by observing others complying, just as there are no reasons to deny that compliance with these different norms can be motivated by either guilt or shame.
7. From typologies to psychology
Both Elster (2007, 357; 2009, 199) and Bicchieri (2008, 234) recognize that the line between different types of norms might be difficult to draw in practice and that specific cases might represent a mixture of different types. But our criticism is not only based on the idea that particular norms are difficult to categorize in practice because of the messiness of real-life situations. Our point is that Bicchieri and Elster’s typologies represent artificial groupings and that they do not capture causally relevant features of norms. Hence, we think that both typologies should be abandoned. This conclusion does not entail that any typology of norms is doomed to fail. In this paper we prefer to remain agnostic regarding the prospects of other typologies for capturing causally relevant distinctions between types of norms. We suspend our judgment, for instance, regarding the validity of the distinction between moral, conventional, and personal norms in Turiel’s sense (1983), or of the distinction between community, autonomy, and divinity norms in Shweder et al.’s sense (1997). Another point is that, if we think that Elster and Bicchieri’s typologies do not capture causally relevant features of norms, they might still capture relevant features of the psychology of norm compliance. Both typologies, for instance, give a central role to the idea that others’ behavior and expectations shape our preference for norm compliance. Similarly, both typologies stress that our motivations to comply are sometimes independent of context and involve a desire to realize an action for itself. Although the typologies must be abandoned, we think that these two ideas must be saved. One way to save them is to change the focus from norms themselves to the psychology of norm compliance. Thus, instead of trying to distinguish types of norms, we could try to identify the different motivational processes that determine norm-compliance in individual agents. In our view, Elster and Bicchieri fail to do this because they are interested in distinguishing types of norms at the level of the population. This is particularly clear in Bicchieri (2006, 11), for which a sufficient number of conditional followers must be present “in the population” for a norm to exist. In our view, if we are to examine norm-abiding behavior in detail, and to explain how norm compliance varies from one individual to another and from one context to another, we need to stop considering norms as phenomena that exist at the populational level. This move is not motivated by a form of reductionism regarding norms, or by a commitment to methodological individualism. There are all kinds of pragmatic and scientific contexts in which it is perfectly reasonable to consider norms as phenomena that exist at the level of the population. Anthropologists, political scientists, and economists can judge perfectly well that compliance with a norm within a given population is sufficiently robust for the norm to play a causal role in the explanation of macrolevel social phenomena. There is no problem, for instance, with considering that norms against corruption can explain political scandals, or that norms against littering can explain the absence of litter in a public park. But this does not imply that it is possible to match types of norms at the populational level with typical contexts of elicitations or with typical motivational mechanisms, as both Bicchieri et Elster propose. In our view, norms that are robustly recognized at the populational level are precisely those that individuals have many reasons to comply with. This is the case for norms of cooperation or fairness, norms against stealing or hurting, as well as codes of honor and etiquette. Compliance with these norms is influenced by many factors, including the fact that one is being observed (normative expectations), the fact that others comply with them (empirical expectations), but also instrumental reasons (linked with expected benefits from following the rule) and independent reasons rooted in emotion (e.g. shame, or guilt) or in moral reasoning. Consider, for instance, table manners, which form relatively stable and broadly recognized codes in every culture. What determines compliance with them? According to Elster, table manners are prototypical social norms. It is true that the guests face each other at the table and that one can comply with table manners to avoid eliciting contempt in others or to meet their normative expectations. But compliance can also ensue from the satisfaction of empirical expectations. That is, the fact that other guests respect the norms may elicit in us a desire to do the same. Table manners would thus also qualify as social norms in Bicchieri’s sense or as quasi-moral in Elster’s sense. But this is not the end of the story. Compliance can follow from purely instrumental reason: we sometimes comply with table manners because we are worried about our reputation or because we want to make a good impression. It can also result from independent moral reasons: we comply because no doing so would elicit a feeling of guilt or moral disgust toward ourselves, which is in fact independent of the context. Now, what kind of norms are table manners? Are they moral, social, or quasi-moral? There is little hope to give a univocal answer to this question. It is not impossible that, under certain conditions, one type of motivations is dominant and that another type is entirely irrelevant. This, however, is an empirical question to which there is currently no straightforward answer.
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Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M. & Park, L. (1997). The "big three" of morality (autonomy, community, divinity), and the "big three" explanations of suffering. (In P. Rozin & A. Brandt (Eds). Morality and Health (pp. 119-169). New York, NY: Routledge).
Sripada, C. & Stich, S. (2006). A Framework for the Psychology of Norms. (In P. Carruthers, S. Laurence & S. Stich (Eds.), The Innate Mind: Culture and Cognition (pp. 280-301). Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Tangney, J. P., Stuewig J., & Mashek, D. J. (2007). Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 345-372.
Teroni, F. & Deonna, J. A. (2009). Differentiating shame from guilt. Consciousness and cognition, 17, 725-740.
Turiel, E. (1983). The Development of Social Knowledge. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Xiao E. & Bicchieri C. (2009). Do the right thing: But only if others do so. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 22(2), 191-208.
References: Bicchieri, C. (2006). The Grammar of Society. (New York: Cambridge University Press). Bicchieri, C. (2008). The fragility of fairness: An experimental investigation on the conditional status of pro-social norms. Philosophical Issues, 18, 229-248. Dana, J., Cain, D.M., & Dawes, R. (2006). What you don’t know won’t hurt me: Costly (but quiet) exit in a dictator game. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 100(2), 193–201. Elster J. (2009). Social norms and the explanation of behavior. (In P. Hedström and P. Bearman (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology (pp. 195-217). Oxford: Oxford University Press). Elster J. (1999). Strong Feelings. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Elster J. (2007). Explaining Social Behavior: More nuts and bolts for the social science. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Heath, J. (2008). Following the Rules: Practical reasoning and deontic constraint. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Kagel, J. H., Kim, C. & Moser, D. (1996). Fairness in ultimatum games with asymmetric information and asymmetric payoffs. Games and Economic Behavior, 13, 100–110. Sripada, C. & Stich, S. (2006). A Framework for the Psychology of Norms. (In P. Carruthers, S. Laurence & S. Stich (Eds.), The Innate Mind: Culture and Cognition (pp. 280-301). Oxford: Oxford University Press). Tangney, J. P., Stuewig J., & Mashek, D. J. (2007). Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 345-372. Teroni, F. & Deonna, J. A. (2009). Differentiating shame from guilt. Consciousness and cognition, 17, 725-740. Turiel, E. (1983). The Development of Social Knowledge. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Xiao E. & Bicchieri C. (2009). Do the right thing: But only if others do so. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 22(2), 191-208.
Philosophy, psychology, and the social sciences have not yet produced a consensual theory about the nature of norms. As is often the case with categorization, some authors approach the phenomenon as “lumpers” and others as “splitters.” Lumpers tend regroup norms under a comprehensive definition, generally centered on the way in which norms match actions with permissibility judgments. Heath (2008, 66), for instance, considers norms to be social rules that “classify actions as permissible or impermissible; they do not specify which outcomes are more or less desirable.” Similarly, Sripada and Stich (2006, 281) define a norm as a “rule or principle that specifies actions that are required, permissible, or forbidden independently of any legal or social institution.” In contrast, splitters consider that types of norms can be identified and consistently distinguished. Several independent typologies of norms have been proposed, often based on unrelated criteria. The most influential of these typologies was initially proposed by Turiel (1983) and distinguishes “moral,” “conventional,” and “personal” norms. The distinction, which has received much attention in subsequent research in philosophy and psychology, is based on people’s dispositions to judge whether the validity of a norm is dependent or not on authority and context. An alternative typology has been proposed by Shweder et al. (1997) and includes what they call norms of “community,” “autonomy,” and “divinity.” Their so-called “CAD model” distinguishes norms on the basis of their content: community norms include prescriptions about the function of an individual within a social group, autonomy norms about an individual’s preferences and rights, and divinity norms about interactions with supernatural beings, which they take to include different sexual or food taboos. Rozin et al. (1999) have extended the CAD model to link types of norms with types of emotional reactions to norm violations. In their view, violations of community norms elicit contempt, violations of autonomy norms anger, and violations of divinity norms disgust. This article is about two new typologies of norms that have been proposed recently by Cristina Bicchieri (2006, 2008) and Jon Elster (2007, 2009). The reason why we have decided to assess these typologies jointly is twofold. The first is that they have been developed independent of previous typologies and can thus be assessed independent of them. The second is that they are based on similar criteria. Instead of focusing on the content of norms (as Shweder et al. 1997) or on the way people assess the validity of norms (as Turiel 1983), they focus on the way in which context, and especially other agents’ expectations and behaviors, shapes one’s preference to comply with norms. We begin this article with a presentation of Bicchieri’s distinction between social and moral norms (1) and Elster’s distinction between social, moral, and quasi-moral norms (2). After having highlighted the similarities between the two typologies (4), we explain why neither Bicchieri’s (5) nor Elster’s (6) offers a consistent distinction between types of norms. We conclude by arguing that both typologies do not capture causally relevant features of norms and should be abandoned (7). Despite this judgment, we emphasize that both authors correctly identify causally relevant features of human psychology that should figure in any account of the motivational infrastructure underlying norm compliance.
2. Bicchieri’s typology: Social norms versus moral norms
Cristina Bicchieri is a philosopher of economics whose interest in norms is strongly influenced by research in experimental economics and, especially, by the way in which compliance can be elicited in experimental settings. According to Bicchieri (2006), preferences for compliance with social norms are conditional on the satisfaction of two types of expectations: normative and empirical. In contrast, preferences for compliance with moral norms are unconditional. We begin by explaining what social norms are, according to Bicchieri, and why she gives a central place to expectations in her definition. We then turn to her definition of moral norms.
What are social norms?
Bicchieri (2006, 10) presents her model of social norms as a rational reconstruction of the conditions under which social norms can be taken to guide action. The first part of her theory has to do with the way in which we apply social norms to everyday situations. According to Bicchieri (2008, 231), “whenever we face a new situation, we interpret, understand and encode it using categories, scripts and schemata.” When decoding particular situations, contextual clues are causally relevant to the elicitation of particular scripts, which in turn come with specific beliefs and expectations. As we will see, the role of such expectations is of crucial importance for Bicchieri’s typology. According to Bicchieri (2006, 11), two conditions must be satisfied for a social norm to exist in a given population. First, a sufficient number of individuals must know that the norm exists and applies to a situation. Second, a sufficient number of individuals must have a conditional preference to comply with the norm, given the right expectations are satisfied. This second condition—the presence of a sufficient number of conditional followers—is the one that justifies distinguishing social and moral norms. Bicchieri distinguishes two types of expectations that must be satisfied for conditional compliance with social norms to obtain. Normative expectations refer to what one thinks others expect from you, what they think one ought to do. Empirical expectations refer to what one has observed or knows about the behavior of others in similar situations. Both concepts aim at capturing the ways in which particular types of expectations determine preferences for compliance in economic experiments, as well as in real life. Below we present some empirical evidence used by Bicchieri to distinguish both types of expectations and, indirectly, to justify linking the existence of social norms to the presence of a sufficient number of conditional followers.
2.1 Normative expectations
Others’ expectations about oneself are often of crucial importance in predicting one’s behavior. This can be shown in the context of economic experiments, which Bicchieri uses extensively to support her account of social norms. For example, Dana et al. (2006) ran an experiment in which they wanted to assess if and how much people would pay to have the possibility of acting unfairly in a “quiet” fashion. In a standard Dictator game (DG), a first player (dictator) receives $10 and can share any part of this sum with a second anonymous player (receiver). Once the dictator has made his decision, the game ends and both players receive the sum that has been decided. Both players also know that the result is the outcome of first player’s decision. In the variant of the game designed by Dana et al (2006), dictators have the opportunity to pay 1$ to exit the game (and thus to receive 9$), but with the advantage of the receiver not being informed that the game was played. They find out that about one third of dictators are ready to pay to quietly exit the game. By manipulating the information, the experimenters highlight the importance of second player’s expectations for the dictators. This suggests that, if given the opportunity, many subjects would choose to use Plato’s Ring of Gyges, which would give them the power to become invisible (Dana et al. 2006, 201). As a matter of fact, the exit option “allowed dictators to control perceptions, and that led some to be more selfish than they otherwise would be if left only with power and anonymity.” (Dana et al. 2006, 201) The authors emphasize that, “when… the receivers beliefs and expectations cannot be manipulated by exit, exit is seldom taken. We conclude that giving often reflects a desire not to violate others expectations rather than a concern for others welfare per se” (Dana et al. 2006, 93). This means that, even in anonymous experimental games, the mere fact of knowing that an actual other has expectations towards oneself influences one’s decision. We can expect the effect to be much stronger in real-life situations in which we interact with significant others. An additional example of the importance of others’ expectations on norm compliance can be found in an Ultimatum game designed by Kagel et al. (1996). Instead of playing the game with dollars, they played it with “chips” that the players must subsequently exchange for dollars. They then compared the behavior of players in games with different exchange rates and different information regarding the exchange rates. The most interesting treatment for our discussion is the one in which the chips had three times more value to the proposer than to the receiver, and only the proposer knew this. In this treatment, proposers gave about half of the chips, suggesting that they primarily cared about the appearance of fairness or, in Bicchieri’s terms, about satisfying others’ normative expectations.
2.2 Empirical expectations
The importance of empirical expectations in ensuring compliance with social norms is often at the center of discussions about the “broken window effect.” Vandalism or littering are assumed to be more likely when evidence of vandalism or littering are present in the environment. To test the importance of empirical expectations in an experimental context, Bicchieri and Xiao (2009) designed a variant of the Dictator game with asymmetric payoffs and asymmetric information about payoffs. The game is set up to create a conflict between normative and empirical expectations in dictators. The most relevant treatment for our discussion is one in which the dictators know that they are expected to act fairly, but also know that a majority of dictators have been acting unfairly in a previous session. A conflict then arises between the normative expectations that are elicited and the dictators’ empirical knowledge of other dictators’ unfairness. The results suggest that agents preferentially act upon what they think others would do in the same situation, even if this implies adopting a behavior that is not in line with what others would approve of. In sum, when there is a conflict between normative and empirical expectations, the latter is most reliable in predicting agents’ choices.
2.3 What are moral norms?
The distinction between social and moral norms is based on the conditionality of the preferences for compliance. According to Bicchieri (2006, 20), “by their very nature, moral norms demand (at least in principle) an unconditional commitment.” Although she gives few details about the nature of this unconditional commitment, she suggests that it is based on emotional responses that give one independent reasons to comply with a norm: “typically contemplating killing or incest elicits a strong negative emotional response of repugnance” (Bicchieri 2006, 21). An important point is that Bicchieri’s distinction between social and moral norms is not based on the content of the norm (by contrast with Turiel (1983)): “What needs to be stressed here is that what makes something a social or a moral norm is our attitude toward it.” (Bicchieri 2006, 21) Moral norms are those that are followed unconditionally upon emotional reactions, whereas social norms are followed conditionally upon the satisfaction of normative and empirical expectations. Bicchieri is also clear that she considers the category of social norms to include many norms that could be prima facie considered as moral: “…many of what we commonly think of as ‘moral’ norms, such as norms of reciprocity, honesty or fairness, are not norms most of us unconditionally follow. They may be more or less well-entrenched, we may find more or less difficult to disobey them, but most individuals are sensitive to what others do or expect them to do in this respect.” (Bicchieri 2008, 233-234)
Here again, what matters for a social norm to obtain is that the preference for compliance can be shown to be dependent upon the satisfaction of the normative and empirical expectations.
3. Elster’s typology: Social, moral, and quasi-moral
As with Bicchieri’s, Elster’s typology gives a central role to the context in which norms are elicited. In contrast with Bicchieri, however, Elster also pays significant attention to the emotional mechanisms underlying compliance with norms.
3.1 Social norms
A first characteristic of social norms, according to Elster, is that they serve no particular purpose. That is to say, they are not the product of instrumental reasoning. For example, “always wear black at funerals” serves no particular purpose, although people generally expect others to wear black in theses circumstances and think others expect them to do the same. This “shared” aspect is of major importance for Elster. To exist, social norms have to be shared and known to be so by the relevant people (Elster 1999, 98). In other words, social norms are public prescriptions that are not followed instrumentally and that are the product of shared expectations. Typical social norms discussed by Elster are norms of revenge or norms of etiquette (Elster 2007, 361-365). Another feature of social norms is that they are enforced by sanction mechanisms directed at violators. The fear of material punishment can motivate compliance with the norm, but the main motivation behind compliance with social norms is the desire to avoid shame. The violation of social norms elicits contempt in observers, which in turn triggers the experience of shame in the norm violator. According to Elster, it is the emotional costs associated with this experience of shame that must be understood as the central form of punishment supporting social norms. Material punishment, for its part, must primarily be taken as an indicator of the intensity of observers’ contempt toward the violator and, thus, of the intensity of shame that one should experience. In sum, according to Elster (2009, 199), social norms “are maintained by the interaction of contempt in the observer of a norm violation and shame in the norm violator.” In Elster’s view, shame supports compliance with social norms through an indirect causal link. Indeed, shame is not experienced as a direct consequence of the violation of a social norm, but rather because someone observed the violation and consequently expressed contempt toward the violator. Hence, “the operation of social norms depends crucially on the agents being observed by others.” (Elster 2009, 196)
3.2 Moral norms
According to Elster, the emotion sustaining moral norms is guilt. Whereas shame is elicited by the presence of contempt in some observer, guilt does not depend on the fact of being observed. It is elicited when agents contemplate possible norm violations or when they remember past violations. In principle, the triggering of guilt does not depend on the presence of a particular emotional response in the observer. The violation of a moral norm is thus likely to elicit guilt directly in the norm violator. Elster (2009, 197) recognizes that witnesses of a moral violation generally experience indignation, but emphasizes that the experience of guilt does not causally depend on the presence of an indignant observer. For example, someone who has stolen a book at the library without anyone noticing may feel guilty later on and bring the book back and apologize. The action tendencies of guilt are generally the undoing of the harm done whenever possible—like in the case of bringing the book back—and the reparation of the social ties that have been breached. This point is very important in distinguishing guilt from shame. Elster thinks that shame supports social norms by motivating people to conceal violations of norms or to comply with norms to avoid being the target of contempt. In contrast, guilt supports moral norms by leading people to undo harm and to apologize. In sum, Elster understands moral norms as distinct from social norms because compliance with them is sustain by guilt. In his view, this connection entails that the elicitation of moral norms is independent of the fact that one is being observed, as well as independent of the emotion experienced by the observers of the violation. Typical moral norms discussed by Elster (2007, 104) include “the norm to help others in distress, the norm of equal sharing, and the norm of ‘everyday Kantianism’ (do what would be best if everyone did the same).”
3.3 Quasi-moral norms
Quasi-moral norms are peculiar because they are not defined with reference to any emotional mechanism. According to Elster (2009, 196), compliance to quasi-moral norms is conditional on the agents observing others complying with the norm. An example of a successful quasi-moral norm relates to the reduction of households’ water consumption in Bogotá under the mayorship of Antanas Mockus. The city authorities were willing to reduce water consumption but were rebutted by the costs of monitoring individual households’ use. They then decided to show the aggregate level of water consumption on TV. People could then know if other citizens were doing their share. If so, according to Elster (2009, 197), they were motivated to reduce their own consumption. This example shows that compliance by others can sometimes motivate people to comply with norms. In Elster’s view, most fairness and cooperation norms are quasi-moral (whereas they are presented as social in Bicchieri’s model). For example, reporting your income correctly to the relevant authorities is considered to be a norm of fairness—since pooling costs and expenses is considered to be collectively advantageous, although everyone has an incentive to cheat. If an increasing proportion of the population fails to report their income correctly and get away with it, it is plausible that more and more people would lose the motivation to comply. The idea is that what motivates people to follow quasi-moral norms is the desire to contribute if others are contributing. Workers follow a quasi-moral norm if they report their income correctly only when most people do, just as people follow a quasi-moral norm when they refrain from throwing garbage away when others use wastebaskets. In brief, the defining feature of quasi-moral norms is that people comply on the basis of others’ compliance.
4. Comparing Elster and Bicchieri
Elster’s typology shares interesting features with Bicchieri’s. Elster identifies three types of norms where Bicchieri sees only two, but the criteria on which they base their typologies are interestingly similar (see table 1). According to Elster, for instance, social norms are elicited when one is being observed. There is an obvious parallel with what Bicchieri describes as “normative expectations,” because being observed is probably the most obvious reason to infer that others have expectations about one’s behavior. Being observed conditions compliance with social norm in Elster (via the experience of shame), just as the satisfaction of normative expectations conditions it in Bicchieri.
Table 1. Elster’s typology of norms and equivalents in Bicchieri
|Elster’s typology |Context of elicitation |Emotional mechanism |Equivalent in Bicchieri |
|Social norms |Being observed |Shame |Normative expectations |
|Moral norms |Independent of context |Guilt |Emotional reactions / |
| | | |independent reasons |
|Quasi-moral norms |Observing others comply |? |Empirical expectations |
The parallel extends to Elster’s quasi-moral norms and Bicchieri’s empirical expectations. Elster’s quasi-moral norms are elicited when others comply, which is precisely how Bicchieri justifies the importance of empirical expectations. Elster’s typology thus distinguishes three types of norm because the variables “being observed” and “observing others comply” are associated with different types of norms (respectively “social norms” and “quasi-moral norms). In Bicchieri, in contrast, the satisfaction of normative and empirical expectations are two variables that condition the preference for the same type of norms: social norms. Moral norms, for their part, can be taken as more or less equivalent in both typologies. Both authors define them by the presence of motivations that are broadly independent of context. The only difference is that Elster focuses on a precise emotional mechanism (guilt), while Bicchieri is less committed to a specific emotional reaction. Although relevant differences exist between the two typologies, they are sufficiently close to be subjected to similar criticisms. In the rest of this paper, we argue that both Bicchieri and Elster fail to draw consistent distinctions between types of norms. We begin with a critical assessment of the distinction between social and moral norms in Bicchieri. We then argue that Elster’s addition of the category of quasi-moral norms, as with his specification of the emotional mechanisms underlying norm compliance, creates further confusion.
5. What is wrong with Bicchieri’s typology?
Bicchieri (2005; 2008) suggests distinguishing social and moral norms on the basis of the preference supporting compliance. While compliance with social norms is conditional on the satisfaction of normative and empirical expectations, compliance with moral norms is unconditional. One way of questioning the distinction between social and moral norms would be to show that our preferences for “moral norms,” although intuitively perceived as unconditional, are in fact conditional on the satisfaction of our normative and empirical expectations. Bicchieri (2008, 234) points in this direction, when she writes: “If norms against killing are just social constructs, however well entrenched, isn’t it possible that they, too, are subject to conditional acceptance? For sure the threshold at which one would switch allegiance will be very high, but there will be one.” This strategy, however, would not amount to abandoning the distinction between social and moral norms, but only to show that the category of “moral norms” is in fact empty. But out criticism runs deeper. We want to question the possibility of distinguishing types of norms on the basis of the (un)conditionality of the preference for compliance. We will show this on the basis of an example. Consider the rule that says “you should not steal.” Intuitively, there are reasons to consider this rule as a moral norm in Bicchieri’s sense. Most of us consider that they have independent reasons not to steal and expect to experience guilt or disgust if they do. But at the same time, “you should not steal” also apparently qualifies as a social norm. Although no experimental studies might be available here, it is reasonable to expect people’s preference for not stealing to depend on the satisfaction of their empirical and normative expectations. If no one complies with the norm, or if no one expects us to comply with the norm, it is likely that our motivation to refrain from stealing will decrease. The preference for not stealing must then, at least to some extent, be conditional on the satisfaction of normative and empirical expectations. Then, should we consider the rule as a social or as a moral norm? Bicchieri’s idea is that a “sufficient number” of individuals must have a conditional preference for the norm to qualify as social. The problem is that the number of conditional followers may not be fixed and might actually depend on other variables that have no place in Bicchieri’s definition. One such variable is how much there is to gain from the violation of the rule. Bicchieri’s definition contains a reference to the costs of potential “sanction,” but no reference to the gains that could potentially ensue from violating the rule. This, in our view, creates a general problem for Bicchieri’s distinction. Indeed, an individual’s preference for complying with the rule “you should not steal” is not only likely to depend upon 1) the satisfaction of empirical and normative expectations and 2) the costs of potential sanctions, but also upon 3) independent moral reasons, and, most importantly for our argument, 4) the potential gains from violating the rule. The impact of this last variable on individuals’ preferences has an important consequence for Bicchieri’s distinction. A rule such as “you should not steal” could stop being a social norm in certain contexts simply because it becomes more advantageous not to comply with it. In other words, in general circumstances, the rule would qualify as a social norm. But above a certain expected gain from breaking the rule, the number of conditional followers would stop being sufficient for the rule to qualify as such. At this point, however, a sufficient number of individuals would probably still have an aversive reaction at the idea of stealing, so the rule would still qualify as a moral rule. In sum, the rule “you should no steal” would switch from the status of social norm to that of moral norm, simply because not complying with the rule is more advantageous in some contexts. This strikes us as a counterintuitive result, but it is an unavoidable consequence of the conceptual link that Bicchieri establishes between the existence of a social norm and the presence of a sufficient number of conditional followers. Although it is true that people have a conditional preference for compliance for most, if not all, norms, it is also true that they have at least some independent reasons for complying with the rule, even when they prefer not to. These independent reasons, be they rooted in emotions or moral reasoning, are not always determinate in actual decision-making, but there is no question that they can be in certain cases, depending not on empirical and normative expectations, but on what is at stake.
6. What is wrong with Elster’s typology?
In this section we first question Elster’s distinction between social and moral norms, and then turn to the concept of quasi-moral norms to show it does not rest on much firmer ground. Elster distinguishes social from moral norms on the basis of their context of elicitation and of the emotional mechanism underlying compliance. Social norms are said to be elicited when one is being observed and to be respected out of shame. In contrast, moral norms are elicited independently of observation and are to be respected out of guilt. We think that both criteria are unlikely to pick out distinctive types of norms. The first reason has to do with the impact of being observed on behavior. There are good reasons to believe (both intuitive and experimental) that being observed always has an impact on norm compliance. Take for instance the variant of the dictator game run by Dana et al. (2006) and discussed above. In this experiment, dictators are ready to pay to quietly exit the game and, hence, to avoid creating expectations in the other player. Is “being generous” or “being fair” in a dictator game a social or a moral norm? Our guess is that many persons will consider that they have a moral obligation to give something and would experience guilt when giving nothing. Still, it is clear that dictators care about being observed and that publicity has an impact on their behavior. Can the same be said about rules such as “you should not steal” or “you should not hurt others”? It is reasonable to assume that most people feel that they have moral obligation not to steal or hurt others and that they would experience guilt if they did. But it also is reasonable to say that being observed has a causal impact on the elicitation of these norms. Won’t the likelihood that I steal or hurt others be reduced if I am observed? Our intuition is that being observed always has an impact on the elicitation of norms, be they social or moral, and Elster certainly fails to provide any clear example of a norm that publicity would not contribute to eliciting. The distinction between shame and guilt is not going to bring Elster much farther. If there are reasons to distinguish these two emotions and to associate them with distinct action-tendencies, there are also reasons to doubt that one (shame) is elicited by public violations of norms while the other is elicited independently of others’ attitude. Tangney et al. (2007) conducted longitudinal studies about self-conscious emotions, with a focus on shame and guilt. They report that there is heterogeneity in people’s disposition to experience both emotions. They distinguish shame-prone and guilt-prone people, on the basis of individual’s propensity to experience a particular emotion in a wide range of circumstances. Shame-prone people tend to experience shame even in private when thinking about a moral violation. In contrast, guilt-prone people tend to experience guilt even in social contexts, probably even when they are the target of contempt. Elster’s distinction between social and moral norms implies that guilt and shame have distinctive elicitors, but Tangney and colleagues’ (2006) results recommend circumspection on this matter. They suggest that guilt-prone persons will see normative violations as calling for reparation, while shame-prone persons will tend to categorize even minor normative violations as diminishing their value as persons. Elster may thus be right to argue that there are different emotional responses to violations of norms, but there are good reasons to think that he is wrong to link these responses to different types of norms. Another reason to doubt Elster’s distinction can be found in Teroni and Deonna (2009), who examined the different criteria found in the literature to distinguish shame and guilt. They distinguish what is typical and what is constitutive of shame and guilt. In contrast with Elster, they suggest that being observed by others—or imagining being observed—might be typical of the experience of shame, but is neither constitutive of this emotion nor necessary to its elicitation (Teroni and Deonna 2009, 729). If shame is defined as the emotion through which we perceive that our value as persons is undermined, then there is no reason to believe that its elicitation necessarily involves being observed by others. This undermines Elster’s distinction between shame and guilt and, indirectly, his distinction between social and moral norms. Although Elster’s analysis of motivational mechanisms is helpful, his attempt to connect them with different types of norms is misleading. Our criticism can be extended to the concept of quasi-moral norms that Elster sees as being elicited by others’ compliance and that he broadly equates with norms of cooperation and fairness. The problems with this new category are multifold. First, there is no reason to believe that observing others comply contributes to the elicitation of a particular subset of norms, instead of norms in general. Aren’t norms such as “you should not hurt others,” which can be regarded as typical moral norms, also more likely to be elicited when others comply with them? Second, there is no reason to believe that norms of cooperation or fairness, prototypical quasi-moral norms according to Elster, are not elicited by being observed, what he considers to be the defining feature of social norm. If I know that people expect me to be fair, isn’t the likelihood that I will be fair higher than otherwise? Finally, in contrast with moral and social norms, Elster’s quasi-moral norms are not supported by a specific emotional reaction. This is not a problem per se. What may pose a problem, however, is the fact that being unfair or uncooperative might trigger the emotions of guilt and shame that Elster associates closely with social and moral norms. If we fail to do our share of a common task, we might experience shame just as if we break a rule of etiquette, or guilt just as if we hurt someone. In sum, we contend that both the contexts of elicitation and the emotional mechanisms discussed by Elster do not justify distinguishing moral, social, and quasi-moral norms. There are no a priori reasons to deny that what he identifies as prototypical social, moral, and quasi-moral norms can all be elicited by being observed by others or by observing others complying, just as there are no reasons to deny that compliance with these different norms can be motivated by either guilt or shame.
7. From typologies to psychology
Both Elster (2007, 357; 2009, 199) and Bicchieri (2008, 234) recognize that the line between different types of norms might be difficult to draw in practice and that specific cases might represent a mixture of different types. But our criticism is not only based on the idea that particular norms are difficult to categorize in practice because of the messiness of real-life situations. Our point is that Bicchieri and Elster’s typologies represent artificial groupings and that they do not capture causally relevant features of norms. Hence, we think that both typologies should be abandoned. This conclusion does not entail that any typology of norms is doomed to fail. In this paper we prefer to remain agnostic regarding the prospects of other typologies for capturing causally relevant distinctions between types of norms. We suspend our judgment, for instance, regarding the validity of the distinction between moral, conventional, and personal norms in Turiel’s sense (1983), or of the distinction between community, autonomy, and divinity norms in Shweder et al.’s sense (1997). Another point is that, if we think that Elster and Bicchieri’s typologies do not capture causally relevant features of norms, they might still capture relevant features of the psychology of norm compliance. Both typologies, for instance, give a central role to the idea that others’ behavior and expectations shape our preference for norm compliance. Similarly, both typologies stress that our motivations to comply are sometimes independent of context and involve a desire to realize an action for itself. Although the typologies must be abandoned, we think that these two ideas must be saved. One way to save them is to change the focus from norms themselves to the psychology of norm compliance. Thus, instead of trying to distinguish types of norms, we could try to identify the different motivational processes that determine norm-compliance in individual agents. In our view, Elster and Bicchieri fail to do this because they are interested in distinguishing types of norms at the level of the population. This is particularly clear in Bicchieri (2006, 11), for which a sufficient number of conditional followers must be present “in the population” for a norm to exist. In our view, if we are to examine norm-abiding behavior in detail, and to explain how norm compliance varies from one individual to another and from one context to another, we need to stop considering norms as phenomena that exist at the populational level. This move is not motivated by a form of reductionism regarding norms, or by a commitment to methodological individualism. There are all kinds of pragmatic and scientific contexts in which it is perfectly reasonable to consider norms as phenomena that exist at the level of the population. Anthropologists, political scientists, and economists can judge perfectly well that compliance with a norm within a given population is sufficiently robust for the norm to play a causal role in the explanation of macrolevel social phenomena. There is no problem, for instance, with considering that norms against corruption can explain political scandals, or that norms against littering can explain the absence of litter in a public park. But this does not imply that it is possible to match types of norms at the populational level with typical contexts of elicitations or with typical motivational mechanisms, as both Bicchieri et Elster propose. In our view, norms that are robustly recognized at the populational level are precisely those that individuals have many reasons to comply with. This is the case for norms of cooperation or fairness, norms against stealing or hurting, as well as codes of honor and etiquette. Compliance with these norms is influenced by many factors, including the fact that one is being observed (normative expectations), the fact that others comply with them (empirical expectations), but also instrumental reasons (linked with expected benefits from following the rule) and independent reasons rooted in emotion (e.g. shame, or guilt) or in moral reasoning. Consider, for instance, table manners, which form relatively stable and broadly recognized codes in every culture. What determines compliance with them? According to Elster, table manners are prototypical social norms. It is true that the guests face each other at the table and that one can comply with table manners to avoid eliciting contempt in others or to meet their normative expectations. But compliance can also ensue from the satisfaction of empirical expectations. That is, the fact that other guests respect the norms may elicit in us a desire to do the same. Table manners would thus also qualify as social norms in Bicchieri’s sense or as quasi-moral in Elster’s sense. But this is not the end of the story. Compliance can follow from purely instrumental reason: we sometimes comply with table manners because we are worried about our reputation or because we want to make a good impression. It can also result from independent moral reasons: we comply because no doing so would elicit a feeling of guilt or moral disgust toward ourselves, which is in fact independent of the context. Now, what kind of norms are table manners? Are they moral, social, or quasi-moral? There is little hope to give a univocal answer to this question. It is not impossible that, under certain conditions, one type of motivations is dominant and that another type is entirely irrelevant. This, however, is an empirical question to which there is currently no straightforward answer.
References
Bicchieri, C. (2006). The Grammar of Society. (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Bicchieri, C. (2008). The fragility of fairness: An experimental investigation on the conditional status of pro-social norms. Philosophical Issues, 18, 229-248.
Dana, J., Cain, D.M., & Dawes, R. (2006). What you don’t know won’t hurt me: Costly (but quiet) exit in a dictator game. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 100(2), 193–201.
Elster J. (2009). Social norms and the explanation of behavior. (In P. Hedström and P. Bearman (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology (pp. 195-217). Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Elster J. (1999). Strong Feelings. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Elster J. (2007). Explaining Social Behavior: More nuts and bolts for the social science. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Heath, J. (2008). Following the Rules: Practical reasoning and deontic constraint. (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Kagel, J. H., Kim, C. & Moser, D. (1996). Fairness in ultimatum games with asymmetric information and asymmetric payoffs. Games and Economic Behavior, 13, 100–110.
Rozin, P., Lowery, L., Imada, S. & Haidt, J. (1999). The CAD triad hypothesis: A mapping between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 703-712.
Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M. & Park, L. (1997). The "big three" of morality (autonomy, community, divinity), and the "big three" explanations of suffering. (In P. Rozin & A. Brandt (Eds). Morality and Health (pp. 119-169). New York, NY: Routledge).
Sripada, C. & Stich, S. (2006). A Framework for the Psychology of Norms. (In P. Carruthers, S. Laurence & S. Stich (Eds.), The Innate Mind: Culture and Cognition (pp. 280-301). Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Tangney, J. P., Stuewig J., & Mashek, D. J. (2007). Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 345-372.
Teroni, F. & Deonna, J. A. (2009). Differentiating shame from guilt. Consciousness and cognition, 17, 725-740.
Turiel, E. (1983). The Development of Social Knowledge. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Xiao E. & Bicchieri C. (2009). Do the right thing: But only if others do so. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 22(2), 191-208.
References: Bicchieri, C. (2006). The Grammar of Society. (New York: Cambridge University Press). Bicchieri, C. (2008). The fragility of fairness: An experimental investigation on the conditional status of pro-social norms. Philosophical Issues, 18, 229-248. Dana, J., Cain, D.M., & Dawes, R. (2006). What you don’t know won’t hurt me: Costly (but quiet) exit in a dictator game. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 100(2), 193–201. Elster J. (2009). Social norms and the explanation of behavior. (In P. Hedström and P. Bearman (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology (pp. 195-217). Oxford: Oxford University Press). Elster J. (1999). Strong Feelings. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Elster J. (2007). Explaining Social Behavior: More nuts and bolts for the social science. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Heath, J. (2008). Following the Rules: Practical reasoning and deontic constraint. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Kagel, J. H., Kim, C. & Moser, D. (1996). Fairness in ultimatum games with asymmetric information and asymmetric payoffs. Games and Economic Behavior, 13, 100–110. Sripada, C. & Stich, S. (2006). A Framework for the Psychology of Norms. (In P. Carruthers, S. Laurence & S. Stich (Eds.), The Innate Mind: Culture and Cognition (pp. 280-301). Oxford: Oxford University Press). Tangney, J. P., Stuewig J., & Mashek, D. J. (2007). Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 345-372. Teroni, F. & Deonna, J. A. (2009). Differentiating shame from guilt. Consciousness and cognition, 17, 725-740. Turiel, E. (1983). The Development of Social Knowledge. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Xiao E. & Bicchieri C. (2009). Do the right thing: But only if others do so. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 22(2), 191-208.
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