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Evidence from a long-term experiment that collective risks change social norms and promote cooperation
Social norms can help solve pressing societal challenges, from mitigating climate change to reducing the spread of infectious diseases. Despite their relevance, how norms shape cooperation among strangers remains insufficiently understood. Influential theories also suggest that the level of threat f...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8443614/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34526490 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25734-w |
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author | Szekely, Aron Lipari, Francesca Antonioni, Alberto Paolucci, Mario Sánchez, Angel Tummolini, Luca Andrighetto, Giulia |
author_facet | Szekely, Aron Lipari, Francesca Antonioni, Alberto Paolucci, Mario Sánchez, Angel Tummolini, Luca Andrighetto, Giulia |
author_sort | Szekely, Aron |
collection | PubMed |
description | Social norms can help solve pressing societal challenges, from mitigating climate change to reducing the spread of infectious diseases. Despite their relevance, how norms shape cooperation among strangers remains insufficiently understood. Influential theories also suggest that the level of threat faced by different societies plays a key role in the strength of the norms that cultures evolve. Still little causal evidence has been collected. Here we deal with this dual challenge using a 30-day collective-risk social dilemma experiment to measure norm change in a controlled setting. We ask whether a looming risk of collective loss increases the strength of cooperative social norms that may avert it. We find that social norms predict cooperation, causally affect behavior, and that higher risk leads to stronger social norms that are more resistant to erosion when the risk changes. Taken together, our results demonstrate the causal effect of social norms in promoting cooperation and their role in making behavior resilient in the face of exogenous change. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8443614 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-84436142021-10-04 Evidence from a long-term experiment that collective risks change social norms and promote cooperation Szekely, Aron Lipari, Francesca Antonioni, Alberto Paolucci, Mario Sánchez, Angel Tummolini, Luca Andrighetto, Giulia Nat Commun Article Social norms can help solve pressing societal challenges, from mitigating climate change to reducing the spread of infectious diseases. Despite their relevance, how norms shape cooperation among strangers remains insufficiently understood. Influential theories also suggest that the level of threat faced by different societies plays a key role in the strength of the norms that cultures evolve. Still little causal evidence has been collected. Here we deal with this dual challenge using a 30-day collective-risk social dilemma experiment to measure norm change in a controlled setting. We ask whether a looming risk of collective loss increases the strength of cooperative social norms that may avert it. We find that social norms predict cooperation, causally affect behavior, and that higher risk leads to stronger social norms that are more resistant to erosion when the risk changes. Taken together, our results demonstrate the causal effect of social norms in promoting cooperation and their role in making behavior resilient in the face of exogenous change. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-09-15 /pmc/articles/PMC8443614/ /pubmed/34526490 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25734-w Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Szekely, Aron Lipari, Francesca Antonioni, Alberto Paolucci, Mario Sánchez, Angel Tummolini, Luca Andrighetto, Giulia Evidence from a long-term experiment that collective risks change social norms and promote cooperation |
title | Evidence from a long-term experiment that collective risks change social norms and promote cooperation |
title_full | Evidence from a long-term experiment that collective risks change social norms and promote cooperation |
title_fullStr | Evidence from a long-term experiment that collective risks change social norms and promote cooperation |
title_full_unstemmed | Evidence from a long-term experiment that collective risks change social norms and promote cooperation |
title_short | Evidence from a long-term experiment that collective risks change social norms and promote cooperation |
title_sort | evidence from a long-term experiment that collective risks change social norms and promote cooperation |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8443614/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34526490 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25734-w |
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