Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS - The Predictive Power of Beliefs: Testing a Norm-Based Utility Function

本工作的目的是测试克里斯蒂娜·比奇耶里博士提出的规范的可操作性，该规范将这一概念嵌入到决策理论的理性行为者模型中。在一系列的两项研究中，研究人员将测试社交困境文献中经常被引用的两种效应(社交线索和群体成员的影响)是否可以通过它们对参与者对现有社会规范的信念的影响来解释，这一点由比奇耶里博士定义，并使用她开发的程序进行衡量。在第三项研究中，研究人员将测试比奇耶里博士基于规范的效用函数预测社会两难任务中的合作行为的能力。如果成功，这将支持将规范嵌入理性选择模型的有用性(正如行为经济学家一直在对其他“社会偏好”所做的那样)。最后，第四项研究将检验比奇耶里博士的说法，即解决协调问题的规范(自我利益和社会利益相吻合)是通过不同于解决社会困境(自我利益和社会利益分歧)的机制来维持的。特别是，我们将观察第三方奖励、惩罚和补偿行为是否作为实现社会最优结果所必需的规范类型的函数而不同。与我们的预测一致的证据将支持比奇耶里·S博士将规范分为两种类型，并提出了另一种检测规范存在的方法，而不是信念诱导。环境的规范影响着人们对通常所做的事情以及通常被批准或不同意的事情的期望。这些期望随后会影响一个人的行为，因为遵守规范的行为会得到非正式的奖励，违规行为会受到惩罚(从八卦、排斥开始，然后是排斥)。从政策的角度来看，旨在通过引入正式规则来改善社会福利的努力，将受益于对规范一个群体行动的现行非正式规则的审查。在现有非正式规则使正式规则合法化的程度上，执行新的正式规则的成本将较低，反之亦然。然而，规范的概念仍然不精确，现实世界的应用仍然不可行，没有可操作的定义和它们对行为的影响的模型。

The purpose of the present work is to test an operationalization of norms proposed by Dr. Cristina Bicchieri, which embeds this concept into the rational actor model from decision theory. In a series of two studies, the researchers will test whether two often-cited effects in the social dilemma literature (the influence of social cues and group membership) can be accounted for by their impact on participants' beliefs about the existing social norm, as defined by Dr. Bicchieri and measured using procedures she developed. In a third study, the researchers will test the ability of Dr. Bicchieri's norm-based utility function to predict cooperation behavior across social dilemma tasks. If successful, this would support the usefulness of embedding norms into the rational choice model (as behavioral economists have been doing with other "social preferences"). Lastly, a fourth study will test Dr. Bicchieri's claim that the norms that solve coordination problems (where self and social interests dovetail) are sustained via a different mechanism than those that solve social dilemmas (where self and social interests diverge). In particular, we will observe whether third-party reward, punishment, and compensation behavior differs as a function of the type of norm necessary to reach the socially optimal outcome. Evidence in line with our predictions would support Dr. Bicchieri?s dichotomy of norms into two types and present another method for detecting the existence of norms other than belief elicitation. The norms of an environment influence people's expectations about what is commonly done and what is commonly approved or disapproved. These expectations can subsequently influence a person's actions as norm-abiding behavior is informally rewarded and violations are punished (starting with gossip, ostracism, and then exclusion). From a policy perspective, efforts aimed at improving the welfare of society by introducing formal rules will benefit from an examination of the current informal rules governing a group's actions. To the extent that the existing informal rules legitimize the formal ones, the cost of enforcing the new formal rules will be lower and vice versa. However, the concept of norms remains imprecise, and real-world applications remain infeasible, without an operational definition and a model of their impact on behavior.