Social Tipping Points and Norm Change in Large-scale Laboratory Experiments

这项研究项目将使用大规模的实验室实验来调查常态变化，并提供一个经过经验验证的框架来分析社会临界点。作者将研究规范或缺乏规范损害社会福利的情况：歧视性规范、限制女性劳动力参与的规范、支持不健康行为(如吸烟或饮酒)的规范，或缺乏环境规范。了解规范变化如何自发发生，以及政策如何帮助这些过程，对于应对经济不平等、全球变暖或公共卫生问题等全球挑战至关重要。在本研究项目中开发和测试的社会小费框架将提供一种廉价的方式来评估旨在改变社会规范的政策干预措施，例如对有害做法征税、传播信息，以及激励那些拥有突出社会地位并能够传播积极变化的变革推动者。该研究项目的另一个目标将是改善社会科学家和大型调查公司对社会经济问题进行调查的方式。传统的调查询问的是一个人对某个话题的看法，但回答可能并不真实。传统的调查也会问一些静态的问题，这些问题并不能提供关于规范是否会发生变化的信息。这个项目将开发一种新的方法来设计带有动态和激励问题的调查，使研究人员能够了解不同社会问题上规范变化的可能性。该项目的结果将具有社会效益和经济效益，因为它们有助于更好地配置资源。作者将实证验证一个理论和实验框架，以促进我们对社会临界点和规范变化的理解。该框架结合了临界点理论、大规模实验室实验和激励性代表性调查。主要目标将是在一个统一的框架内组织影响规范变化的社会和经济因素。这一框架将使研究人员能够研究取决于社会结构的社会临界点和规范变化，例如，人们对规范偏差、多样性、社会网络、社会碎片化、信息和过滤泡沫、政治机构、个人信念、风险和公平偏好以及行为偏差(如沉没成本谬论)的容忍度。该框架将作为评估政策干预措施的工具，帮助回答诸如“哪些干预措施可以提高人们接种疫苗的意愿？”以及“更多元化的社会是否更有可能经历积极的规范变化？”作者将进一步利用社会提示框架来设计一种新型的代表性调查，以确定特定社会，例如加州人、德克萨斯人、种族团体或宗教团体，是否为不同的社会问题，如平权行动、移民或气候变化而进行变革的时机成熟。这些调查的一个关键的方法论贡献将是允许研究人员发现规范变化的可能性，而不是专注于静态的社会信仰和期望。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research project will use large-scale laboratory experiments to investigate norm change and provide an empirically validated framework to analyze social tipping points. The authors will study situations where norms, or a lack thereof, damage a society’s welfare: discriminatory norms, norms that curtail female labor force participation, norms that support unhealthy behaviors (e.g., smoking or drinking), or the absence of environmental norms. Understanding how norm change can occur spontaneously and how policy can help such processes is essential for addressing global challenges such as economic inequality, global warming, or public health issues. The social tipping framework developed and tested in this research project will provide an inexpensive way to evaluate policy interventions that aim to alter social norms, such as taxing harmful practices, dispensing information, and incentivizing agents of change who hold prominent social positions and can spread positive change. Another aim of the research project will be to improve how social scientists and large survey companies conduct surveys on socioeconomic issues. Traditional surveys ask for a person's opinion on a topic, but responses may not be truthful. Traditional surveys also ask static questions that are uninformative about whether or not norm change can occur. This project will develop a new method to design surveys with dynamic and incentivized questions, allowing researchers to understand the potential for norm change across different social issues. The project’s results will be socially and economically beneficial because they can contribute to a better allocation of resources.The authors will empirically validate a theoretical and experimental framework to advance our understanding of social tipping points and norm change. The framework combines a theory of tipping points, large-scale lab experiments, and incentivized representative surveys. The main objective will be to organize societal and economic factors affecting norm change in a unified framework. This framework will enable researchers to study social tipping points and norm change depending on a society’s structure, e.g., people’s tolerance toward norm deviations, diversity, social networks, social fragmentation, information and filter bubbles, political institutions, individual beliefs, risk and fairness preferences, and behavioral biases such as the sunk cost fallacy. The framework will serve as a tool to evaluate policy interventions, helping to answer questions like, “Which interventions can raise people’s willingness to get vaccinated?” and “Are more diverse societies more likely to experience positive norm change?” The authors will further leverage the social tipping framework to design a new type of representative survey to determine whether or not a particular society, e.g., Californians, Texans, racial groups, or religious groups, is ripe for change for different social issues such as affirmative action, immigration, or climate change. A crucial methodological contribution of these surveys will be to allow researchers to detect the potential for norm change rather than focusing on static societal beliefs and expectations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.