IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jobhdp/v129y2015icp93-104.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Balancing evidence and norms in cultural evolution

Author

Listed:
  • MacCoun, Robert J.

Abstract

Psychologists have long studied the ways in which individuals draw inferences from evidence in their environment, and the conditions under which individuals forgo or ignore those inferences and instead conform to the choices of their peers. Recently, anthropologists and biologists have given considerable attention to the ways in which these two processes intersect to jointly shape culture. In this paper I extend the BOP (“burden of (social) proof”; MacCoun, 2012) analysis of “strength in numbers” with a parallel account of “strength in arguments,” and examine ways the two processes might be linked. I compare these models to some leading accounts of individual learning and social transmission, suggesting opportunities for a closer integration of theory and research on cultural evolution across anthropology, biology, and psychology.

Suggested Citation

  • MacCoun, Robert J., 2015. "Balancing evidence and norms in cultural evolution," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 93-104.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:129:y:2015:i:c:p:93-104
    DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2014.09.009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597814000740
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.obhdp.2014.09.009?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pillutla, Madan M. & Chen, Xiao-Ping, 1999. "Social Norms and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas: The Effects of Context and Feedback, , ," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 81-103, May.
    2. Frank M. Bass, 1969. "A New Product Growth for Model Consumer Durables," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 15(5), pages 215-227, January.
    3. Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, 1991. "Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 1039-1061.
    4. Vijay Mahajan & Eitan Muller & Frank M. Bass, 1995. "Diffusion of New Products: Empirical Generalizations and Managerial Uses," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(3_supplem), pages 79-88.
    5. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Irving Lorge & Herbert Solomon, 1955. "Two models of group behavior in the solution of eureka-type problems," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 20(2), pages 139-148, June.
    7. Patrick R. Laughlin, 2011. "Group Problem Solving," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9339.
    8. Parks, Craig D. & Kerr, Norbert L., 1999. "Twenty-Five Years of Social Decision Scheme Theory," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 1-2, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Morris, Michael W. & Hong, Ying-yi & Chiu, Chi-yue & Liu, Zhi, 2015. "Normology: Integrating insights about social norms to understand cultural dynamics," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 1-13.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Steven M. Shugan, 2002. "Editorial: Marketing Science, Models, Monopoly Models, and Why We Need Them," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(3), pages 223-228.
    2. Martin Hewing, 2012. "A Theoretical and Empirical Comparison of Innovation Diffusion Models Applying Data from the Software Industry," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 3(2), pages 125-141, June.
    3. Jose Apesteguia & Miguel Ballester, 2009. "A theory of reference-dependent behavior," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 40(3), pages 427-455, September.
    4. Shunda, Nicholas, 2009. "Auctions with a buy price: The case of reference-dependent preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 645-664, November.
    5. Koszegi, Botond & Rabin, Matthew, 2004. "A Model of Reference-Dependent Preferences," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt0w82b6nm, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    6. Marianne Bertrand & Dean S. Karlan & Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir & Jonathan Zinman, 2005. "What's Psychology Worth? A Field Experiment in the Consumer Credit Market," Working Papers 918, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    7. Grund, Christian & Sliwka, Dirk, 2001. "The Impact of Wage Increases on Job Satisfaction - Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Implications," IZA Discussion Papers 387, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Hong, Yan-Zhen & Su, Yi-Ju & Chang, Hung-Hao, 2023. "Analyzing the relationship between income and life satisfaction of Forest farm households - a behavioral economics approach," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    9. Erica Mina Okada, 2010. "Uncertainty, Risk Aversion, and WTA vs. WTP," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 29(1), pages 75-84, 01-02.
    10. Vishal Gaur & Young-Hoon Park, 2007. "Asymmetric Consumer Learning and Inventory Competition," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(2), pages 227-240, February.
    11. Karagözoğlu, Emin & Keskin, Kerim, 2024. "Consideration sets and reference points in a dynamic bargaining game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 219(C), pages 381-403.
    12. Attema, Arthur E. & Brouwer, Werner B.F., 2012. "A test of independence of discounting from quality of life," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 22-34.
    13. Jidong Zhou, 2011. "Reference Dependence and Market Competition," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(4), pages 1073-1097, December.
    14. David M McEvoy, 2016. "Loss Aversion and Student Achievement," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 36(3), pages 1762-1770.
    15. Alekseev, Aleksandr & Sokolov, Mikhail V., 2021. "How to measure the average rate of change?," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 43-59.
    16. Uriel Procaccia & Uzi Segal, 2003. "Super Majoritarianism and the Endowment Effect," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 181-207, November.
    17. Martin, Vincent, 2017. "When to quit: Narrow bracketing and reference dependence in taxi drivers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 166-187.
    18. Qin, Ruwen & Nembhard, David A., 2012. "Demand modeling of stochastic product diffusion over the life cycle," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(2), pages 201-210.
    19. Enrico Imbimbo & Federica Stefanelli & Andrea Guazzini, 2020. "Adolescent’s Collective Intelligence: Empirical Evidence in Real and Online Classmates Groups," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-16, April.
    20. Mariya Burdina & Scott Hiller, 2021. "When Falling Just Short is a Good Thing: The Effect of Past Performance on Improvement," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 22(7), pages 777-798, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jobhdp:v:129:y:2015:i:c:p:93-104. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/obhdp .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.