IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0124715.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Time Lag and Communication in Changing Unpopular Norms

Author

Listed:
  • Klarita Gërxhani
  • Jeroen Bruggeman

Abstract

Humans often coordinate their social lives through norms. When a large majority of people are dissatisfied with an existing norm, it seems obvious that they will change it. Often, however, this does not occur. We investigate how a time lag between individual support of a norm change and the change itself hinders such change, related to the critical mass of supporters needed to effectuate the change, and the (im)possibility of communicating about it. To isolate these factors, we utilize a laboratory experiment. As predicted, we find unambiguous effects of time lag on precluding norm change; a higher threshold for a critical mass does so as well. Communication facilitates choosing superior norms but it does not necessarily lead to norm change when the uncertainty on whether there will be a norm change in the future is high. Communication seems to help coordination on actions at the present but not the future. Hence, the uncertainty driven by time lag makes individuals choose the status quo, here the unpopular norm.

Suggested Citation

  • Klarita Gërxhani & Jeroen Bruggeman, 2015. "Time Lag and Communication in Changing Unpopular Norms," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-17, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0124715
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0124715
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0124715
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0124715&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0124715?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bicchieri, Cristina & Fukui, Yoshitaka, 1999. "The Great Illusion: Ignorance, Informational Cascades, and the Persistence of Unpopular Norms," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(1), pages 127-155, January.
    2. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change in Informational Cascades," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 992-1026, October.
    3. Jeremy Grantham, 2012. "Be persuasive. Be brave. Be arrested (if necessary)," Nature, Nature, vol. 491(7424), pages 303-303, November.
    4. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, "undated". "Third Party Punishment and Social Norms," IEW - Working Papers 106, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    5. Abhijit V. Banerjee, 1992. "A Simple Model of Herd Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 797-817.
    6. Berns, Gregory S. & Loewenstein, George & Laibson, David I., 2007. "Intertemporal Choice - Toward an Integrative Framework," Scholarly Articles 4554332, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    7. Michael T. Hannan & László Pólos & Glenn R. Carroll, 2007. "Language Matters, from Logics of Organization Theory: Audiences, Codes, and Ecologies," Introductory Chapters, in: Logics of Organization Theory: Audiences, Codes, and Ecologies, Princeton University Press.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Dunia López-Pintado & Duncan J. Watts, 2008. "Social Influence, Binary Decisions and Collective Dynamics," Rationality and Society, , vol. 20(4), pages 399-443, November.
    2. Patrick Groeber & Heiko Rauhut, 2010. "Does ignorance promote norm compliance?," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 16(1), pages 1-28, March.
    3. Ruomeng Cui & Dennis J. Zhang & Achal Bassamboo, 2019. "Learning from Inventory Availability Information: Evidence from Field Experiments on Amazon," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 1216-1235, March.
    4. Jonas Hedlund & Carlos Oyarzun, 2018. "Imitation in heterogeneous populations," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(4), pages 937-973, June.
    5. Cao, Melanie & Shi, Shouyong, 2006. "Signaling in the Internet craze of initial public offerings," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 818-833, September.
    6. Kraemer, Carlo & Noth, Markus & Weber, Martin, 2006. "Information aggregation with costly information and random ordering: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 423-432, March.
    7. Fishman, Arthur & Fishman, Ram & Gneezy, Uri, 2019. "A tale of two food stands: Observational learning in the field," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 101-108.
    8. Cavatorta, Elisa & Guarino, Antonio & Huck, Steffen, 2024. "Social learning with partial and aggregate information: Experimental evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 292-307.
    9. Buechel, Berno & Hellmann, Tim & Klößner, Stefan, 2015. "Opinion dynamics and wisdom under conformity," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 240-257.
    10. Boğaçhan Çelen & Kyle Hyndman, 2012. "An experiment of social learning with endogenous timing," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 16(2), pages 251-268, September.
    11. Bohl, Martin T. & Branger, Nicole & Trede, Mark, 2017. "The case for herding is stronger than you think," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 30-40.
    12. Wang, Peiwen & Chen, Minghua & Wu, Ji & Yan, Yuanyun, 2023. "Do peer effects matter in bank risk? Some cross-country evidence," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    13. Battaglini, Marco, 2005. "Sequential voting with abstention," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 445-463, May.
    14. Malik, Saif Ullah & Elahi, Muhammad Ather, 2014. "Analysis of Herd Behavior Using Quantile Regression: Evidence from Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE)," MPRA Paper 55322, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Bartosz Wilczek, 2020. "Misinformation and herd behavior in media markets: A cross-national investigation of how tabloids’ attention to misinformation drives broadsheets’ attention to misinformation in political and business," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-22, November.
    16. Olivier Gossner & Nicolas Melissas, 2006. "Informational Cascades Elicit Private Information ," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(1), pages 297-325, February.
    17. Itai Arieli & Fedor Sandomirskiy & Rann Smorodinsky, 2020. "On social networks that support learning," Papers 2011.05255, arXiv.org.
    18. Amir Ban & Moran Koren, 2020. "A Practical Approach to Social Learning," Papers 2002.11017, arXiv.org.
    19. Park, Beum-Jo & Kim, Myung-Joong, 2017. "A Dynamic Measure of Intentional Herd Behavior in Financial Markets," MPRA Paper 82025, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Nuzzo, Simone & Morone, Andrea, 2017. "Asset markets in the lab: A literature review," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 13(C), pages 42-50.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:plo:pone00:0124715. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.