Norms and Development: Interdisciplinary Approach

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Norms and Development Interdisciplinary Approach

• Week 11
• Social Norms in Dynamic Interactions II
• Cooperation and Trust

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A Message Raised in the Last Seminar

• Because of two fallacies (i.e., fundamental
  attribution error and aggregation fallacy),
• the mere snapshots of dynamic systems MAY provide
  erroneous conclusions about psychological
  characteristics of individuals embedded in a
  system.

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H. C. Triandis (2001)Characteristics of
Collectivist Culture

• Individuals define themselves as aspects of a
  collective, interdependent with some ingroup
• They give priority to the goals of that
  collective rather than to their personal goals.
• Their behavior is determined more often by the
  norms, roles and the goals of the collective
  rather than by their personal attitudes.
• They stay in relationships even when the costs of
  staying in these relationships exceed the
  advantages of remaining.

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H. C. Triandis (2001)Characteristics of
Collectivist Culture

• Individuals define themselves as aspects of a
  collective, interdependent with some ingroup
• They give priority to the goals of that
  collective rather than to their personal goals.
• Their behavior is determined more often by the
  norms, roles and the goals of the collective
  rather than by their personal attitudes.
• They stay in relationships even when the costs of
  staying in these relationships exceed the
  advantages of remaining.

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Individualistic View of Collectivist Culture

• People want to stay in relationships because they
  give priority to the goals of the other people
  (b?d).
• People give priority to the others' goal because
  they identify themselves with the others (?social
  identity? a ? b).
• People identify with the others because it is
  culturally transmitted or because they stay in
  the relationships longer (a?a or d?a).
• ? All factors are chained. It looks like a
  self-fulfilling dynamic system

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Anatomy of Cooperation
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Goal/Expectation Theory (Pruitt Kimmel, 1977)
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Direct Evidence Supporting G/E TheorySequential
Prisoners Dilemma

• The first player makes decision (C/D) and his
  decision is informed to the second player.
• The second player then makes a decision (C/D)
• First player decided to cooperate (or,
  defect) to you. Do you cooperate or defect?
  Remember that this is one-shot game and you will
  never interact with the first player in future.

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• When the first player defected, almost no second
  players select cooperation (Hayashi et al.,
  1999).
• When the first player cooperated, about 60-70 of
  the second players select cooperation (Hayashi,
  et al., 1999 Kiyonari et al., 2000).

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• ? On cooperative tendency in one-shot and
  anonymous situations, there seems to be life-long
  stable individual differences.
• Studies on social value orientation showed about
  60 of individuals are cooperative.
• Takezawa McElreath (2004) showed that
  cooperative people on SVO scale are very likely
  to be reciprocal second players in the sequential
  PD game.
• ? Lets call this characteristic trustworthiness

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Are Japanese More Trustworthy to Unknowns than
Americans?

• No difference exists.
• Kiyonari Yamagishi (1999) U.S. Japan
• Buchan et al. (2002) U.S. Japan
• Takezawa et al. (SVO in progress)
• U.S. Japan

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How About the First Player?

• When the proportions of trustworthy people
  are identical between two different cultures, is
  it possible that the proportion of cooperative
  first player is larger in one culture?
• ? Yes. If people are more trustful to unknowns,
  the proportion of cooperation by the first
  players increases (A proposition theoretically
  derived from G/E theory).

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Are Japanese More Trustful to Unknowns than
Americans?

• Behavioral data (e.g., first player in SPD)
• U.S. gtgt Japan
• Kiyonari Yamagishi (1999)
• Buchan et al. (2002)

Social survey (w/wo representative
sample) U.S. gtgt Japan Hayashi et al.
(1982) Yamagishi Yamagishi (1994)
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Institutional View of Collectivist Culture
Partial Version

• People dont trust unknown people.
• Because of (a), people dont cooperate with
  unknown people.
• Distrustful people cooperate only when they are
  assured that the other will cooperate.
  Assurance (but not trust!) is provided under
  institutions which make cooperation rational.
• If such an institution does not exist, people are
  less cooperative than those in individualistic
  culture.

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Questions Remains to be Solved

• They give priority to the goals of that
  collective rather than to their personal goals.
• ? If sanctioning system is so common in Japan,
  casual observations of the Japanese life may
  give an impression that they are much more
  cooperative than Americans.

Q1. But, why are Americans more trustful than
Japanese? Americans seem to have an illusion
about benevolence of people
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Questions Remains to be Solved (contd)

• They stay in relationships even when the costs of
  staying in these relationships exceed the
  advantages of remaining.
• ? We will see that this conclusion is clearly
  wrong in Yamagishi (1988).

Q2. But, Yamagishi(1988)s finding clearly
contradicts with our casual observation. How can
we solve this paradox?
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• Wait for the next seminar for completing an
  institutional view of collectivist culture as a
  dynamic system