Norms and Development: Interdisciplinary Approach Week 11 Social Norms in Dynamic Interactions I: Reasoning and Emotions

Wainryb and Turiel (1995; the last seminar) emphasized that culture and socialization are dynamic processes. They also emphasized the importance of children’s autonomic interpretations of environments surrounding themselves. So does cultural psychology. Still, many people discussing culture seem to commit two fallacies and dismiss real dynamic aspect of cultures… Dynamic Nature of Cultures

Two Fallacies Fundamental Attribution Error Simply attributing sources of culturally diverse behaviors to culturally different characters of individuals (but not to the differences in social structures). Aggregation Fallacy Simply assuming that societal-level phenomenon stems from the mere aggregation of characters of individuals.

Ex. Why Japanese Employers Discriminate Female Employees? – Wages of female workers are worse than male workers and responsible posts were exclusively given to male workers. But, why? One important factor is often dismissed  A concept of “statistical discrimination” developed in Sociology (Merton, 1948) & Labor Economics (Arrow, 1973).

Assumptions: Japanese companies implement the lifelong employment system. Employees are trained at the employers’ cost (e.g., OJT). Training cost will be compensated by employee’s future contribution to a company. 1.It is rational for employers to hire people who are likely to stay in their company for a long time. 2.It is judgment under uncertainty to predict how long each person will stay in a company. Only cue-based statistical decision is feasible.

Yes…, unfortunately, it was a statistical fact that females quit their jobs much earlier than males. Given another statistical fact that employers do not give responsible posts to females and the lifelong wage is far worse than their future husband, what’s a rational decision for female high school students and their parents? Until 1997, more females entered 2-yr junior colleges than 4-yr universities. You can imagine how this influences the first statistical fact…

If we take "snapshots" of psychology and behaviors of individuals embedded in this dynamic system, we will observe prejudice and gender stereotypes against females. However, it is simply wrong to attribute the sources of gender discrimination (=macro- level phenomenon) to the psychology of male managers in the personal sections, female high school students, or their parents.  They are the mutually influencing components of a dynamic system. Culture as an Equilibrium in Dynamic Systems

So, can you think of any study that actually specified components of culture as dynamic system AND depicted the whole dynamics? Do you think only what we can do is to accumulate anecdotes and taking snapshots of a system? Groups, Society, Culture Individual Behaviors and Psychology

What I will Talk Today Taking group decision making as an example, learning one way how to model social interactions of individual cognitive processes. The goal is to understand complexity of micro-macro transition and importance of specifying its details. Three examples are discussed…

Ex. 1. Are Three Heads Really Better than One Head? Imagine the following situation; Only 40% of individuals can solve a particular mathematical problem. 70% of 5-person groups can solve the same problem when they can discuss how to solve it. From this data, can we conclude that group discussion enhances the performance?

IndividualsGroup Outcome (Correct, Incorrect)CorrectIncorrect (5, 0)100%0% (4, 1)100%0% (3, 2)100%0% (2, 3)100%0% (1, 4)100%0% (0, 5)0%100% Baseline Model: Truth-Win

What’s the predicted proportion of the groups that can find the correct answer in the baseline truth-win model? 1 – p(0,5) = p(0,5)= no individual found the answer = 0.92

IndividualsGroup Outcome (Correct, Incorrect)CorrectIncorrect (5, 0)100%0% (4, 1)100%0% (3, 2)100%0% (2, 3)100%0% (1, 4)0%100% (0, 5)0%100% Truth-Win Supported by More than Two

What’s the predicted proportion of the groups that can find the correct answer in this model? 1 – p(0,5) – p(1, 4) = 0.66 p(1,4)= Only one individual found the answer

IndividualsGroup Outcome (Correct, Wrong)CorrectWrong (5, 0)100%0% (4, 1)100%0% (3, 2)96%4% (2, 3)92%8% (1, 4)73%27% (0, 5)1%99% Data from Stasson et al., (1991): Problem Solving under the Majority Rule

IndividualsGroup Outcome (Correct, Wrong)CorrectWrong (5, 0)100%0% (4, 1)100%0% (3, 2)100%0% (2, 3)84%16% (1, 4)57%43% (0, 5)45%55% Data from Stasson et al., (1991): Problem Solving under the Unanimity Rule

The two tables (i.e., truth-win) are called Social Decision Scheme models (SDS; Davis, 1973). Each model expresses different process of preference/opinion aggregation. The models are used both for 1) deriving theoretical predictions about group-level outcomes and 2) for inferring aggregation processes from the data.

IndividualsGroup Decision (X, Y)XY (5, 0)100%0% (4, 1)100%0% (3, 2)100%0% (2, 3)0%100% (1, 4)0%100% (0, 5)0%100% Ex. 2. Majority Rule

On 6-person Groups: Tindale, et al., (1999)

Ex. 3. From Preference to Cognitive Processes 3 individuals (X, Y, Z) are discussing over two alternatives (A, B). There are 7 cues (i.e., information) supporting A (a 1 -a 7 ). There are 4 cues supporting B (B 1 -B 4 ).  If the all the information is shared, a group will select the alternative A (cf. Dawes' rule is assumed here).

Distribution of Cues XYZ A a 1, a 2, a 3 a 1, a 4, a 5 a 1, a 6, a 7 B b 1, b 2, b 3, b 4 It is expected that group discussion enhances exchanges of non-shared cues (i.e., a 2 -a 7 ) and leads a group to select the correct alternative A.

Transfer of Cues from Individual Memory to Group Discussion Imagine that each individual recall a cue with a probability, p, and mention it in discussion. The probability a certain cue is recalled and exposed to the group is; 1- (1-p) n n = the number of people sharing the cue

What's the probability a non-shared cue (i.e., a 2 ) is exposed to the other group members (p=0.2)?  1 – (1-0.2) 1 = 0.2 How about a shared cue (i.e., b 1 )?  1 – (1-0.2) 3 = The difference is

What will happen if people try harder to recall a cue (p = 0.2  0.4)? Non-shared information: 1 – (1-0.4) 1 = 0.4 Shared information 1 – (1-0.4) 3 = The difference gets larger than when people are less serious in recalling cues (0.298  0.384).

This is called hidden profile problem. Stasser and his colleagues (Stasser, 1992; Stasser & Titus, 1985, 1987, Stasser et al., 1989) derived several counter-intuitive predictions from the above model and found empirical evidence supporting the model.

Discussion Socialization is just one aspect of dynamics of culture. The target of socialization (=social environments) is not the mere aggregation of individual psychology but results from complex micro-macro transition processes. Social environment for children includes not only the display of the preferences but also exchange of reasons underlying preference. Two tasks are left: 1) Developing a simple process model. 2) Identifying whether or not exchange of arguments have a long- term effect on the development of morality.