The Behavior of Information: A Reconsideration of Social Norms

Abstract

Do social norms really matter, or are they just behavioral idiosyncrasies that become associated with a group? Social norms are generally considered as a collection of formal or informal rules, but where do these rules come from and why do we follow them? The definition for social norm varies by field of study, and how norms are established and maintained remain substantially open questions across the behavioral sciences. In reviewing the literature on social norms across multiple disciplines, we found that the common thread appears to be information. Here, we show that norms are not merely rules or strategies, but part of a more rudimentary social process for capturing and retaining information within a social network. We have found that the emergence of norms can be better explained as an efficient system of communicating, filtering, and preserving experiential information. By reconsidering social norms and institutions in terms of information, we show that they are not merely conventions that facilitate the coordination of social behavior. They are, instead, the objective of that social coordination and, potentially, of the evolutionary adaptation of sociality itself.