The Interplay of Social Identity and Norm Psychology in the Evolution of Human Groups

Abstract

People’s attitudes towards social norms play a crucial role in understanding group behavior. Norm psychology accounts focus on processes of norm internalization that influence people’s norm following attitudes but pay considerably less attention to social identity and group identification processes (Chudek & Henrich, 2011; Bicchieri, 2016; Gelfand, 2018; Tomasello, 2014). Social identity theory studies group identity but works with a relatively thin and instrumental notion of social norms (Hogg 2016; Scheepers & Ellemers 2019; Turner & Reynolds, 2012). We argue that to understand both sets of phenomena best, it is important to integrate the insights of both approaches. Throughout the lecture, we highlight tensions between the two approaches and conflicting observations and sketch the contours of an integrated account. We focus on processes of internalization and suggest that internalization of social norms and internalization of social identity can be seen as two complementary processes, both playing a role in norm-governed behavior. We conclude with some observations on how a twofold account may contribute to studying the evolution of human groups and understanding behavior and social norms in complex societies. Multi-level societies are characterized by their members’ ability to coordinate and negotiate between norm systems, issues that are best understood by combining the insights of norm psychology and social identity theory (Bird et al., 2019; Townsend, 2018). Moreover, we suggest that to better understand and measure normative behavior in complex societies with multiple roles, identities, allegiances, and subgroups, one must also consider the negotiation of social identities (Aureli & Schino, 2019).