Stable Norms Research Articles

Tolerant indirect reciprocity can boost social welfare through solidarity with unconditional cooperators in private monitoring

Indirect reciprocity is an important mechanism for resolving social dilemmas. Previous studies explore several types of assessment rules that are evolutionarily stable for keeping cooperation regimes. However, little is known about the effects of private information on social systems. Most indirect reciprocity studies assume public monitoring in which individuals share a single assessment for each individual. Here, we consider a private monitoring system that loosens such an unnatural assumption. We explore the stable norms in the private system using an individual-based simulation. We have three main findings. First, narrow and unstable cooperation: cooperation in private monitoring becomes unstable and the restricted norms cannot maintain cooperative regimes while they can in public monitoring. Second, stable coexistence of discriminators and unconditional cooperators: under private monitoring, unconditional cooperation can play a role in keeping a high level of cooperation in tolerant norm situations. Finally, Pareto improvement: private monitoring can achieve a higher cooperation rate than does public monitoring.

Apt information literacy? A case of interdisciplinary scholarly communication

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to explore the aptness of “information literacy”, conceptualized as a socially contextualized phenomenon, for analyses of interdisciplinary scholarly communication.Design/methodology/approach– The paper presents a conceptual analysis. Two influential representatives of the social turn in the information literacy literature are taken as starting points: Annemaree Lloyd’s conceptualization of “information literacy practice”, and Jack Andersen’s conceptualization of information literacy as “genre knowledge”. Their positioning of information literacy as a socially contextualized phenomenon – by use of practice theories and rhetorical genre theory, respectively, – is analysed against an illustrative example of interdisciplinary scholarly communication.Findings– Conceptualizations by Lloyd and Andersen explain information literacy as socially contextualized in terms of stable norms and understandings shared in social communities. Their concepts have the potential of explaining changes and innovations in social practices including scholarly communication. If we combine genre-theoretical and practice-theoretical concepts – and accentuate the open-endedness of social practices and of genres – we can enhance the understanding of information literacy in settings of interdisciplinary scholarly communication where the actors involved lack shared conventions and assumptions.Originality/value– The paper suggests that the fluid features of social contexts should be accounted for in the information literacy literature. By combining genre-theoretical and practice-theoretical concepts in a novel way it offers such an account. It provides a useful framework for understanding the phenomenon of information literacy in interdisciplinary scholarly communication.

Socially Enforced Nepotism: How Norms and Reputation Can Amplify Kin Altruism.

Kin selection, which can lead organisms to behave altruistically to their genetic relatives, works differently when—as is often the case in human societies—altruism can be boosted by social pressure. Here I present a model of social norms enforced by indirect reciprocity. In the model there are many alternative stable allocations of rewards (“distributional norms”); a stable norm is stable in the sense that each player is best off following the norm if other players do the same. Stable norms vary widely in how equally they reward players with unequal abilities. In a population of mixed groups (some group members follow one norm, some follow another, and some compromise) with modest within-group coefficients of relatedness, selection within groups favors those who compromise, and selection between groups favors generous generalized reciprocity rather than balanced reciprocity. Thus evolved social norms can amplify kin altruism, giving rise to a uniquely human mode of kin-based sociality distinct from spontaneous altruism among close kin, or cooperation among non-kin.

Stable Norms and Salient Deviations: Multilayered Listening in Jazz and Common-Practice Music

Stable Norms and Salient Deviations: Multilayered Listening in Jazz and Common-Practice Music

Member state commitments and international environmental regimes: Can appeals to social norms strengthen flexible agreements?

Abstract In terms of regime evolution, there has been a general shift from blunt enforcement instruments to the improved transparency of a soft implementation style, involving data reporting and review processes, to ensure the commitments of parties. Flexible instruments are now attracting attention, and these instruments’ effectiveness is dependent on stable social norms among the parties. From this perspective of enforcement, it is vital that fundamental infrastructure be created for stabilizing social norms—by promoting reciprocity, fairness and trust. The issue then becomes how to ensure the accountability and transparency of the member states’ individual commitments to promote fairness and trust among all members. Reporting and review protocols may enhance these elements. This article illustrates how flexible agreements have sprung up and demonstrates the role of social norms in ensuring commitments in agreements, focusing particularly on UNFCCC negotiation.

EDom: Norming software and relative meaning frequencies for 544 English homonyms

Words that are homonyms-that is, for which a single written and spoken form is associated with multiple, unrelated interpretations, such as COMPOUND, which can denote an < enclosure > or a < composite > meaning-are an invaluable class of items for studying word and discourse comprehension. When using homonyms as stimuli, it is critical to control for the relative frequencies of each interpretation, because this variable can drastically alter the empirical effects of homonymy. Currently, the standard method for estimating these frequencies is based on the classification of free associates generated for a homonym, but this approach is both assumption-laden and resource-demanding. Here, we outline an alternative norming methodology based on explicit ratings of the relative meaning frequencies of dictionary definitions. To evaluate this method, we collected and analyzed data in a norming study involving 544 English homonyms, using the eDom norming software that we developed for this purpose. Dictionary definitions were generally sufficient to exhaustively cover word meanings, and the methods converged on stable norms with fewer data and less effort on the part of the experimenter. The predictive validity of the norms was demonstrated in analyses of lexical decision data from the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., Behavior Research Methods, 39, 445-459, 2007), and from Armstrong and Plaut (Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 2223-2228, 2011). On the basis of these results, our norming method obviates relying on the unsubstantiated assumptions involved in estimating relative meaning frequencies on the basis of classification of free associates. Additional details of the norming procedure, the meaning frequency norms, and the source code, standalone binaries, and user manual for the software are available at http://edom.cnbc.cmu.edu .

Constructing metrics on a 2-torus with a partially prescribed stable norm

A result of Bangert states that the stable norm associated to any Riemannian metric on the 2-torus T 2 is strictly convex. We demonstrate that the space of stable norms associated to metrics on T 2 forms a proper dense subset of the space of strictly convex norms on $${{\mathbb R}^2}$$ . In particular, given a strictly convex norm || · ||∞ on $${{\mathbb R}^2}$$ we construct a sequence $${\langle {\| \cdot \|}_j \rangle_{j=1}^{\infty}}$$ of stable norms that converge to || · ||∞ in the topology of compact convergence and have the property that for each r > 0 there is an $${N \equiv N(r)}$$ such that || · || j agrees with || · ||∞ on $${{\mathbb Z}^2 \cap \{(a,b) : a^2 + b^2 \leq r \}}$$ for all j ≥ N. Using this result, we are able to derive results on multiplicities which arise in the minimum length spectrum of 2-tori and in the simple length spectrum of hyperbolic tori.

Morfoloģiskie varianti normalizācijas vēstures aspektā

MORPHOLOGICAL VARIABILITY IN THE HISTORY OF STANDARDIZATION OF LANGUAGE Summary The stable norms of morphological elements are formed in the contemporary Latvian literary language, though there exist parallel variants and new variants of words appear. The standardization of language tends mainly to reduce morphological variability by determi­nating the semantical or stylistical shades of variants. It is necessary to analyse the main tendencies which regulate the dynamics of variability in different periods of literary language development. We must take into account the national tendencies of variability development, as well as the influence of certain scholars and most well-known sources of codificated norms who played the great­est part in the changing of norms. In order to codify any variant we can study the grammatical system of the language in its his­torical development, the history of competing variants, the frequency of using them in fiction in different periods, and the history of codification. The analysis of experience of previous linguists may facilitate the codification of morphological variants in contemporary literary language.

Legal Evolution: Integrating Economic and Systemic Approaches

This paper explores the scope for synthesis between economic and systemic approaches to the understanding of legal evolution. The evolutionary and epistemic branches of game theory predict that stable norms will emerge when agents share common beliefs concerning future states of the world. Systems theory see the legal order as a social system which reproduces itself by recursive acts of legal communication, thereby giving rise to self-reference and operational closure. At the same time, the legal system is cognitively open, that is to say, indirectly influenced by other social systems in its environment. This gives rise to the possibility of coevolution of law and the economy. It will be argued that systems theory, by developing the idea of law as an adaptive system with cognitive properties, provides a missing link in the evolutionary theory of norms. Recent game theoretical models imply that common knowledge is not entirely endogenous to agents’ interactions, but depends to a certain extent on emergent normative structures. These include the public representations of common knowledge which are provided by the legal system. The paper explores the implications of this idea, argues for an integrated economic and systemic analysis of legal evolution, and considers some of the theoretical and methodological implications of such a step.

Demography and ecology drive variation in cooperation across human populations

Recent studies argue that cross-cultural variation in human cooperation supports cultural group selection models of the evolution of large-scale cooperation. However, these studies confound cultural and environmental differences between populations by predominantly sampling one population per society. Here, we test the hypothesis that behavioral variation between populations is driven by environmental differences in demography and ecology. We use a public goods game played with money and a naturalistic measure of behavior involving the distribution of salt, an essential and locally valued resource, to demonstrate significant variation in levels of cooperation across 16 discrete populations of the same small-scale society, the Pahari Korwa of central India. Variation between these populations of the same cultural group is comparable to that found between different cultural groups in previous studies. Demographic factors partly explain this variation; age and a measure of social network size are associated with contributions in the public goods game, while population size and the number of adult sisters residing in the population are associated with decisions regarding salt. That behavioral variation is at least partly contingent on environmental differences between populations questions the existence of stable norms of cooperation. Hence, our findings call for reinterpretation of cross-cultural data on cooperation. Although cultural group selection could theoretically explain the evolution of large-scale cooperation, our results make clear that existing cross-cultural data cannot be taken as empirical support for this hypothesis.

Assessing the Ability to Recognize Facial and Vocal Expressions of Emotion: Construction and Validation of the Emotion Recognition Index

Despite extensive research on emotional expression, there are few validated tests of individual differences in emotion recognition competence (generally considered as part of nonverbal sensitivity and emotional intelligence). This paper reports the development of a rapid test of emotion recognition ability, the Emotion Recognition Index (ERI), consisting of two subtests: one for facial and one for vocal emotion recognition. The rationale underlying the test’s construction, item selection, and analysis are described and a major validation study with more than 3,500 professional candidates, providing stable norms, is reported. Additional analyses concern differences for gender, age, and education, as well as correlations with cognitive intelligence and personality factors. Moreover, a separate validation study with a student sample reports the correlations of the ERI with some of the major published tests in this area, demonstrating satisfactory construct validity. Correlations between ERI scores and the position of candidates in the organizational hierarchy suggest that recognition competence might be might contribute to predicting career advancement.

Legal Evolution: Integrating Economic and Systemic Approaches

Abstract This paper explores the scope for synthesis between economic and systemic approaches to the understanding of legal evolution. The evolutionary and epistemic branches of game theory predict that stable norms will emerge when agents share common beliefs concerning future states of the world. Systems theory sees the legal order as a social system which reproduces itself by recursive acts of legal communication, thereby giving rise to self-reference and operational closure. At the same time, the legal system is cognitively open, that is to say, indirectly influenced by other social systems in its environment. This gives rise to the possibility of coevolution of law and the economy. It will be argued that systems theory, by developing the idea of law as an adaptive system with cognitive properties, provides a missing link in the evolutionary theory of norms. Recent game theoretical models imply that common knowledge is not entirely endogenous to agents’ interactions, but depends to a certain extent on emergent normative structures. These include the public representations of common knowledge which are provided by the legal system. The paper will explore the implications of this idea, argue for an integrated economic and systemic analysis of legal evolution, and consider some of the theoretical and methodological implications of such a step.

Implicit causality bias in English: a corpus of 300 verbs

This study provides implicit verb causality norms for a corpus of 305 English verbs. A web-based sentence completion study was conducted, with 96 respondents completing fragments such as "John liked Mary because..." The resulting bias scores are provided as supplementary material in the Psychonomic Society Archive, where we also present lexical and semantic verb features, such as the frequency, semantic class and emotional valence. Our results replicate those of previous studies with much smaller numbers of verbs and respondents. Novel effects of gender and its interaction with verb valence illustrate the type of issues that can be investigated using stable norms for a large number of verbs. The corpus will facilitate future studies in a range of areas, including psycholinguistics and social psychology.

Hedlund metrics and the stable norm

The real homology of a compact Riemannian manifold M is naturally endowed with the stable norm. The stable norm on H 1 ( M , R ) arises from the Riemannian length functional by homogenization. It is difficult and interesting to decide which norms on the finite-dimensional vector space H 1 ( M , R ) are stable norms of a Riemannian metric on M. If the dimension of M is at least three, I. Babenko and F. Balacheff proved in [I. Babenko, F. Balacheff, Sur la forme de la boule unité de la norme stable unidimensionnelle, Manuscripta Math. 119 (3) (2006) 347–358] that every polyhedral norm ball in H 1 ( M , R ) , whose vertices are rational with respect to the lattice of integer classes in H 1 ( M , R ) , is the stable norm ball of a Riemannian metric on M. This metric can even be chosen to be conformally equivalent to any given metric. In [I. Babenko, F. Balacheff, Sur la forme de la boule unité de la norme stable unidimensionnelle, Manuscripta Math. 119 (3) (2006) 347–358], the stable norm induced by the constructed metric is computed by comparing the metric with a polyhedral one. Here we present an alternative construction for the metric, which remains in the geometric framework of smooth Riemannian metrics.

The Fall of the Strong State

From the 1930s to the 1980s, Swedish politics was based on the assumption that social change could be accomplished through a specific political and administrative process. National politicians decided the aims of policy, government commissions of inquiry engaged experts who compiled available knowledge, Parliament turned the resulting proposal into law, a civil service agency implemented the policy and local authorities put it into effect. This rationalistic model of social steering can be called 'the strong state'. This article documents the fall of the strong state. It also argues that these changes to the output side of government have troubling implications for the operation of democracy. The reason is that the strong state model provided citizens with a reasonably clear idea of how public policies were - or should be - produced and implemented. As a result of the strong state's decline, the link from elections to policy is partly obscure, partly broken. The question for the future is whether the strong state will be replaced by some new model that provides the necessary focal points for debates on public policy, or whether stable norms will remain absent due to an inherently obscure division of labour within Sweden's policy-making and administrative structures.

Global Personality Norms: Multicultural, Multinational, and Managerial

The critical importance of understanding, selecting, and developing global management talent—management operating within internationally diverse interpersonal and situational contexts—has emerged from the increasing globalization of business and the concomitant high rates of immigration, emigration, and expatriation. With an awareness of this general context, my commentary highlights the conceptual and methodological themes within a set of papers concerned with composing normative groups against which to compare the personality test scores of global managers. I first suggest types of organizational change that might critically affect global management norms, then reflect on approaches to developing norms in light of the organizational purposes at hand, and finally discuss issues connected to measurement equivalence efforts and how multilevel models can assist in these efforts. The papers featured in this special issue address a serious and cutting-edge challenge: establishing stable and relevant testing norms for a management population and business context that is in a constant state of flux.

Starmania: Einkaufen am “Jahrmarkt von Identitäten”

The role of media in the identity constructing process is being discussed as an essential one in the field of media studies. But can we really speak of just ONE identity in postmodern times? Youth today is confronted with a large number of identification patterns. Young people are not faced any more with just ONE path of life which would offer stable traditions, values and norms as was the case maybe two generations ago. Today they can choose from a wide variety of identities and can create their own identity mix – similar to the process of shopping at the ‘Jahrmarkt’ (fair) of identities. Referring to the example of the Austrian crossmedial TV casting show ‘Starmania – The New Generation’ I want to show how young people use media texts for their individual identity constructions. The methodological basis of my investigation is 20 qualitative interviews with young Starmania fans as well as visualizations, done and then verbally commented after each interview by the adolescents. This methodological approach helps to illustrate the subjective meaning systems of these young people and to validate their verbal inputs. One of the most important preliminary results of the study showed that the adolescents absorb the offers of identity patterns given by the TV show and integrate them into their individual biographies. In this respect, for example, Starmania acts as an advisor regarding fashion and outfit, as a model for gender roles or as a guide for questions about the future. “Starmania”: La foire aux identités (Jahrmarkt von Identitäten) Le rôle des medias dans le processus de construction de l’identité apparaît comme essentiel dans le domaine de la médiologie. Toutefois la question qui se pose est de savoir si à l’époque postmoderne on peut parler d’UNE seule et unique identité. La jeunesse d’aujourd’hui se trouve face à un très grand nombre de schémas d’identification. Les jeunes ne trouvent plus devant eux UN seul et unique chemin de vie qui leur offrirait des traditions, valeurs et normes stables comme c’était sans doute le cas il y a deux générations. Aujourd’hui ils peuvent faire leur choix dans une gamme étendue d’identités et créer leur mélange identitaire ‐ comme s’ils faisaient leurs achats au «Jahrmarkt» (foire) aux identités. En prenant pour exemple l’émission de TV autrichienne transmédiatique «Starmania ‐ La Nouvelle Génération», je veux montrer comment les jeunes utilisent des textes des medias pour construire leurs identités individuelles. La méthodologie de ma recherche repose sur 20 interviews qualitatives de jeunes fans de Starmania et sur des visionnements effectués puis commentés verbalement par les adolescents après chaque interview. Cette approche méthodologique aide à faire apparaître les systèmes subjectifs de la signification chez ces jeunes gens et à valider leurs apports. Un des résultats préliminaires les plus importants de cette étude a montré que les adolescents absorbent les offres de schémas d’identité fournis par l’émission de TV et les intègrent dans leur biographie individuelle. A cet régard, par exemple, Starmania joue un rôle de conseiller en matière de mode et d’habillement, de modèle pour les rôles de genre ou de guide pour les questions sur l’avenir. ‘Starmania’: Einkaufen am Jahrmarkt von Identitäten Die Rolle von Medien im Identitätsfindungsprozess wird als eine der wichtigen Fragen in der Medienpädagogik diskutiert. Aber können wir wirklich von nur EINER Identität in unseren postmodernen Zeiten reden? Unsere Jugendlichen werden heute mit einer großen Anzahl von Identifikationsmustern konfrontiert. Junge Menschen stehen nicht mehr nur EINEM Lebensweg, der ihnen stabile Traditionen, Werte und Normen anbietet, gegenüber, wie das wohl noch zwei Generationen vorher der Fall war. Heute können sie aus vielerlei Identitätsvarianten wählen und sich ihren eigenen “Identitätsmix” zusammenstellen – ähnlich dem Prozess des Einkaufens auf einem “Jahrmarkt von Identitäten”. Am Beispiel der crossmedialen TV Casting Show “Starmania – die Neue Generation” möchte ich zeigen, wie Jugendliche Medientexte zur Konstruktion ihrer eigenen Identität nutzen. Die methodologische Basis meiner Untersuchung sind 20 qualitative leitfadengestützte Interviews mit jugendlichen Starmania‐Fans sowie Visualisierungen, welche die Jugendlichen nach den Interviews zum Thema “Starmania” angefertigt und verbal erläutert haben. Die Methode dient der visuellen Verdeutlichung der subjektiven Bedeutungssysteme der Jugendlichen und der Validierung des verbal Ausgedrückten. Eines der wichtigsten vorläufigen Ergebnisse der Studie zeigte, dass die Heranwachsenden die Identitätsmuster‐Angebote der Femsehshow aufnehmen und in ihre individuellen Biographien integrieren. In diesem Zusammenhang wirkt Starmania zum Beispiel als Berater für Mode und Kleidung, auch als ein Modell für Geschlechterrollen oder als Leitfaden für die Beantwortung von Zukunftsfragen.

Sweden: The Fall of the Strong State

From the 1930s to the 1980s, Swedish politics was based on the assumption that social change could be accomplished through a specific political and administrative process. National politicians decided the aims of policy, government commissions of inquiry engaged experts who compiled available knowledge, Parliament turned the resulting proposal into law, a civil service agency implemented the policy and local authorities put it into effect. This rationalistic model of social steering can be called ‘the strong state’. This article documents the fall of the strong state. It also argues that these changes to the output side of government have troubling im‐plications for the operation of democracy. The reason is that the strong state model provided citizens with a reasonably clear idea of how public policies were – or should be – produced and implemented. As a result of the strong state's decline, the link from elections to policy is partly obscure, partly broken. The question for the future is whether the strong state will be replaced by some new model that provides the necessary focal points for debates on public policy, or whether stable norms will remain absent due to an inherently obscure division of labour within Sweden's policy‐making and administrative structures.

Stable norms – From theory to applications and back

The purpose of this survey paper is to give a brief review of certain aspects of stability of norms and subnorms acting on algebras over a field F , either R or C . A norm N on an associative algebra A over F shall be called stable if for some positive constant σ, N ( a m ) ⩽ σ N ( a ) m for all a ∈ A , m = 1 , 2 , 3 … A norm shall be called strongly stable if the above inequality holds with σ = 1. We begin the paper by discussing several results regarding norm stability, including conditions under which norms on certain algebras are stable. The second part of the paper is devoted to applications, where we employ the notion of norm stability to obtain criteria for the convergence of a well-known family of finite-difference schemes for the initial-value problem associated with the parabolic system ∂ u ( x , t ) ∂ t = ∑ 1 ⩽ j ⩽ k ⩽ s A jk ∂ 2 u ( x , t ) ∂ x j ∂ x k + ∑ 1 ⩽ j ⩽ s B j ∂ u ( x , t ) ∂ x j + Cu ( x , t ) , where A jk , B j and C are constant matrices, A jk being Hermitian. The third and last part of the paper deals with the question of stability for subnorms acting on subsets of power-associative algebras that are closed under scalar multiplication and under raising to powers. A subnorm f on such a set S is a real-valued function satisfying f( a) > 0 for all 0 ≠ a ∈ S , and f( αa) = ∣ α∣ f( a) for all a ∈ S and α ∈ F .

Norming clinical questionnaires with multiple regression: The Pain Cognition List.

Questionnaires for measuring patients' feelings or beliefs are commonly used in clinical settings for diagnostic purposes, clinical decision making, or treatment evaluation. Raw scores of a patient can be evaluated by comparing them with norms based on a reference population. Using the Pain Cognition List (PCL-2003) as an example, this article shows how clinical questionnaires can be normed with multiple regression of raw scores on demographic and other patient variables. Compared with traditional norm tables for subgroups based on age or gender, this approach offers 2 advantages. First, multiple regression allows determination of which patient variables are relevant to the norming and which are not (validity). Second, by using information from the entire sample, multiple regression leads to continuous and more stable norms for any subgroup defined in terms of prognostic variables (reliability).