intrust

Robert Axelrod is a poster child of game theory thanks to his famous Prisoner’s Dilemma computer tournaments introduced to the general public in the Evolution of Cooperation. In Axelrod’s tournaments, computer agents compete against each other using pre-programmed strategies. Their moves, which entail choosing being cooperating with or defecting against fellow agents exercising strategies of their own, will either get them rewarded or punished. The success of of each individuals strategy evolves in a verosphere of interdependence with all other players.

In a later essay “The evolutionary approach to Norms. (American Political Science Review 80, no 4 (Dec 1986) Axelrod essentially added another N to the Nature– Nurture dichotomy: Normal. At first glance the existence of norms would seem to fall within the Nurture camp’s jurisdiction: This is certainly true for the influence on personal development due to the social-cultural environments we are born into, and on the other hand, making the case for Nature, it can be argued that humans are genetically endowed with a natural propensity for adherence to certain norms of behaviour.

Axelrod’s approach focuses on our strategic actions in the presence of existing norms and investigates how those strategies evolve over time, due to their accumulated successes and failures. His model discounts not only what an individual actually is at the start of game, but also an individual’s limited scope for rational choice, thus avoiding one of the perennial problems of theorizing about human behaviour.

Robert Axelrod, lists eight mechanisms which can serve to establish cooperation. It is not difficult to see their relationship to social capital as discussed above.

Reputation – People will tend to respect norms when their violation would cause fellow society members to make negative inferences about them, or restrict their ability to carry out normal activities; specifically those requiring a transacting partners exposure to shared risk.

In the shadow of law¹ – As we are well aware, norms often precede laws: As norms become firmer there can be desire a to formalize them (or forbid them mala prohibita). But the very existence of laws, leads to the spread and enforcement of related norms. By formally decreeing laws and defining actions that break them, it will make it easier for a populace to make value judgments on areas in the shadows of these laws.

Membership – the accelerated promotion of norms via common-cause or common-circumstance constellations.

Social proof – What do other people do? What is successful for them? Social proof is the snowball or follow-john effect. Group conformism.

Deterrence – When a power exhibits decisive public punishment of a highly visible selection of offenders, eg zero tolerance campaigns.

Internalization – when violating an establish norm is psychologically painful even if the direct material benefits are positive.

Metanorms (Axelrod)– takes the propensity of fellow society members to punish, censor or show disdain for those who break norms or laws, and raises it one level up to – the propensity of fellow society members to punish, censor or show disdain for those who do not punish, censor or show disdain for those who break norms or laws.

Metanorms (my alternative definition) The belief that there is a normal way to do things. That it is normal to be normal.

Axelrod’s compilation of norms occurs in an essay describing agents in computer simulations. Perhaps his long preoccupation with “prisoners” causes him to focus on the formative effects of pain and loss rather than those of joy and gain. Success is overwhelmingly couched as the avoidance of negative consequences rather than the attainment of positive rewards. For example, internalization speaks only of psychological pain suffered for defection, not the possible satisfaction gained in cooperating. Reputation refers to “bad reputation”. He speaks of deterrents but not inducements.²

In the following example several of the mechanisms from above are at work, yet it is psychological pleasure that ultimately holds the norm intact.

// posted by Greg FitzPatrick @ 00:25