As a professor who teaches early morning classes, it is always encouraged to eat if hungry. However, everyone must be considerate of those around them. You should not chew loudly. Remember, this may not be disrespectful in all cultures, and it is very subjective.
Perhaps stricter than folkways are more because they can lead to a violation of what we view as moral and ethical behavior. Mores are norms of morality, or right and wrong, and if you break one it is often considered offensive to most people of a culture. If a more is not written down in legislation, it cannot get sanctioned by the criminal justice system.
Other times it can be both illegal and morally wrong. If one attended a funeral for a family member, no one would expect to see someone in bright pink clothes or a bikini. Most people are encouraged to wear black clothing out of respect. Although there may not be specific rules or laws that state expected attire to wear to a funeral, it would be against what most of American society views as right and wrong to attend a funeral in a bikini or be in hot pink leotards.
It would be disrespectful to the individual people are mourning. Both mores and folkways are taught through socialization with various sources: family, friends, peers, schools, and more. A taboo goes a step farther and is a very negative norm that should not get violated because people will be upset. Additionally, one may get excluded from the group or society. The nature and the degree of the taboo are in the mores. A student once gave the example of a man in their neighborhood in Colorado that had multiple wives and also had ten different children from the women.
However, there are instances where having children with multiple people would not be seen as taboo. Specifically, if a man or woman remarries and then has another child with their new partner. However, again, this is more acceptable today than in the past because of the greater societal acceptance of divorce and remarriage. If one is religious think of something taboo in that specific religion?
How about a sports team in college? Any ideas? Lastly, and most important to the study of crime and criminal justice, our laws. The group average contributions across 20 periods were used as a data unit, and the effects of the punishment and reward options on the contributions were analyzed using a two-way ANOVA with one factor being the existence of the reward option and the other being the existence of the punishment option.
S1 in Supplementary Information for the interaction plot. These results hold even if the data for the final period are not considered. We performed this test because data show some tendency of the end-period effect. In the subsequent analysis, we checked that the statements in the main body hold even when the data of the final period are not considered, if necessary.
A comparison of the contribution trends across periods also confirms the positive effect of the reward option on the contribution. The contributions under the R and PR treatments are consistently higher than those under the N and P treatments. In addition, the level of contribution is sustained across periods in the case of the R and PR treatments with the reward option, but it gradually decreases in the condition without the reward option Fig. Transition in average contributions across periods per treatment.
Note: The amounts for the R and PR treatments are consistently higher than those for the N and P treatments in which participants are unable to give a reward. The trend in the average contribution shows that the amount for the P treatment decreases greatly in later periods, while the amounts for the R and PR treatments are maintained Table S1 in Supplementary Information.
As a result, the difference in the contributions between the R and PR treatments and the N and P treatments becomes more prominent in the later periods. In our experimental setting, contributions toward public goods reduce the benefits to society as a whole. Therefore, as indicated by the results from the first stage, the average payoff at the end of the PGG is lower than that when the average contribution is higher. However, the opposite is observed when the results of the SEG are considered Table 1.
That is, although higher contributions are achieved for the R and PR treatments in an inefficient PGG, the final payoffs are higher than those for the other two treatments. Higher payoffs in the two treatments with the reward option do not necessarily mean that high contributors in the PGG are rewarded.
In our setting, the best way for participants to increase the payoff in the treatment with the reward option is by rewarding each other while ignoring contributions to inefficient public goods. However, the participants did not behave in such a manner, and they seemed to connect the behaviors in the PGG and SEG.
In other words, they use the reward option in conditional to the contribution level, even though this is an inefficient public good. To explore how the participants link their behaviors in the PGG and the subsequent SEG, we studied the frequency of the usage of the options and analyzed where the options were used. The experimental results show that the punishment option is suppressed and the reward option is selected more often Table 1 and Fig.
S2 in Supplementary Information , which proves our hypothesis under an environment with fixed IDs. To promote contributions based on punishments or rewards even in the case of inefficient public goods, the receipt of the punishment or reward should be contingent on the level of contribution of a person. We have already observed that the contribution levels are sustained in treatments with reward options and thus, we predict that the reward option is used for people with high contributions.
The results support this prediction. Rewards are used more for a person who has made a high contribution than for one with a low contribution in both the R and PR treatments Table 2 and Table S2 in Supplementary Information. In addition, the punishment option is directed towards a person with a low contribution, which may seem surprising, given our observation that the level of contribution in the P treatment decreases across the periods. This is due to the low frequency of the usage of punishments compared with rewards.
These results are also supported by non-parametric tests Table S3 in Supplementary Information. In addition to the conditional usage of punishments and rewards, the response to the usage is also important to sustain the level of contribution in the PGG. Comparisons of the contribution levels before and after receiving punishments or rewards for the first time reveal that for the PR treatment, the reward option had a marginal significant effect on the increase in the contribution, and the punishment option had no significant effect.
In contrast, the reward option in the R treatment has no significant effect on the contribution and the punishment option in the P treatment has a marginally significant effect on the contribution Table 3. Hence, while the significance levels of the reward and punishment options differ among the treatments, we observed that in line with the previous studies of a PGG with sanctions, sanctions have a positive effect on the maintenance or increase in contributions even toward inefficient public goods.
The results of the usage and response to sanctions are almost the same as those in previous studies on a standard efficient PGG. It seems that the efficiency or inefficiency of public goods is irrelevant to the usage of punishments or rewards. This causes some doubt as to whether the participants really understand about the meaning of inefficiency, which was the motivation for our second study.
To this end, we manipulated the instructions and emphasized how inefficient one unit of the contribution to public goods is. If the participants still contribute to the public goods after they fully understand the inefficiency and the social loss, we will be convinced that the contribution toward inefficient public goods is an instrumental action that seeks returns in the subsequent stage via rewards.
In other words, we explore whether this social bad norm can be considered as an investment in social capital, which will reap benefits in future. The manipulation of the emphasis has two additional purposes. First, it is a robustness check of Study 1 and the literature Although the studies in the literature carefully explain the inefficiency of public goods, it is still uncertain whether the participants fully understand the concept of inefficiency as the researchers understand it i.
The continued contribution behavior may occur because they do not understand this. Second, the emphasis on the inefficiency is important to policy makers because it can be considered a mild intervention to abolish a bad social norm. The best scenario is that participants refrain from inefficient behavior with maintaining the reward-based relationship.
However, there is a risk that the intervention not only breaks the bad social norms but also reduces the good rewarding behavior. The worst scenario may arise if the participants contribute based on only altruistic motives to society and they are rewarded for the contribution, but the emphasis then destroys such altruistic motives. To this end, we emphasized the inefficiency of the public goods with and without the reward and punishment options.
This manipulation requires the participants to calculate payoffs in the PGG, causing them to inevitably recognize the inefficiency. We consider four treatments, such as no social exchange with emphasis NE and punishment-reward with emphasis PRE treatments in which the inefficiency is emphasized, and no social exchange without emphasis NN and punishment-reward without emphasis PRN treatments in which the inefficiency is not emphasized.
In addition, we conducted the pre- and post-experiment surveys to determine the views of the participants on the contributions in the PGG and the options in the SEG, and how these view changed over the course of the experiment. As shown in Table 4 , the reward and punishment options increase the contributions toward public goods, and the emphasis on inefficiency decreases the contributions.
The change in the contributions per treatment across periods Fig. In summary, while an emphasis on the inefficiency decreases contributions, bad social norms are practiced and maintained in the treatment with social exchange even with the emphasis. Similar to the case in Study 1, high contributors received rewards even though the inefficiency of the contribution was emphasized, while low contributors are punished in the PRE and PRN treatments Table S4 in Supplementary Information.
Similar tendencies to those in Study 1 were observed regarding the effect of the options on the contribution in the subsequent periods. Overall, the two PR treatments are almost identical in terms of the effect of the punishment or reward option. The results of our experiment indicate that the opportunities for social exchange and the emphasis on the inefficiency in the PGG affect social norms for the contribution that the participants perceive. We found that contribution norms are formed even before the interactions in the first period.
Next, we determined if the participants regarded the contribution norm as a unfavorable one. This is consistent with the interpretation that when there is a social exchange after the PGG, participants link the behaviors in the PGG and those in the SEG and thus, they regard the contribution toward the PGG as a kind of investment in social capital that results in returns on the next occasion.
Finally, we examined the reasons behind the social exchange behavior in the SEG and analyzed how these were changed by the emphasis of the inefficiency. The results indicate that when there is an emphasis on the inefficiency, participants do not reward in the SEG in order to increase the contribution in the later PGG Table S7 in Supplementary Information.
This also validates our interpretation that they contribute in the PGG in order to obtain the returns from the later SEG.
The two experiments indicated that rewards have a stronger association with an inefficient social norm than do punishments. This is important to the literature on public goods game experiment. First, Studies 1 and 2 have shown that the level of contribution toward inefficient public goods is higher under conditions where participants can reward each other in a fixed ID environment. Alike efficient public goods studies, the reward mechanism hypothesis in inefficient PGG has been examined and verified by our results.
Second, the most important finding in our study is that people cooperate in the PGG to achieve mutual rewards. Previous studies have suggested people reward for the sake of achieving cooperation in the PGG 2 , However, participants in Study 2 actively contributed in the PGG and rewarded others mutually even though they understood the inefficiency of the PGG, whereas the emphasis on inefficiency significantly decreased contributions when the reward and punishment options did not exist.
This result suggests that people choose to behave altruistically based on prospects for social exchange in another situation. Inefficient altruistic behavior, which was observed in our experiments, can be considered to include investment in social capital based on the viewpoints of trust and reciprocity in the subsequent social exchange stage 11 , Reciprocity might arise when someone behaves kindly and the recipient considers it as kind even if the behavior involves reduced welfare in society.
Because contribution toward public goods benefits all members of the group, all of them potentially respond based on reciprocity. Therefore, the linkage of a PGG and dyadic social exchange triggers widespread reciprocity and establishes an effective mechanism for cooperation in later stages. While we verify that cooperation in a PGG induces rewarding behavior, previous studies have shown that the latter induces the former.
We propose that both directions of contribution in a PGG and mutual cooperation in dyadic exchange exist when the provision of public goods is socially efficient. The direction could depend on the proportion of payoffs obtained from the PGG and reward stage. Our experiments assumed that the payoff from mutual rewards is larger than that in the public goods stage 0. The relationship between inefficient public goods and the network of dyadic social exchanges suggests that an attempt to abolish an inefficient social norm requires a deep understanding of the background of social relations in society.
The results of our experiments imply that abolishing an inefficient norm is complicated and difficult for policymakers for two reasons. One is that abolition may have negative effects on social exchange networks and result in reduced welfare. The other is that people maintain inefficient norms even if they realize the inefficiency of them, as shown in Study 2.
Instead, offering an alternative manner that is less harmful to society could be more effective. Thus, the transformation of a bad norm to less harmful one will be an interesting topic for future research. Even though our results have a number of potential policy implications, they need to be discussed before making any generalizations. First, the study participants were university students. Although university students and the general public are different in terms of several aspects such as skills, knowledge, and experience 19 , this can be ignored for at least our norm-related task because the Japanese students are almost the same as adults with regard to norm-related dimensions.
In addition, aging itself may affect their behaviors and beliefs Thus, it can be hypothesized that in reality, people have even stronger feelings for sustaining inefficient norms, and future research should test this hypothesis. Second, we should discuss the cultural difference. In terms of the cooperation and punishment-reward in the PGG 21 , conducted meta-analysis across several countries.
Regarding the effect of punishment on cooperative behaviors, they found cultural differences with a variety of impacts by countries and classified Japan as one of the strongest countries. Regarding the effect of reward, there is no clear evidence by countries Japan has not been found to be unique in this regard.
As our main findings pertain to the reward effects to sustain inefficient norms, our findings can be generally expected to be valid. Third, the four-person group may facilitate mutual rewards based on contribution behavior. The meta-analysis on PGG with punishment or reward 21 concludes that the group size does not moderate either punishment-cooperation association or reward-cooperation association.
However, it appears to be natural that the size of the group wherein each member of the group interacts by using the reward and punishment is smaller than that of the PGG they play. Only a few studies have investigated large group cooperation in PGG through mutual rewards within the smaller group 16 , 17 , and their results are contrasting one is positive and another is negative.
Thus, future research is required to verify whether our result would hold in a large group setting. Finally, we should mention that the sample size of our study is relatively small, which causes the small statistical power to detect the small difference. This might be the reason for why the effect of the punishment on the contribution is not statistically significant, being slightly contradicted to some studies on the punishment literature under the fixed ID environment 22 , The strongest mores are legally protected with laws or other formal norms.
But more often, mores are judged and guarded by public sentiment an informal norm. People who violate mores are seen as shameful. They can even be shunned or banned from some groups.
The mores of the U. The consequences for violating this norm are severe and usually result in expulsion. Unlike mores, folkways are norms without any moral underpinnings. Rather, folkways direct appropriate behavior in the day-to-day practices and expressions of a culture. They indicate whether to shake hands or kiss on the cheek when greeting another person.
They specify whether to wear a tie and blazer or a T-shirt and sandals to an event. In Canada, women can smile and say hello to men on the street. In regions in the southern United States, bumping into an acquaintance means stopping to chat.
In other regions, people guard their privacy and value time efficiency. A simple nod of the head is enough. Other accepted folkways in the United States may include holding the door open for a stranger or giving someone a gift on their birthday. The rules regarding these folkways may change from culture to culture.
Many folkways are actions we take for granted. Folkways might be small manners, learned by observation and imitated, but they are by no means trivial. Like mores and laws, these norms help people negotiate their daily lives within a given culture.
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