How social norms emerge: The interindividual actor-critic

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Science
• Social Psychology
• Computational Neuroscience

Background:

• Social norms influence diverse human behaviors and life choices.
• Existing theories of norm emergence often present conflicting assumptions regarding substantive and dynamical properties.
• A unified account is needed to bridge individual learning mechanisms and emergent group behaviors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a unified theoretical framework for social norm emergence.
• To demonstrate how fundamental learning algorithms can naturally generate social norms.
• To explain both the substantive and dynamical properties of social norms.

Main Methods:

• Extending actor-critic models of learning to social contexts.
• Simulating interindividual learning processes where actions are critiqued by others.
• Analyzing emergent group behaviors for norm-like properties.

Main Results:

• The proposed actor-critic framework uniquely produces group behavior with properties of real-world social norms.
• Simulations generated prosociality, ingroup bias, norm stickiness, and S-shaped adoption curves.
• The model also exhibited local conformity alongside global diversity in behavior.

Conclusions:

• Social norms can emerge organically from fundamental learning mechanisms, not solely from social transmission.
• Actor-critic models extended to social feedback provide a parsimonious explanation for norm emergence.
• This framework unifies individual learning processes with the complex dynamics of social norms.