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A Cognitive Framing for Norm Change

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Book cover Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems XI (COIN 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 9628))

Abstract

Norms are within minds and out of minds; they work thanks to their mental implementation but also thanks to their externalized supports, processing, diffusion, and behavioral messages. This is the normal and normative working of Ns. Ns is not simply a behavioral and collective fact, ‘normality’ or an institution; but they necessarily are mental artifacts. Ns change follows the same circuit. In principle there are two (interconnected) loci of change with their forces: mental transformations vs. external, interactive ones. Ns change is a circular process based on a loop between ‘emergence’ and ‘immergence’; that is, changes in behaviors presuppose some change in the mind, while behaviors causal efficacy is due to their aggregated macro-result: acts that organize in stable choreographies and regularities build (new) Ns in the minds of the actors. More precisely the problem is: which are the crucial mental representations supporting a N conform (or deviating) behavior? And which kinds of ‘mutations’ in those mental representations produce a change in behavior? I will focus my analysis on Social Norms, in a broad sense.

“Just remove a brick and the wall will sink”

(Arab saying)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    From politeness to customs, from moral norms to Ns and rules in organizations, associations, communities of practice with their “rules”. For a systematic analysis of social norms and discussion about the general theory see [5, 6, 12, 31, 35].

  2. 2.

    I will also do not examine the other crucial phenomenon in Ns evolution: the introduction of a completely new N, and its issuing or negotiation. I will mainly focus on adherence or violation (and their reasons) in N changing, adaptation, or extinction.

  3. 3.

    The fact that Ns are always relative to a “class” of subjects, not just to one specific person and it holds “for all the values of X” is one reason why the violation has not an individual meaning. X the violator is just “one of all/many”, is a representative, an “example”; that’s why his (bad) behavior can be a (bad) “example”; and the impact of the behavior is more that “individual”: It is not longer true that “for any value of X, X has to, will do, and does action A”.

  4. 4.

    Not to be used as synonym of “altruistic”, “benevolence”, etc.

  5. 5.

    An interpersonal example may be: X: “You can not go around in underwear!” Y: “But you had to say me that there were guests in our house!”.

  6. 6.

    This expectation should be part of what Bicchieri calls “empirical expectation” (“what we expect the other do”). However, we should distinguish between “to expect that the other conform” and “to expect that the others monitor and sanction”. Two different predictions based on different experiences that might also don’t be fully correlated.

  7. 7.

    This is a change in our “empirical expectations” in Bicchieri and Xiao terminology [8].

  8. 8.

    My behavior is like an exam question, where I in fact already know the answer but I want to know if you know it.

  9. 9.

    This nice example is about a legal N, however similar examples exist also for social ones; like the “provocation” acts of courageous women in Arabic countries.

  10. 10.

    For a rigorous cognitive notion of “value” and its strict link with evaluations, prescriptions and Ns see [40].

  11. 11.

    Agents too should have some moral value and should be able at least to interpret our behavior and reasons in these terms, and possibly mediate our interaction caring of moral norms.

  12. 12.

    This is Antigone tragedy. This also is Socrates’ message to us while taking the poison: respecting Ns and authorities (even when their decision is incorrect and harming us) may/should be a prevalent value.

  13. 13.

    This case and the previous one change our “normative expectation” in Bicchieri and Xiao [9] terminology.

  14. 14.

    On the relevance of Norm-signaling, and of explicit communication, not just of punishment, see also [2, 3].

  15. 15.

    Christine Cuskley “Frequency and stability in linguistic rule dynamics”, Invited seminar at ISTC October 2014.

  16. 16.

    Not in the sense of a “collective mind” but in the more basic sense of a collective of minds; many minds sharing certain assumptions and infecting each other.

  17. 17.

    It is clear that such an internal/external dynamics of Ns change might be fully simulated only with cognitive Agents in MAS.

  18. 18.

    This obviously shouldn’t be an excuse for the selfish violator just for his own private interests (although – as Adam Smith has explained – even this guy plays his social function, beyond his personal motives).

  19. 19.

    I worry about the rigorous computational (intelligent) coordination and surveillance on human work and organization. At least in “critical states” we need violations, although not foreseen in the program; but just opportunistic and reactive to a given contingency.

  20. 20.

    For example, the motto of Bicchieri for synthesizing the spirit and working of social Ns “Do the right thing: But only if others do so” could create some misunderstanding. This might be the mental rule, the prescription that the individual gives to himself in front of a N (it can explain his conformity or violating behavior) but is not the prescription of the N: the N says, prescribes, just “Do the right thing!” Ns want to be obeyed and respected in any case; this is their imperative. I may decide or be leaning to respect this absolute imperative only “if”, under certain condition, but the “normative expectation” also by the others doesn’t say “only if the others do so”.

  21. 21.

    It is even possible that a meta-norm emerges: the idea that to conform to this N (for example, of politeness) by antiquate, ridiculous, or snob, and this elicits negative attitudes in the others, that I want to avoid. A sort of meta N of not conforming to the traditional N is emerged; sometime even justified by new value (for example, “do not give precedence to women” as sign of women discrimination). In this case, for those people the previous N is no longer there, is no longer considered and accepted as a social N. The emergence or formulation of a meta-N about the violation (and then abandon) of a previous specific N is one of the processes of N abandoning and N innovation. It requires specific mental changes and contents; including a value-based justification of the “criticism” to the previous impinging N.

  22. 22.

    See for example: [1], [40], [10], [26] [27], [37], [44], [29] [30].

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  1. ISTC-CNR GOAL Lab, Rome, Italy

    Cristiano Castelfranchi

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  1. Delft University of Technology , Delft, The Netherlands

    Virginia Dignum

  2. IIIA-CSIC , Barcelona, Spain

    Pablo Noriega

  3. Ozyegin University , Istanbul, Turkey

    Murat Sensoy

  4. University of Sao Paulo , Sao Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Jaime Simão Sichman

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Castelfranchi, C. (2016). A Cognitive Framing for Norm Change. In: Dignum, V., Noriega, P., Sensoy, M., Sichman, J. (eds) Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems XI. COIN 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9628. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42691-4_2

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