Dysfunctional Social Norms

Subproject “Dysfunctional Social Norms” investigates within the beliefs-externalities-legitimacy framework how social norms that amplify the costs (externalities) that globalization & technological change (driver) imposes on societies could possibly be changed incrementally, referring to the conflict-abatement hypothesis. In the literature, second-order beliefs have been identified as an important reason for the perseverance of dysfunctional norms but concrete knowledge referring to particular norms is still scarce. We focus on three dysfunctional social norms that exist to varying degrees in Arabic speaking Middle East countries: anti-social punishment, religious licensing, and female genital mutilation. Our contribution is both theoretical and methodological. Relying on theory, we conceptualize the notion of religious licensing, propose to think of it as type of norm and subsequently introduce ways to measure it and test factors contributing to it. For the two other norms, we focus on new interventions to contain them. Our research approach combines experimental designs, focus groups, quantitative text analysis, and sentiment analysis of social media text. The interventions we propose rely on a combined top-down and bottom-up approach implying that norm change would be incremental when authorities trigger changes in both first- and second-order beliefs (top-down), and actors internalize the new norms in their decision-making process (bottom-up). The results will lead to improved knowledge on how dysfunctional norms may be changed and societal conflicts abated.