From climate change to ecosystem and habitat destruction to the spread of infectious diseases such as COVID-19, many contemporary societal challenges are exacerbated by collective action problems. In these situations, groups would benefit from a shared outcome but the incentives available to individuals drive them to free ride. While laws, treaties, and other formal institutions could in principle address these global issues and create cooperation, they are often unavailable, unenforceable, or insufficient and informal institutions, such as social norms become essential. Under the right conditions, poor and destructive norms may disappear and new norms may spontaneously emerge, which motivate people to act against their self-interest and cooperate for the good of the collective. Despite their importance, evidence on the causal effect of social norms in promoting cooperation in humans is still limited. In this talk, Dr. Andrighetoo will present work on the formation and change of social norms and their effect in promoting human cooperation. She will discuss results from recent laboratory experiments showing that social norms are causal drivers of behavior and can explain cooperation-related regularities.

Bio: 

Dr. Giulia Andrighetto is senior researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the National Research Council, Rome, Italy and at Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden. Her research examines the nature and dynamics of social norms through behavioral experiments and agent-based modelling. In 2013, she was awarded the Ricercat@mente Prize for the best under 35 Italian researcher in the field of social sciences & humanities by the National Research Council and the Accademia dei Lincei. In 2016, she was awarded a Wallenberg Academy Fellowship by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Sweden.