Evolution of Social Norms and Cooperation

Regular Session with four to five 20 to 25-minute presentations

Social norms emerge in dilemma situations, regulate externalities, and enable or stabilize social cooperation. While numerous works focus on the compliance and stability of social norms, there is much less research on the emergence of social norms. Models of bounded rationality, adaptive learning, evolutionary processes, and game-theoretic models are helpful in gaining a deeper understanding of the evolution of norms and social cooperation. Equally important is empirical work, experiments, and field studies to test hypotheses about the emergence of norms. Theoretical and empirical work on the evolution of social norms and cooperation will be presented and discussed in this session.