Chiara Lisciandra

On the Emergence of Descriptive Norms

A descriptive norm is a behavioral rule that individuals follow when their empirical expectations of others following the same rule are met. We aim to provide an account of the emergence of descriptive norms by first looking at a simple case, that of the standing ovation. We examine the structure of a standing ovation, and show it can be generalized to describe the emergence of a wide range of descriptive norms.

Editorial: Formal epistemology meets experimental philosophy

In the past few years, there has been an increasing tendency in the application of formal and experimentalmethods to tackle philosophical issues.Weverymuch approve of this trend,whichweviewas part and parcel of the recent renewal of “scientific philosophy”: In our mind, the aim of a scientifically oriented philosophy is to adopt formal and experimental methods to address philosophical questions. A distinguishing feature of contemporary scientific philosophy is that the use of formal and experimental methods is not confined to areas such as the philosophy of science, of mathematics, or of physics. Quite the contrary: This research program applies its broad toolkit of formal and experimental practices to a very large range of philosophical areas. For instance, in the philosophy of cognitive science, the development ofmathematicalmodels of concepts representation has proved to be an innovative way to compare normative theories against empirical results. In the philosophy of economics, agent-based models have been used to explore the notion of causality used in economics. More generally, different areas of philosophy—from the philosophy of language to the philosophy of cognitive science, and from ethics to the philosophy of economics—have become increasingly scientific and characterized by a highly interdisciplinary approach. In tandem with this methodological turn, the dispute about whether philosophy should appeal to formal or experimental methods has made a comeback: Experimental philosophers defend the use of empirical methods as a means of exploring

Hypothetical Models in Social Science

The chapter addresses the philosophical issues raised by the use of hypothetical modeling in the social sciences. Hypothetical modeling involves the construction and analysis of simple hypothetical systems to represent complex social phenomena for the purpose of understanding those social phenomena.

Why are there descriptive norms? Because we looked for them

In this work, we present a mathematical model for the emergence of descriptive norms, where the individual decision problem is formalized with the standard Bayesian belief revision machinery. Previous work on the emergence of descriptive norms has relied on heuristic modeling. In this paper we show that with a Bayesian model we can provide a more general picture of the emergence of norms, which helps to motivate the assumptions made in heuristic models. In our model, the priors formalize the belief that a certain behavior is a regularity. The evidence is provided by other group members’ behavior and the likelihood by their reliability. We implement the model in a series of computer simulations and examine the group-level outcomes. We claim that domain-general belief revision helps explain why we look for regularities in social life in the first place. We argue that it is the disposition to look for regularities and react to them that generates descriptive norms. In our search for rules, we create them.