Nineteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

This paper serves two goals. First, it suggests that norm modelling, especially in consideration of its empirical implications, should follow social structure accounts instead of social preferences accounts. Second, it showcases the importance of synergy in interdisciplinary research by fostering holistic theories in order to lead to practical applications such as norm modelling. This paper is organised as follows. The first section articulates the definition of social norms by Elster (1989) as a reductionist account which supports the methodological approach in modelling social norms as social preferences. Furthermore, in comparison with the reductionist account section one defends the social structure accounts in seeing norms as social facts which are irreducible to individuals’ psychology, following the seminal work by Georg Simmel (1895), Durkheim (1982), and Gilbert (1989). The second section argues that commitment to the philosophical position, namely non-reductionist account, plays a key role in leveraging applicable methodological insights for empirical norm modelling. With empirical considerations, section three exemplifies how the two diverged philosophical positions synthesise the two different empirical approaches applied in economics for norm modelling respectively. The current popular social preferences theory developed by Fehr-Gintis (1999) is illustrated as an empirical model which syntheses the reductionist account in the philosophical literature, whereas two other general models, i.e., the expectation-dependent account and the norm sensitivity account are demonstrated as what synthesise the non-reductionist account. The final section summarises the two main points of the paper.